Word: chapbook
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...most amusing pieces in the chapbook (Chaucerian jargon for this sort of collection) are not really supposed to be taken seriously. Cast From a Coffee House Comedy and Verbatim II have some funny lines, and some neat images, but lack coherence. Also in Cast From a Coffee House Comedy, the poet rhymes quartz with schmaltz, which is enough to stop any reader right there. The prose poem Battery Manhattan again has its brief moments, but is cluttered with incomplete sentences which have no function, and forced quaintness of expression. Mr. Phelps does however call the cry of a sea gull...