“Poemolator, The” by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry ’02)
An excerpt from “Poemolator, The” by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry ’02), published by High Shelf Press.
Poemolator, The
No Americans suffer more from their inability to understand, or make themselves understood by, non-English speakers than America’s poets in Iraq. That’s why this year The Poetry Foundation of America (TPFoA) equipped hundreds of them with the Poemolator, a hand-held electronic device that allows the poets to deliver dozens of poems, prerecorded in Arabic, to the Iraqis they encounter.
The gadget, which looks like an larger than usual television remote control — with a speaker and a microphone on top — bursts into Arabic when it hears an equivalent phrase in English spoken by a poet whose voice it recognizes. But like an electronic parrot, the Poemolator simply repeats what it’s been programmed to repeat.
