Nonexistence Poem by gershon hepner

Nonexistence flows from what is unpronounced,
the dried source of a watershed,
cisternal spaces in the head,
the prey at which no cat has pounced.


Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviews 'For Common things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today' (Alfred A. Knopf) by the 25 year old West Virginian, Jedediah Purdy. Purdy argues that irony such as that personified by Jerry Seinfeld, harms 'common things, ' by which he means all that is public, shared and ordinary. Thomas Carlyle wrote in 'Sartor Resartus': 'An ironic man, with his sly stillness and ambuscading ways, may be viewed as a pest to society.' The epigraph to his book comes from Czeslaw Milosz: 'What is unpronounced tends to nonexistence.'


9/9/99