If, like me, you can suspend your usual horror at conspiracy theories in favor of the higher paranoia, and you have a weakness for poetry noir and are convinced that JFK was not assassinated by a lone marksman in the book depository building, have I got the book for you: it is Historic Diary by Tony Trigilio (Buffalo, NY: BlazeVOX). Trigilio uses a variety of styles and forms — e.g., a pantoum for The Manchurian Candidate, diary entries in porose or prosey verse for the assassination witnesses who met violent deaths.
Here are a couple of sentences or lines lifted almost at random from this compelling new book:
"He shot the President on his lunch hour."
"The PTA overrun with communists."
"Tough to believe, in those 90 seconds
After the shots came off, a man could stash
A rifle, run down four flights of stairs, buy
Himself a Coke, stare down a cop."
"Dressed and sitting
upright in bed, November 8, 1965,
Kilgallen found dead of a drug
overdose, her case notes vanished — "
"'The Queen of Diamonds'? What did she mean, 'The Queen of Diamonds'?"
— DL
[from the archive; originally posted March 9, 2011. The image is that of the book cover Charlie Orr created for an unwritten book by me.]