Pamper Me To Hell and Back

April 27, 2018 9:03 PM

Hera Lindsay Bird, New Zealand Poetry Star, interrogates capitalism and love in her recent poem Pyramid Scheme. Why aren't they called triangle schemes? Her most recent collection, published this year, is titled Pamper Me to Hell and Back.

Previously on MetaFilter. Recording of Pyramid Scheme on the Poetry Foundation's podcast.

posted by 3zra (9 comments total)

I tried hard to hate that poem and it was easy to for a while but it lulled me about midway and won me by the end. Would read again.
posted by notyou at 11:20 PM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

because sun money is free money

The original pyramid scheme!
posted by chavenet at 1:56 AM on April 28, 2018

Wonderful.
posted by The Toad at 4:44 AM on April 28, 2018

i know you hate the domestic in poetry but you should have thought of that before you invited me to move in with you

Hell yeah.
posted by eustacescrubb at 5:14 AM on April 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I like this very much.
posted by pracowity at 6:45 AM on April 28, 2018

In my experience, there are in fact taxes
posted by thelonius at 7:31 AM on April 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I kept getting distracted by the fact that it seems really obvious to me that it's a pyramid scheme, not a triangle scheme, because "pyramid" automatically gives you the correct orientation of things, with the head scammer on top. Whereas triangles can be all sorts of shapes (isosceles, scalene, right, equilateral) and orientations.

But it feels very geometrysplainy of me to say so.
posted by BrashTech at 9:23 AM on April 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

Now that is a love poem. A++++
posted by tuesdayschild at 1:36 PM on April 28, 2018

Actually, it's neither a pyramid nor a triangle scheme. Since the number of members increase exponentially in each layer, the sides of the structure are *curved*.
posted by storybored at 10:36 PM on April 28, 2018 [2 favorites]