Master Class: Sub-Lit: the Contagion [Rick Kenney]

Long before the internet, certain word-strings have always “gone viral,” colonizing minds by infectious means, mouth to ear, without need of the literary apparat and its customary gray vectors: tenured professors, annotated anthologies, editorial and critical harrumph. We’ll collect specimens of this subliterary sort, including jokes, riddles, curses, charms, weather-saws, and prayers and consider how they do it. In that sense, this may devolve into a lightning taxonomy of the several live magics constituting Ars Poetica; curse us if we don’t keep it light.