Frank Kuppner's The Third Mandarin is made of 501 quatrains divided into five "books." It collages an alternative Imperial China of drunk poets, grumpy sages, and sex-starved emperors. The poems riff on a variety of forms, from prophecies and love letters to drinking songs and graffiti.
As a storyteller, Kuppner sticks faithfully to the path of least significance. His is a poetry of things that might happen in a minute or two, to people we don't really care about, for reasons too complicated to go into. His characters have a habit of turning up late to their own poems, as the poet rushes off to find them so that he can get started. Half riddling philosopher, half-drivelling idiot, Kuppner's speaker has the air of someone who has forgotten why they came into the room, 501 times.
