A poem about manners that declines to mind its own: Dave Bonta's "Manners" has no commas, no full stops and no capital letters except the single "I". Even the layout seems relaxed, as if the lines had come to the table in their socks. Beneath that casual surface sits a small, sharp idea. The self we bring to a formal meal doesn't much care about the formalities, and the self we are when alone may be better company than any crowd.
The first stanza works like a tidy piece of comic logic. Talking about a "dinner self" suggests that we keep several selves in the wardrobe, one for each occasion, and this one is named after the meal it attends. Yet it turns out to be "indifferent / to dinner manner", the very thing you would expect to define it. The sound sets up the joke. "Dinner" and "manner" are near twins, sharing the same "-nner" ending and the same two-beat bounce, so the second line echoes the first like a phrase recited by rote. Etiquette, the poem hints, is partly a matter of repeating the expected noises. It is also worth noticing that the title says "Manners" in the plural while the line says "manner" in the singular. A whole code of conduct shrinks to one flat way of behaving, worn like a uniform.
Then the poem turns inward. "Even I" is half confession, half shrug, as if the speaker were admitting to a slightly embarrassing preference. The setting shifts from "dinner" to "supper", a word that, judging by its tone, feels homelier and less dressed up. There the speaker "entertain[s]" himself or herself. The verb works twice. It means to amuse, but it also means to receive as a guest, which belongs to the vocabulary of hospitality, and so of manners. The speaker becomes host and guest in one, with nobody to impress and nobody to offend, so the rules have nothing left to do.
The last word is the poem's boldest move. "Unparliament" is a coinage, and what it means is left for the reader to work out. A parliament takes its name from speaking (the word comes from the French *parler*), and "a parliament of owls" is a real collective noun for a gathering of birds. Reading "unparliament" as a gathering of talkers with no order or dignity, such as a noisy table of guests, is an inference rather than a certainty, but it fits the poem's mood. The comparison is also left slightly open. The sentence says the speaker entertains himself or herself "more than any unparliament", but it never says exactly what the unparliament fails to do. Is it failing to amuse the speaker, or failing to amuse itself? The sentence stops on the long, mock-grand word with no punctuation to close it, which is a rather unceremonious way to leave the table.
The rhythm supports this. There is no rhyme scheme or regular metre, only a pattern of lengthening and clipping. The first line rolls out through the five syllables of "indifferent", and then the second drops to a short, dismissive five syllables in all, like a flick of the hand. The second stanza is longer and looser, and it ends on a four-syllable flourish. "Indifferent" and "unparliament" both end in "-ent", and they sit at the two stanzas' longest moments, so a faint echo brackets the poem. "Self" returns inside "myself", which keeps the poem's attention on the person at the centre of the meal.
The poem is significant for how much it fits into so little space. In a few lines it suggests that manners are a kind of performance, that we split ourselves to suit different rooms, and that being unobserved is a real pleasure. It makes these points lightly, without a lecture, and its form acts out what it says. A poem about indifference to manners that is itself indifferent to capitals and commas feels honest. One invented word is enough to show how much tone a poet can pack into a single coinage.