"It is what it is"

If you've been in the country anytime in the the past five years or so, you've probably heard the phrase "it is what it is." People use it constantly. On one hand it's one of those meaningless verbal shrugs that serves to wrap up a conversation, along the lines of "I hear ya" or "what are you gonna do?" On the other, it actually does mean something. Perhaps that the subject in question must be taken at face value, or that it must be dealt with without harboring any illusions about it what it might be but isn't. Urban Dictionary has no less than 16 definitions. Or, to quote from this assessment of the phrase on flak magazine, " 'It is what it is' can also be an agent of insinuation, a coy refusal to spell out something that the speaker clearly thinks goes without saying." This brief analysis of the phrase led me to make a few diagrams which I reduced to the mini concrete poem above. I don't expect it to win any awards, but it was a helpful exercise in exorcising that seemingly ubiquitous phrase from my head for at least a few minutes. Nothing groundbreaking, but you know what they say...