desolate tap hounds
suckling at the teet
of their ripe mothers
pussy mongering imps
blacking out hearts
for imperfect truths
drown the headlights
indian style warrior
let your speed guide you
carreen on the hood
of childhood fame
wash the hollow from you
breathe the known thriller
believe in the known gods
let the haggered butcher go
how overwhelming must be
to be something
low rides the princes crown (and pants)
drink the little girls dry
they only live once
you are the only immortal
Monday, February 18, 2013
The View from the Underground
For those of you not plugged in, Alexandra Petri wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled "Is Poetry Dead?" I will not link it here. It has already gotten too much attention and does not deserve another back link.
First, when I was living abroad I would get rather irate and abrasive whenever I would hear someone speak ill about America. America, my home, I rue every moment my feet touch it's soil and hate to the fiber of my being the science experiments this country conducts on it citizens, the completely disillusioned values, and the travesties which are daily occurrences here. But no one talks shit about my family but me.
Alexandra Petri isn't a poet.
Second, whatever. Let her, let all of them, think poetry is dead. Ghost get the better view of the world anyway.
I could say a whole bunch of shit like: to even state that poetry is dead, or could be dead, is to completely misconceptualize what poetry stands for (and no, misconceptualize isn't a word. Poetry, bitch.).
But I won't. I don't care or at least care less then I'm letting on here.
I'll admit fire rose in my eyes when I read that she thought "what we mean by poetry is a limp and fangless thing." I could have broken a nose or two with the spine of a Kay Ryan book.
But really the only way to get anyone to read your shit on-line anymore is to make wild and outrageous claims. The internet is flooded with so many panting dogs out there, Chihuahuas and German Shepards both spell "bark" the same way, just one has to yap a little more for attention. I don't blame her really. And I do wholly think poetry needs a swift kick in the ass, so why not have it be from an outsider questioning its validity. I'll admit I've though it before. But then, this my home. This is where I live.
So what no one's work is currently matching up to the Divine Comedy or The Odyssey. The cannon is forged over time. Literary importance is bestowed, not just inherent. Who knows what any poet will be in the future besides dead. And can't the cogency of poetry also be said for all classical forms of contemporary art? Yes, there is just a lot more money in oil, but for how much longer? How many of those young artist who've never even touch oil could could have been the next Van Gogh, sitting behind a computer doing graphic design for a dental office? How many could have been the next Whitman but instead of standing in a open field broke and naked sat at a desk inserting SEO keywords into some article they shitted out?
Maybe poetry isn't dead. Maybe the poets aren't alive. Maybe we're all just too afraid to throw it all away and just write poetry and only poetry. To forget health insurance and let that upper groin lump grow and pray it doesn't take you until you've finished that last chap book. To let go of mortgage payments and live like a monk on hangouts. Show me the mangled artist who gave it all up for poetry and gracefully took a shotgun to the dome or walked into the river with a stone-coat. Save this over-fed diabetes and cancer culture.
Take the gutter over a cubical. Be a nothing no-name alcoholic scarred broke vagrant poet rather then some dead on their feet HMO shielded journalist marketeer.
If poetry is dead is your opinion, keep your opinions. In fact, keep your money. Keep your fame. Keep your notoriety. And if you are opening lit mags with that attitude, keep your fucking readership.
Yeah, I'm pointing some fingers, but let this be a conversation with the self I'm sharing with you. All of us poets have been worrying too much about what poetry is and where poetry is, rather then writing poetry. So I'm stopping here.
First, when I was living abroad I would get rather irate and abrasive whenever I would hear someone speak ill about America. America, my home, I rue every moment my feet touch it's soil and hate to the fiber of my being the science experiments this country conducts on it citizens, the completely disillusioned values, and the travesties which are daily occurrences here. But no one talks shit about my family but me.
Alexandra Petri isn't a poet.
Second, whatever. Let her, let all of them, think poetry is dead. Ghost get the better view of the world anyway.
I could say a whole bunch of shit like: to even state that poetry is dead, or could be dead, is to completely misconceptualize what poetry stands for (and no, misconceptualize isn't a word. Poetry, bitch.).
But I won't. I don't care or at least care less then I'm letting on here.
I'll admit fire rose in my eyes when I read that she thought "what we mean by poetry is a limp and fangless thing." I could have broken a nose or two with the spine of a Kay Ryan book.
But really the only way to get anyone to read your shit on-line anymore is to make wild and outrageous claims. The internet is flooded with so many panting dogs out there, Chihuahuas and German Shepards both spell "bark" the same way, just one has to yap a little more for attention. I don't blame her really. And I do wholly think poetry needs a swift kick in the ass, so why not have it be from an outsider questioning its validity. I'll admit I've though it before. But then, this my home. This is where I live.
So what no one's work is currently matching up to the Divine Comedy or The Odyssey. The cannon is forged over time. Literary importance is bestowed, not just inherent. Who knows what any poet will be in the future besides dead. And can't the cogency of poetry also be said for all classical forms of contemporary art? Yes, there is just a lot more money in oil, but for how much longer? How many of those young artist who've never even touch oil could could have been the next Van Gogh, sitting behind a computer doing graphic design for a dental office? How many could have been the next Whitman but instead of standing in a open field broke and naked sat at a desk inserting SEO keywords into some article they shitted out?
Maybe poetry isn't dead. Maybe the poets aren't alive. Maybe we're all just too afraid to throw it all away and just write poetry and only poetry. To forget health insurance and let that upper groin lump grow and pray it doesn't take you until you've finished that last chap book. To let go of mortgage payments and live like a monk on hangouts. Show me the mangled artist who gave it all up for poetry and gracefully took a shotgun to the dome or walked into the river with a stone-coat. Save this over-fed diabetes and cancer culture.
Take the gutter over a cubical. Be a nothing no-name alcoholic scarred broke vagrant poet rather then some dead on their feet HMO shielded journalist marketeer.
If poetry is dead is your opinion, keep your opinions. In fact, keep your money. Keep your fame. Keep your notoriety. And if you are opening lit mags with that attitude, keep your fucking readership.
Yeah, I'm pointing some fingers, but let this be a conversation with the self I'm sharing with you. All of us poets have been worrying too much about what poetry is and where poetry is, rather then writing poetry. So I'm stopping here.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Under Review
 |
My application to graduate school is in and pending. And I must admit it's been on my mind.
If I break it down, which I need to do hourly, what irks me is the hope, however false or true, the idea that I might be admitted. And such a might is an infinitesimal mite gnawing away at my touchy flesh. 500 to 600 applicants is a lot of funking aspiring waste-holes like myself. Lets say 300 of those applicants are poesy fruitcakes like myself vying for 2 or 3 slots in the New Writers Project roster. I illogically break it down in my head like this:
10%- I am an infinity better writer then. These are completely delusional children who's parents held them too much, teachers coddled them too often, and who still think writing about drugs is acceptable after Burroughs.
20%- I'm squeaking past. These decent poets around 25 to 26 years old who've taken a break after undergraduate but all they did was work and occupy themselves with money wondering why they aren't growing up after college like they assumed they would. They never when on that adventure they pinky promised themselves they would find and survive. 20% I have less fear then, and it shows in writing.
30%- I'll beat out because of academic achievements, internships, publications, life experiences, age, and, more then likely, marital status (thanks love).
When I applied, as nervous as I was to have everything perfect and as much as I lacerated myself over each and every single word of my portfolio, I was sure I had it in the bag. But its been a month and half since then and that affability that once flooded my insides has ebbed like the tide with the moonrise. Now is the darkness. Now is the time of bellows and its unseen bellowers. Now is the period I sleep and try to stay warm and hope the sun to peek the horizon with the warmth of a new day.
Now I call it at 50/50.
50%- I'll get in and I'll be on a predominant path towards the accomplishment I've berthed for five years, two professions, three states, seven countries, two internships, a hand full of publications, and a fuck ton of failures and triumphs.
50%- I'll look at my wife and ask, with empty pockets and an empty mind, "Now what?"
Send me those good energies.
Excuse
let me explain, as a child
i thought pain was temporal
that a wound exuded finite hurt
until the well chamber dried
so I would hold tight
milking my contusions
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Ode to the Mad Dog
Ornery fiend of a wine warm
a no good glassseized thing it is
downed and candied nebulas of oomph
laborious harvest and dazzling alchemy
unwholesome life giver, breathe high in me
actuality is fortified and carnal
Save the souls for temperant light
Let the night fall for the mutts
Snap the neck and draw the cork
Draw the mongrels from their bumcages
I've been playing with words lately
Is it obvious/abrasive?
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
dear free form poets
dear Free
form poets, I can't
read
you're fuckING !
poetry-
I am, for now,
interested
in what you have to say
with
your
dumb-
ass
words.
please do
not
make
this harder
t h e n
it has to be
to pay attention
2 u.
At least give it to me and then take it away.
Space Compass
Sometimes:
Poetry, like most art, is a medium where there is a certain innate skill, something inside of us that cannot be acquired through perseverance, which will propel the poet forward from the group when perseverance will inevitably fail (a cyclical failure it is really).
Whether it comes from a nature or nurture I don't really know, or care, but from what I've been able to surmise: at some point, in any journey (worth mention), there will be a moment when you realized you've forgotten something important and how difficult things will be without it. You don't know whether you have this constitution until it is too late.
A compass, in space, is useless.
Poetry, like most art, is a medium where there is a certain innate skill, something inside of us that cannot be acquired through perseverance, which will propel the poet forward from the group when perseverance will inevitably fail (a cyclical failure it is really).
Whether it comes from a nature or nurture I don't really know, or care, but from what I've been able to surmise: at some point, in any journey (worth mention), there will be a moment when you realized you've forgotten something important and how difficult things will be without it. You don't know whether you have this constitution until it is too late.
A compass, in space, is useless.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)