[New-Poetry] hate

Mon Jun 8 03:02:11 EDT 2009

Brilliant, Judy, brilliant.

David Bircumshaw
Website: http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Judy Prince 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views 
  Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 3:27 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] hate

  Thanks, James, it feels sooooo good to read a rant.  However, since I'm an optimist 'til my hair follicles squeak, who drinks a glass of water until it's slightly more than half full and then throws it against the kitchen wall, and who's a fan of both Bob Grumman and Barry EssPAxe, here's my offering based upon your delightful list:

  POETS UNITED

  1]  We are the champions, my friends!!!!  <cue tune>
  2]  We sell our poems as tattoes on our bodies.  <long poems, long parts>
  3]  We admit that we're a poet to our pet rottweiler who takes care of snarking family and friends.
  4]  We love our own poems and poems of several other poets, if they pay us enough for that disclosure in a published source.
  5]  We store our poems in Kryptonite cylinders stamped:  "YOU AIN'T READ NOTHIN' YET!!!" [which we know to be true until they view our poem-tattooed body parts]
  6]  We incise our poems on the underside of Paul Muldoon's eyelids.
  7]  We respond en masse to a call from Bob, Barry and me for contributions to The Poetry Superfund, the wealth which we use to fund a Professor of Poetry Chair at Oxford University [UK] which requires 50 lectures free to the public, given by 50 poets chosen by all the contributors to The Poetry Superfund.  
  8]  To our poem submissions, we attach a rejection slip which reads:  "YOU WRITE  AWESOME POEMS, DUDE!" followed by a line for the reader's signature.
  9]  We demand that The Poetry Society [does that woman's money ever dry up?] fund a highly visible unit called Incompetent Poets United [acronymic possibilities].
  10]  We stand up at stuffy poetry readings with cameras aimed at poets' bellies only, and we send these photos to Vanity Fair and the Onion.
  11]  We lobby Congress for Poetry Pet of the Month, a different Poetry Pet for each month, beginning with a porcupine [porpentine].
  12]  We inundate our alma maters with single dollar bills in red envelopes titled:  GIVE THIS DOLLAR TO A POET WHO HAS NOT BEEN TO A COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY.
  13]  We formalise formalists and ultra-modernise modernists, we chop our chops, muddy our verse, remain standing whilst a poet is reading her poems and fall crashingly down when we're bored, we throw tomatoes at the audience whilst we're reading our poems, we begin a striptease onstage which stops after we've stripped off our third pair of mismatched longsleeved opera gloves, and we insist upon backup music and dancing from Jennifer Blowdryer and her friends whom we insist receive the money we gain from passing her hat around.
  14]  We have Group Poet Marriages at each formal university conference, insisting that the university provide poem-inscribed mini-weddingcakes, mugs, and napkins at each person's place setting.

  ----------[this list could not have been possible without the child who named "Yaddo" because the darling thing was an incipient poet]

  Best,

  Judy

  2009/6/7 <jforjames at aol.com>

    The recent plaint posted by Eileen Myles on the Harriet blog (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/i-hate-poetry/), provoked me to create a list of the kinds of things related to 'a life in poetry' that tend to exasperate and to vex us to point of angering us against poetry. This is a provisional list, feel free to add on...

    Being ignored by and large by the larger culture. The obscurity of the poet.

    The meager amounts poets can make from publishing work. The payment often being in copies of the mag. The inability to admit, “I’m a poet,” to friends and family.

    The anonymity of published poems. Hundreds of magazines in print or online, chockfull of poetry that almost no one sees. The contributing poet opens the journal, scans the contents page for familiar names, in hopes their work has been published shoulder to shoulder with reputable company. He only reads his own poem (ever concerned about the mar of typo) and then he sets his contributor’s copy aside and never looks at it again.

    Staid journals that always seem to be named Review or Quarterly. Edgy journals with names like Paisley Smile or Underpass. Graduate students screening submissions, determining what work gets passed on to the editor.

    Rejection slips that are pre-printed and unsigned. Rejection slips that try to cheer you up with a witticism. Rejection notes via email are easier; their sting transitory in the moment of click DELETE.

    The shear number of practicing poets. Thousands of competent poets pressing out more and more poetry, new ones constantly ‘emerging’ onto the scene. The suspicion that if there were fewer publishing poets one's work would have a better chance of coming to the fore.

    Gripes about the quality of poetry published in high-visibility magazines, particularly The New Yorker; similar complaints lodged against work appearing in American Poetry Review and Poetry magazine.

    The polemics of school v. school. Perjorative nomenclature like “School of Quietude.” The suspicion that one group or the other is getting all the plums of academic appointments, grants and fellowships, major readings and conference invitation.

    Poets’ pictures that are ten years younger than they are. Beautiful poets with voluminous hair. Poets who lean forward on bended e lbows with a hands holding up their sagging chins. Poets posed with bookcases in the background. Poets caught in profile staring into space.

    The increased ‘professionalization’ of poetry, the proliferation of MFA programs, where the granting of a terminal degree is seen as necessary credential for a young poet. The dismal job prospects for the graduates. 

    Poetry readings that start late. Poetry readings where the poet comes in late with an entourage of aging professors and eager-to-please young graduate students. Poetry readings in which the poet reads for over an hour. Poetry readings where the poet reads in monotone or with that regular cadence of rise & fall, affecting the way poems are supposed to be read, with every third word getting leaned on hard as if it were important.Poets who over-explain their work before reading i t. Poets who strain to entertain with lame jokes; who couldn't hack in stand-up.

    Formalists who believe that poetry written without regular meter and traditional forms is somehow lazy or merely ‘chopped prose’. Patting themselves on their backs for their well-turned rhymes. 

    The clique of the avant garde. Or the geezer avant garde still claiming their relevancy after 60. The lot of them self-serving in their praise. Always circling the wagons. Nary a negative word about any among their number. The enemy without attacked, while they decay within.

    Poets who believe poetry is ‘beautiful writing’. Poets who don’t read; and make a point of not wanting to be influenced. When only influence could save their sorry offerings.
    Poets who show up at open mikes and read beyond their time limit. So sure the world is hungering for their work. Those who give a bad name to amateur (when the name’s root is really ‘one who loves’).

    Poets who are inordinately fond of landscapes that will stimulate their creativity. Who don’t seem to be able to write without the space of a residency: “This book would not have been possible without Yaddo,” etc. 

    The proliferation of publishing through manuscripts contests. Socialized self-publication.And the subversion of manuscript contests, teacher-student log-rolling and other kinds of insidious back-scratching, all exposed so well by Foetry.com.

    Post-modernism that’s so self-unaware it is impossible to embarrass itself.

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at gmail.com>

    Sent: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 3:55 am
    Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] hate

    My question was logically referring to the thread that James Finnegan opened on this list. I'd say that if she is not on this list, she seized the idea quite smartly. And I agree completely with James' point, having raised the same objections several times which triggered violent reactions that spanned from feminism to women's rights to Rights to Hypertights and the Hell that ensued. To cut a nightmare short, Never Again. 
    But I am happy to see that I am not the only one. And on the other hand the free submissions to the Corner daily teach me that there are many other people who share the same idea. Less visible and 'screaming' people who with Van Gogh are able to make of a couple of potatoes a dinner for four. 

    On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 3:41 AM, <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:

      Anny, I can symphathize with Myles' frustrations. We all have our moments. But I have to say her plaint is somewhat scattershot.
      It makes me think that sometimes we ask too much from our art, poetry in this case. Is poetry not giving us what we expected,
      or, at times, do we expect too much from it? What were we promised other than a few touchstone poems that we can carry with us through time,
      and the feeling that, once in great while, something we wrote rubbed against those magic momuments.

      Posted this to my blog
      http://ursprache.blogspot.com/
      thinking about what Myles had to say...

      It was not important that [the poems] surv ive.
      What mattered was that they should bear
      Some lineament or character, 

      Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
      In the poverty of their words,
      Of the planet of which they were part. 

      —Wallace Stevens, from “The Planet On The Table”

      --
      Finnegan 

      -----Original Message-----
      From: Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at gmail.com>
      Sent: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 8:02 am
      Subject: [New-Poetry] hate

      I am wondering, is Eileen Myles on this list? She write on :
      I hate poetry @ Harriet's
      http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/i-hate-poetry/

    -- 
    Anny Ballardini
    http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
    http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
    http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
    http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
    I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
    Friedrich Nietzsche

_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! 

    _______________________________________________
    New-Poetry mailing list
    New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
    http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _______________________________________________
  New-Poetry mailing list
  New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
  http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20090608/76848f7c/attachment.html