[New-Poetry] hate

[Judy Prince]

>From you, David, wow.  And an elegant thankful bow....
Judy

2009/6/8 David Bircumshaw <david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com>

>  Brilliant, Judy, brilliant.
>
>
> David Bircumshaw
> Website: http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Judy Prince <jbalizsprince at googlemail.com>
> *To:* NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views<new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> *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.
>>
>>
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