The November 3rd Club

A poem of mine is in the Winter edition of The November 3rd Club. I also have one in the Fall edition. You might like to check it out if you're interested in literary values in a political age.

Yes, but what does he sound like?

Went to the Wintonbury Library in Bloomfield, CT for the first time last night. There were so many people who signed up for the open mike that we were limited to two poems. But you don't have to miss out. You can hear me read at my MySpace band page. You can right click on the lyrics and open them up in a new window if you want to follow along while I read.

And tonight is the open mike at the Arms Library in Shelburne Falls, which I hope to record and post tomorrow.

They Regret Poetry

So say Charles Mudede and James Latteier in The Stranger. They get around to bashing Wordsworth, "tenured poetry", the Beats, the Black Mountain poets, and the New York school of poets, and then every frickin' poet there is:

Poet, listen! And listen good. You are not important, your childhood experiences are worthless, your father was not all that bad, your womb is not the universe, your impotence is not the end of the world, language will never regret the absence of all you have to say about who you are, where you are from, why you are anxious, why you are tough, why you love, why you fuck. What you dream, what you smoke, what you believe are not the stuff of heaven or hell—it just comes out all wrong and goes on and on. As T. S. Eliot once asked, and what we must ask you now with great urgency, when will it end?

to which several people responded to Poetry's autopsy, including these snippets:

My suggestion? Tell aspiring poets whose work you despise to read more poetry.
--J.R.Tipton

If the work relies on the horror-show gravity of your minority (or misunderstood majority) status, childhood abuse, bad marriage, poverty, disappointingly hollow wealth or the deaths of your parents for its impact, then it is fraudulent and silly and begging to be shot out of the sky.
--Grant Cogswell

7 Things Tag

Martyn has just tagged me to have a go at listing 7 things from the following categories...so here goes.

7 Things to do before I die

Fall in love again
(that would be enough)

7 Things I cannot do

Do home repairs
Suffer fools gladly
Go a whole day without swearing
Have dairy
Keep answering this question

7 Things that attract me to blogging

(boring)

7 Things I say most often

Bloody, bloody hell!
He/she/they will burn in hell.
What the fuck?!!
Move your ass! (when driving)
(enough)

7 books I love

e e cummings: Poems
Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(curiously, for all the reading I do, I find I love hardly any)

7 Movies or TV Series I watch or would watch over & over again
(there are more than 7 of these)
Smallville (TV series)

War movies:
Patton
Full Metal Jacket
The Hunt for Red October
Braveheart

Romance:
Say Anything
A Walk in the Clouds
High Fidelity

Comedy:
Back to School
Summer School
Real Genius

Once a Bastard, Always a Bastard

Pat Robertson has done it again, this time suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.”

According to MSNBC News Services:

Robertson said “God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible and he says ‘This is my land,’ and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, ‘No, this is mine.”’

Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of critics who challenged his remarks, “What they’re basically saying is, ‘How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?”’

“This is what the word of God says,” Watts said. “This is nothing new to the Christian community.”

And I'd say, then that's what's wrong with the Bible and the Christian community, especially the million daily viewers who watch and listen to this demented psycho nutjob.

When Robertson finally dies, we can all say that it was God's way of telling him to shut the fuck up.

News of a Coupla Bastards

The bastard Byron had one of his poems recently discovered. Typically, it was found in a book inscribed to him which he returned to its author after falling out with him. Bastard. Also

A previously unrecorded manuscript of Shelley's 1820 Ode to Naples, in the handwriting of Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of Shelley's wife, Mary, was found at the same library.
Poor Claire Clairmont, mother of Byron's daughter, Allegra, who died at age five in a convent, not having been visited by her father even after sending him a touching letter asking him to take her to the fair. Bastard.

But David Biespiel would have us admire the poetry, if not the poet. He makes his case with the example of Philip Larkin, whose published letters are so salacious that they are not quoted in the article. He quotes Martin Amis:
"The word 'Larkinesque' used to evoke the wistful, the provincial, the crepuscular, the sad, the unloved; now it evokes the scabrous and the supremacist."
Biespiel writes
One question to ask is: Should we care that much if a poet has a bitter disposition or an ugly world-view in his private life or private letters? All things considered, I say no. For me, the poems, not the seedy or saintly life of the poet who wrote them, is what we want to care about. A poem is something a poet makes; it's not the life he lives.
Which I guess is a fine view to have, unless you are one of those unfortunate enough to be a victim of the poet's bastardy. Or have no empathy for those who were.

The Muses Among Us

For the first time in a long while I spent the entire day alone: didn't go out; no phone calls; no visitors. But I wasn't totally without the thoughts of someone else. I read "The Muses Among Us" by Kim Stafford. It's subtitled "Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft." It's about how inspiration is not something we force from ourselves, but exists all around us in what other people say. I found myself so frequently thinking that a particular sentence would be a good quote that I just gave up trying to remember them all. The whole book is worth a read to anyone who values the process of the writing life as much as the product. Perhaps the two best chapters are "The Writer as Professional Eavesdropper" and "Quilting Your Solitudes", but, really, the entire book was charming and comforting to read.