The marginalization of American poetry.

[Eduardo X]

I give you:

American Football

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.

by Harold Pinter

[RSofaer]

Dylan Thomas wrote my favorite poem about poetry:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-letter-to-my-aunt/

[TimElhajj]

I don't get into the rhyming stuff at all (unless it's a dirty limerick about a man named McSweeny, who spilled gin on his weenie. And then I am down with it.)

I didn't get introduced to poetry in grade or high school, but it was big in college, where it seemed to be mostly dominated by young feminists writing angry free-form verse about menstruation and stuff that made me wince.

Although it's pretty dated now, Dana Gioia wrote a pretty good essay

This is interesting. I can't even imagine poetry outside of academia. I didn't realize that poetry was ever considered the voice of the people, especially in America. I wonder why his article didn't even touch on the Beat generation, which seemed to involve a lot of what he says is part of the solution (i.e., readings that involve more than just reading, poets who capture the imagination of the common man).

[TimElhajj]

Originally Posted by Eduardo X

I'm in an MFA program for poetry, and we talk about this pretty much non-stop. I've happily decided that these 3 years will be my super fun time to write a fucking ton and make a ton of contacts that will sustain my writing life in years to come.
And that life will be writing, as I have for the past 13 years, on my own, and eventually trying to get published somewhere..

Dig it, Eduardo! You're my new hero. This is exactly what I want to do one day, possibly after the kids have finished school or at least after they have taken out loans big enough, or have done well enough in life, that I don't feel responsible for their needs so much anymore.

Edit: Who does poetry good about heroin, god, and humm... fatherhood? Recommend me some poets.

[Anaxagoras]

Originally Posted by Eduardo X

I'm by no means an expert on contemporary poetry, but I know of quite a few poets. Tell me some things you're interested in, and I'll try to find you a poem you like.

How about.... dogs, God, (to crib a good one from Mr. ElHajj) and experiencing foreign cultures. (aka traveling)

Originally Posted by bulhajj

I don't get into the rhyming stuff at all

I'm the same way. The rhyming schema is (in my opinion, of course) an irritating hold-over from the days when poets had to memorize all their poems, and they used rhymes & metric as mnemonic aides.

[Eduardo X]

The titular poem in Waking the Deaf Dog is pretty ass-kicking, I think. It isn't really about god, but it is about dogs and childhood.

I typically hate metered and rhymed poetry. In fact, I'm not a fan of form as a tradition, even with the huge amounts of garbage free verse has produced.

And Bullhajj, I pay $0 for school. I make very little money off of school, and had to take a living expense loan for the year ($4k), but this is the only year I'll have to do that, as next year, I'll get more than twice as much of a stipend. MFAs don't get you much outside of time to write, even if they are terminal degrees, so they are usually fully funded. The time is always right to try to get your MFA!

[Cory]

No matter the true state of American poetry, we can be sure that the Bananas and Nuts thread is certainly doing its part. :)

[Mark Asher]

THE VIEWS
by Albert Goldbarth

Their party--a various dozen of them, a vicar,
a tough young streetjack, a lady's waiting maid, etc.--
had been kidnapped from the ferry by a raiding ship,
and that was attacked by enemy cannon, and then
their adventures really began. It's dawn now,
and they wake on the other side of a day of long trek
through the villages of this mountainous, alien land.
They're in an abandoned plaza. Overnight, a number
of their belongings have disappeared: some purses, food bags.
In the nearer vista, the ruin of a temple spills the morning
light like burning brandy over its marble lip. The world
is a large and marvelous place, someone is thinking reverently,
strange, and visibly miracled. One slaps his pocket: wallet gone.
Jezusfukkinchrist, he says, the same old story everywhere you go.

[jason]

Originally Posted by Bullhajj

I didn't get introduced to poetry in grade or high school, but it was big in college, where it seemed to be mostly dominated by young feminists writing angry free-form verse about menstruation and stuff that made me wince.

I think my first poetry outside of things like Dr. Seuss was in the 4th grade. The school that I went to required students as part of their literature studies to analyze and memorize one poem per week. On fridays we had to get in front of the class, recite the poem from memory and then give a short report on the construction, themes and imagery in the poem. Surprisingly, this was a public school.

In college I took a creative writing class for poetry. It was filled with mostly women writing poems about heartbreak and angsty feminist stuff... this is what lead to me choosing to use my writing assignments to do poems about sex, like my Valentine's day classic "Part Your Lips Just So" or "A Complaint On Dying" about the unfairness of women having multiple orgasms while men tend to fade after just the one.

[TimElhajj]

Originally Posted by jason

In college I took a creative writing class for poetry. It was filled with mostly women writing poems about heartbreak and angsty feminist stuff... this is what lead to me choosing to use my writing assignments to do poems about sex, like my Valentine's day classic "Part Your Lips Just So" or "A Complaint On Dying" about the unfairness of women having multiple orgasms while men tend to fade after just the one.

Tend? I bet you were popular with the rest of the class. Me, I liked to go to coffee shops and get all angsty about about my writer's block.

[Jason McCullough]

Oh, and I've been surprised how good stuff in the journals are, and how many great new things that point me at. Flyway, for example, is gold the entire way through; unfortunately, none of the damned thing is online that I can find.

For example: Aldo Leopold. Never heard of the guy before, but it's turns out he's the founder of wildlife ecology, and also wrote fantastic, spare essays and prose. Thinking like a mountain is just awesome stuff (the domain hosting it is hilariously extreme for such now-uncontroversial content). I mean, damn, everything on this page of excerpts is grade-A. There's a couple short stories by Patricia Neumann and Ron Parsons that perfectly capture the culture I grew up in, in an actually respectful manner you so rarely see; alas, not online.

[Ezdaar]

This thread needs more Billy Collins.

[Mark Asher]

Originally Posted by Ezdaar

This thread needs more Billy Collins.

Bar Time
by Billy Collins

In keeping with universal saloon practice,
the clock here is set fifteen minutes ahead
of all the clocks in the outside world.
This makes us a rather advanced group,
doing our drinking in the unknown future,
immune from the cares of the present,
safely harbored a quarter of an hour
beyond the woes of the contemporary scene.
No wonder such thoughtless pleasure derives
from tending the small fire of a cigarette,
from observing this glass of whiskey and ice,
the cold rust I am sipping,
or from having an eye on the street outside
when Ordinary Time slouches past in a topcoat,
rain running off the brim of his hat,
the late edition like a flag in his pocket.
--
Also, this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4jHI...eature=related

[salwon]

Originally Posted by Bullhajj

Edit: Who does poetry good about heroin, god, and humm... fatherhood? Recommend me some poets.

Lou Reed?

[TimElhajj]

Ohhhh. Good thinking salwon. Good thinking.

[McGraw McGraw]

Originally Posted by Bullhajj

This is interesting. I can't even imagine poetry outside of academia. I didn't realize that poetry was ever considered the voice of the people, especially in America. I wonder why his article didn't even touch on the Beat generation, which seemed to involve a lot of what he says is part of the solution (i.e., readings that involve more than just reading, poets who capture the imagination of the common man).

I will be going out on a limb here, but it might have something to do with Gioia being a neo-formalist and the Beats being mostly free-verse. I'm speaking entirely from conjecture, of course.

Anyway, there are few poets (if any) who handle heroin or any type of intoxication very well. There was a female poet I read a few years back who was writing about cocaine addiction, but I can't remember her name. She had a spread in Melee, I think. Not to step on Eduardo's toes by recommending, but Yusef Komunyakaa handles fatherhood pretty well-- granted it's from a son's perspective. Neon Vernacular is a book I'd strongly recommend from Komunyakaa.

Pretty much every poet deals with god, but very few poets write explicitly about dogs. Cat poems are quite common. For Anaxagoras's search for foreign understanding, I'd suggest Terrance Hayes's "Friday Poem" from Hip Logic or one of Kenneth Rexroth's later poems like "On Flower Wreath Hill." Those suggestions are assuming that you want to read about living in Japan, which is much more common a trope in poetry than you would imagine.

For what it's worth, Lou Reed's poetry teacher in college was Delmore Schwartz, one of the most forgotten Modernist masters about whom Saul Bellows's Humboldt's Gift was written.