Comments on: ARE POETS BAD MOTHERFUCKERS?????????

By: Joel Brouwer

Joel Brouwer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:09:04 +0000

Where is my present.
Report this comment

By: Javier Huerta

Javier Huerta — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:10:58 +0000

It’s good to see people defending Olena’s post. Though, I do think Olena does just fine defending it herself.
Kent is right, about my post being partly inspired by Olena’s. I was actually thinking about bad words in poetry ever since I read the one bad word I use in front of a group of high school students. They reacted, well, like high school students. I really didn’t know if we could use those words in this forum, and, I was even going to email Nick to ask about it. So Olena’s post was liberating.
Report this comment

By: Marty Elwell

Marty Elwell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:59:09 +0000

Olena – Great post! It’s only missing line breaks.
and,: i know, i know. but right now this “poet” needs to EAT.
i will tell you exactly what i think….sometime next week!
There’s fucking music in this post!
Also, thanks for asking what poets are (lawyers, insurance geeks, divorced, editors, teachers, retired, anthropologists, criminals, soldiers, professors, etc…etc…etc…), rather than going with the same old stereotype.
I don’t pretend to be of the same caliber of the poets on your list, but I like your kick-in-the-ass approach to getting some thought around what folks are doing with their poetry.
Report this comment

By: Doodle

Doodle — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:35:26 +0000

In a world of text messaging, Twittering, Facebook, and too-tiny QWERTY keyboards on PDAs, the style of Oleana’s posts really shouldn’t cause too much head-scratching among the literati.
Report this comment

By: Brian Salchert

Brian Salchert — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:30:40 +0000

I’m a dibbing and dabbing
feather swuufer
and all my badass m–f– poems
are offline.
Report this comment

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:50:46 +0000

I’m wondering why Olena K. Davis’s post seems to annoy so? Is it because it lacks the proper “decorum”? What is that decorum? Who says poets can’t be sardonically named? What’s the dress code at the soiree, for mainstream and post-avant alike? (See also Javier Huerta’s post on language protocol above it, partly inspired, I’m supposing, by Davis’s.)
I found the post rather thrilling, and poet or not, I hope there’ll be more of the kind.
Poesia! Mas maldicion, y menos precaucion!
Kent
Report this comment

By: kt

kt — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:23:52 +0000

hey olena,
i play chess and i emote about it all the time.
i care what poets are. i think it’s natural for a poet (some kind of disenfranchised by the very nature of the art he/she practices) to question place and motive and self. maybe not for you, henry, (respectfully, i am saying this. the web doesn’t translate text tone) but for me, it is a natural thing. i think about it every day. i question it every day. i am worrying about it right now. i have to struggle for it.
keep up the good work olena, they asked you to write, not one of these other ‘bad motherfuckers,’ and your posts are interesting engaging electric. they make me sit up straight and check my socks for electrodes.
Report this comment

By: NEG

NEG — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:50:14 +0000

I was making a joke about this post being a cliffhanger, that’s all…I’d be happy to explain in a more robust fashion for a small fee…
Report this comment

By: meg

meg — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 07:19:51 +0000

are you flarf?
Report this comment

By: Gary B. Fitzgerald

Gary B. Fitzgerald — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:09:50 +0000

“fucking” ridiculous.
Report this comment

By: noah freed

noah freed — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:35:05 +0000

Is our poets learning to read?
Report this comment

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:33:07 +0000

kent–the question is, most certainly, not restricted to poets. and/but, no, i have not had the pleasure of meeting your cousin. i really don’t hang with the lawyers. thanks for not ridiculing my query (believe me i do enough of that for myself), olena
Report this comment

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:22:46 +0000

noah and neg, not sure what anything or you mean(s), or if you guys are poets or readers or lawyers or plumbers or part time models, but i assume you think a entry by a “poet” or worthy of pay is something different than the above? noah, how/what would your entry read? neg, what is valuable to you? i.e. i’m curious: what do you want your poets to look like and speak to. please expound. olena
Report this comment

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:51:03 +0000

Who cares what poets “are”? Do chess players emote & obsess over their personal identity? No, what counts is the chess.
I think I get more out of poetry measurable by a ratio of its distance from Reality TV.
I think one aspect of poetry is that it lifts the ordinary language we speak toward awareness. It’s not about being culturally hip or cool, in my book : it’s about understanding, awareness.
Report this comment

By: Reader of Soul Patches

Reader of Soul Patches — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:04:12 +0000

Hey NEG (and what’s with the acronym thing? Is it like identity branding? Good stuff),
If you were mentioned in the list, would you post the snide comment? Why the passive aggressive post? Why not take it a bit further, spell out your problems with it?
Looking forward to your follow up,
Reader of Soul Patches
Report this comment

By: NEG

NEG — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 07:27:49 +0000

Hmmm.. So, does the Poetry Foundation pay bloggers per post or a flat rate?
Report this comment

By: jimmy

jimmy — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:28:59 +0000

I think Olena should run for governor of Alaska.
Report this comment

By: noah freed

noah freed — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:18:05 +0000

hey i think i could blog for poetry foundation.
Report this comment

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:44:13 +0000

Olena,
I think your question is a very important one (“Are Poets Bad Motherfuckers?????????”).
You ask a list of fellow-famous poets to answer the question, so I won’t try, myself.
But I did want to ask you, since you are a lawyer, Do you happen to know my cousin Brooks Chandler????????? He’s a lawyer, too, livign in Girdwood, though he goes everywhere, flying around on float planes alot, including to Nome, where he is the City Attorney. I ask because I know that probably every attorney in the Anchorage region knows every other attorney. And that would be amazing, and you would know my cousin, with whom I lived for a year in Waterville, Maine, where I first read Bill Knott, back when he was famous, and called himself Saint Gerard!
So, just out of curiosity: Do you happen to know my cousin?????????
Kent
Report this comment

By: Travis Nichols

Travis Nichols — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:33:17 +0000

Olena, you are one bad motherfucker. And you are a poet. Ergo: Ride the snake.
Report this comment