now that we are all done with the important business of sending sarah back home and moving into my new house (!) (um, revise that clause accordingly), i am officially ready to honor my contract with the poetry foundation by bringing things back down (or is it up?) to hank moody style solipsism and, if the opportunity presents itself, POETRY. HI!
here were/are some of the things i was thinking about while unpacking boxes and boxes of poetry and poisoning rats. (okay, mice, and lots of fiction, too, but still):
1. what exactly does joel brouwer mean by: “the knowledge that dooms a marriage is the knowledge prerequisite to marriage”?
2. what exactly does seneca mean by: “this is the difference between us and the etruscans … since they attribute everything to divine agency, they are of the opinion that things do not reveal the future because they have occurred, but that they occur because they are meant to reveal the future” ?
3.how many poets could you actually sue for the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress?
4. giving readings like giving head. right? you can do it even if you haven’t written anything new. right?
5. why have i not read most of these? i could never leave my house again and actually get an education.
6. i should never leave my house again. and get an education.
7. “i i i never told anyone about the time i slept with two guys at once cause…it never happened.” i misquote myself, but, low and behold, we actually do mature and evolve. one of them was/is a girl!
8. does EVERYTHING feel literal to the creator?
9. jesus! weston cutter’s birthday! i was so gonna do an entry in his honor on OCTOBER 31– day of birth of most emotionally something individuals (keats, too!) (but, shit! was running boxes and african dwarf frogs out of my old house (quick! into the garage) and missing and then catching a plane to meet my lovers). weston! i so need to send you a birthday shirt and some music! (do you have the new dylan bootleg?) mostly, two very corny beautiful songs: the feliz brothers’ “radio song” (”don’t you ever die, you ever die, you ever die, move me all of my life, all of my life, all of my life”) ( yes, i Llove tripetition) and birdmonster’s: “my love for you” (my love my love for you will never something it’s something than the things i do, my love, my love for you will never stray it’s stronger than the things i say”)
10. i am in the “surfwise” school of you must change your life rather than the “man on wire” school of you must change your life. (but you gotta love the french. don’t you?)
11. speaking of movies: the cool school: that is my dream: a LARGE group of guy painters and sculptors who are as competitive as they are creative. and me.
10. look! i have built in book shelves!
Here’s an endearingly prickly comment by one Lawrence Klepinger, from beneath Richard Archambeau’s essay on Poets and Left Politics over at Poetry Magazine. I don’t know if it belongs here under Olena’s post, but it seems pretty much anything can fit under Olena’s posts! And this *is* kind of fun…
Posted By: Kent Johnson on November 12, 2008 at 3:28 pmThe poetical is political, but always mainly personal,
Kent
*
I often get a kick out of people who call
themselves poets. They are usually the
ones who have an enormous
“chip” on their shoulder for not having
“made it” in society - so in righteous
indignation, they complain about the
evils of the community that they are
forced to exist in. As a retired
overseas English instructor - with no
pension from any school, and
supporting myself on investments that I
made throughout my teaching career -
I am always amused that those
“academics,” who profess to be “Left
Wing Truth-telling,” - are precisely the
ones constantly jockeying for position
in an administrative post, clamor for
longer “paid” sabbaticals and would sell
their mother’s gravestone to insure
permanent tenure. Until “poets” of this
ilk lose their tether to the economic tit
of modern education they will succeed
at nothing but academic mumbo-jumbo
and fade into the ivy covered halls that
they so obediently adhere to. Sorry -
but the truth hurts. That is why lies
were invented.
–Lawrence Klepinger
Kent,
Posted By: Iain on November 13, 2008 at 9:12 amI’m not sure how much my irritation comes from actually disagreeing with Lawrence, or whether it’s just because he comes off as kind of a dick. What exactly is he suggesting we “poets” do? Become independently wealthy enough off of “investments” to support ourselves? To insert some Lawrence-style self righteousness in here, I say this as a poet working as a paramedic. However, I don’t have any delusions that being “outside the system” is good for anything besides one’s own smugness. You can always tell how far outside the system you are by how far you are from enacting any kind of positive change. Perhaps I actually share some of Lawrence’s frustration with academic poets who pat themselves on the back merely for the politics that they hold, but to suggest that stepping away from the system of power does anything more than allow it more power is a delusion.
Someone is wrong on the Internet!
Posted By: Jordan on November 13, 2008 at 10:21 amEverything else I wanted to say was just driven out of my head by that picture because OMG OMG OMG I need your bookshelves.
Posted By: unreliable narrator on November 14, 2008 at 3:24 pmNice book cart, too!!
Posted By: Don Share on November 14, 2008 at 4:01 pm