Meanwhile, it just occurred to me: P.O.D. could also stand for the new “Pee on Demand” technology.

Okay, so it wasn’t funny….
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.
Michael

.
Michael quit his job today and gave up all he had
or ever hoped to have while here on Earth,
and now lives like some contemporary Sinbad,
making up for years he’s wasted since his birth.
He explains that he forsakes the Nobel prize
and will only read his poems to the sea.
If he has neither fame or fortune when he dies,
no regrets. Says he’s contented just to be.

And when I asked him why he chose to live like this,
needing neither recognition or respect;
what exactly is the nature of this bliss
that so defies the rules of intellect?
He answered: “Laugh to living, sing to hearing us.
Life is too important to be serious.”
And I laughed out loud at the rest of us.

.
Copyright 2005 – Evolving-Poems 1965-2005, Gary B. Fitzgerald

(written 1974 – age 22)
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I think that made the poem, and I’m very glad you’ve finally come around to agree with me about peeing in the sea.
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Let me see if I can work that out. So you are suggesting that posting a poem on the internet is like pissing in the sea. O.K. So the sea is very large and the piss of a poem, any poem, even Paradise Lost, is very small by comparison.

So why bother to unzip at all, Gary? I mean, why do it?
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Posting on the internet is like pissing in the sea.

.
Wasted time
is undefined
for time is time to each,
and spending time
creating rhyme
is time wasted some would teach.
To others waste
is in the chase
for riches and success,
but short is life, and soon to end,
and the value of the time we spend
is anybody’s guess.

.
Copyright 2005 – Evolving- Poems 1965-2005, Gary B. Fitzgerald
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If you want sadness and sorrow and desperation, fear and depression and death, then just read my poetry!
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I offer to add Amy Lowell to the list of the true political progressives you mention.
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— All this sitting about in cafés to calm down
Simply wears me out. And their idea of literature!
The idiotic cut of the stanzas; the novels, full up, gross.

I have lived it, and I know too much.
My café nerves are breaking me
With black, exhausting information.

from Rosemary Tonks, “The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas”
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Miriam, I would have loved to find the purse too. But in your case I think the coins were not sobbing but laughing…

John Oliver, how lovely to know that your class is reading together and especially with the dear Daniel Hoffman. At our reunion I’m pretty sure that the “class poet” designation arose because they heard me read a specific poem I had written just for them and for the occasion–and just one poem, as John wisely points out (I did give a longer reading earlier in the day to a smaller group, largely writers –a more typical audience for a reading. It didn’t feel at all like a square peg in a round hole; it felt completely natural on both sides. I think in this case, it wasn’t true that “The people get all the poetry they need from old poetry, or pop songs, or prose, or opera, or comedy”–they seemed to need a poem written just for them.

As Martin, and Margo, point out, people in other cultures, whether Portuguese, Russian, or many other places I’ve been & heard of– seem to have a more organic and more empowered connection with poetry than we do in the U.S.., just as they do with each other and with other aspects of life, for example food and music and dance….
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Anna Akhmatova(translation: Judith Hemschemeyer)

“Knock With Your Little Fist”

Knock with your little fist–I will open.
I always opened the door to you.
I am beyond the high mountain now,
Beyond the desert, beyond the wind and the heat,
But I will never abandon you…
I didn’t hear your groans,
You never asked me for bread.
Bring me a twig from the maple tree
Or simply a little green grass,
As you did last spring.
Bring me in your cupped palms
Some of our cool, pure Neva water,
And I will wash the bloody traces
From your golden hair.

1942
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However, no tears are called for, and I don’t know of anyone who reads these poets to shed them.

Schwartz was trying, in any case, to be funny in what L. reports. Remarks aren’t literature, of course; but the words were turned into verse by Lowell, not by Delmore, in this particular case.
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First, let me say that I am a dedicated POD poet. I have proudly (and loudly) and intentionally self-published all six of my books. I have never submitted to any contests, magazines or book publishers. So, I thought, Bill’s right. We should take this POD thing to the next level. Then I got my idea!

If I got a letter tomorrow from William Logan, Joan Houlihan or Helen Vendler or, Jeez, for that matter, anybody, asking me to send them my books for review, what would I say? I’d say: ”I am replying to your e-mail on my laptop while driving to the Post Office at 85MPH. Please pardon my typos as there are vehicles on every side honking at me and people gesturing with their fingers that my poetry is number one. Oh…wait….!

You bet your bouncing, flabby bippy I would. So would you!

I recently had an interesting experience. I participated in a three-way book exchange with Brian Salchert and William Michaelian. William observed that maybe we could start a trend…poets sending each other their books for free, a network of poets sharing their work. What a brilliant idea. Po-biz, shmo-biz!

So, here’s the deal. Any person who purchases one of my books and honestly and fairly reviews it, pro or con, in a public medium, print or electronic, professional entity or personal blog, will be 100% reimbursed by me for the cost of the book. I will provide my mailing address so you can send me the receipt. I will then send you a personal check (or stamps or cash, whatever) and you can keep, burn or give away the book.

I will read the review and laugh or cry. But it must not be disingenuous.

No: “Read it. Not too bad.”.

No: “I bought this book. It, like, really sucks, dude.”.

Get it? Amateur or professional, ya gotta know your poetry.

There is a movement, a revolution, occurring on the internet today. It’s taking poetry back to its roots, its original, popular community roots. Back to us.

Why not take back criticism, too?

GBF
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Schwartz’s re-write of Wordsworth’s lines strikes me a jejune.

I don’t even have to point out that sadness is different from depression; sadness even implies a sort of melancholy wisdom, which would be a good thing for a poet, and even for a youth.

But Schwartz’s meaning is nothing but self-pity: ‘Actually, things sucked from the start.’ It’s only a watering down of the Wordsworthian poignancy.

Unfortunately Schwartz’s generation pretty much bought all the odd prejudices by the Modernists against the Romantics, etc. The whole lot of Lowell’s generation is overrated. I don’t shed a tear for any of those tragic maturations. You shall know them by their fruits.

Thomas
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We poets in our youth begin in sadness;
thereof in the end come despondency and madness…

- hence Simpson’s title.
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“masochists, manic depressives, suicides, all poets are neurotics of the death instinct, losers and failures who embrace the misery of their wretched trade…”

Bill,

If I can just put a little perspective on what sounds to me like self-pity:

As a young man, Robert Lowell, nicknamed Caligula, or Cal, was given a choice.

Cal’s wealthy parents would either put him in the nuthouse OR send him down to Tennessee where he would study with Alan Tate, Ford Madox Ford (yea, that Ford Madox Ford) and John Crowe Ransom.

If you are Robert Lowell, which do you choose?

1. Mental Institution

2. Immortal Glory & Fame

Secondly, writing poetry is a pretty easy job.

Thirdly, if there’s nothing special about you, but you can tell yourself (and others) that you are A POET, why WOULDN’T you want to do this?

There seems to be a gross misunderstanding going on here.

Poetry doesn’t MAKE anyone poor, or mad, or depressed.

Poetry, in varying degrees, keeps madness and depression AT BAY.

If poetry-writing doesn’t make one happy, then one shouldn’t complain about how hard it is to be a poet. (And one is probably not a very good poet, if poetry-writing doesn’t make one happy.)

John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz, and Robert Lowell were not cra-ZEE because of poetry: this is nothing but a common poet’s p.r. stunt; these guys were bonkers for various reasons, but not from poetry.

I just re-read ‘Poets in Their Youth’ by Eileen Simpson and when I read about Delmore Schwartz bitching and moaning because he hated teaching at Harvard, or John Berryman bitching and moaning because he just didn’t have enough time to finish his Rockefeller Grant study, I just rolled my eyes…

Thomas
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as I posted on my prose blog today:

*
Going through the 18 versions of Rilke in Randall Jarrell’s Collected this morning,

I thought of how convenient reading these 18 would be, if they were together in a small volume,

and I remembered seeing oh decades ago a squib about how some press was planning to publish Lowell’s and Snodgrass’s versions from Rilke in a single volume with illustrations by Klee—

a book which to my regret never appeared.

But why was it never published?

And why for example has their publisher Farrar Straus and Giroux

never put out a Rilke selection with all the Lowell and Jarrell versions in it?

And then I thought: well, what’s stopping me from publishing that book?

What’s stopping me from scanning all the Rilkes from the Lowell and Jarrell Collecteds into a print file,

and then privately printing (via Lulu.com) copies of it

for myself and my friends?

The print quality of books produced by Lulu.com equals or betters that of most publishers—

( the Farrar Straus Giroux printjob of Lowell’s Imitations for example is blurred and muddy in every edition of it I’ve ever owned!)—

Yes, what’s stopping me from creating and printing out for myself a book I want to read,

a book which should exist—

I can’t be the only one who has realized that with the new availability of private “print on demand” venues,

anybody anywhere can create

their own personal edition of any author they want to—

Via the private p-o-d process, I can publish and have my own copy of Philip Larkin’s Complete Sonnets

(at a cost of around five bucks)

and to hell with the executors/publishers who “own” the copyright!

As I say, I can’t be the only one who’s come to this realization:

there must be many readers out there who have collated edited and privately p-o-d’d

such books for their own pleasure and purpose . . .

I wonder how many “books” of this sort already exist!

An underground movement of such readers must exist out there already—

I can’t be the only one.

**
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i say it’s because they’re (we’re) nutcases . . .

define ‘poet’: stupid and/or crazy.

whatever the cause, the result’s the same:

the loss of audience.
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You may yet find such a change purse.

Miriam
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