This first part of this poem came to this morning before I got up; I don't know who "Sue" is

 I missed my moment

working in the family restaurant 

early marriage to Sue

military draft

the earthquake and the epidemic

servitude to false gods

alcoholism and worse

Maybe that's the complete poem. I know continuing it would ruin whatever it has. 

Now you've got me talking in clichés

 Life is hard 

so you need a little sentimentality

smoothing out the hard edges

Now you've got me talking in clichés!

So you need a little sentimentality?

I've got some in the back room

Now you've got me talking in clichés

there is no "you" here, though

I've got some in the back room

but I don't think you want me to go back there

there is no "you" here, though 

Once you realize that, the jig is up 

But I don't think you want me to go back there 

Life is hard

Once you realize that, the jig is up

smoothing out the hard edges

I wrote this poem in my head in bed before I got up; entirely fictional and maybe the worst poem I've ever written

Here in the suburbs

where the meaninglessness of life

becomes more evident 

with every sit com we watch

every police procedural

I fell in love

with my daughter's middle school teacher

(It was ok

we were both divorced

and my daughter didn't go

to that school any more)

We met by chance

at a Starbucks

She was overweight  but attractive

So was I 

We exchanged numbers

By the third date

we were watching tv

Her kisses were like honey

She liked Law & Order

Special Victims Unit

But why call the police

into people's sex lives?

I thought to myself

Sure, leave the minors alone

But between consenting adults

most things are ok

We had to break up eventually 

I didn't like her shows

I preferred other forms of banality 

The paper is cheap...

 

The paper is cheap; the font is ugly;

the binding looks flimsy; there are some smudges on the back cover.

This book might be brilliant, 

for all I know;

it is written in a language I do not know. 

Poem with surprise ending

 There was a woman named Susan

but I wasn't in love with her and that was not her name 

Day dream of ruining mathematics

 I dreamed of ruining math 

(more of a day dream, really) 

by saying 1 is a number 

all numbers are divisible by it 

so prime numbers shouldn't be a thing 

A poem

 From the back deck

of my girlfriend's house

I heard a distant drummer

amid the traffic noise

on October 16th

in the evening 

(she was on a trip to Japan) 

I didn't investigate 

I'd had some wine

and a dog and cat to take care of 

Homage to Bob B. with Dad joke

The wisest herb is not oregano

but sage

but I prefer Basil 

When

 When did books of poetry

start having 70 pages?

or 67?  You know what I mean

Who decided that? 

Who reads one

anyway?

Not a student

unless forced to  

Cuenca

 I got a book in the mail from amazon prime, at my office, sent to me by someone I have not yet identified. It is another attack on the poetry of experience, articles from the 90s but only published as a book now. The first article is an attack on a book by Luis Alberto de Cuenca. The first poem cited has these lines:

Te duchabas mil veces, te ponías

fijador en el pelo, y la esperabas

impaciente en la puerta del colegio.

Luego ibais a sentaros a aquel banco

del bulevar, o a casa de tus padres.

Pasó el tiempo. La magia de la cita

te llenó la cabeza de ilusiones. 

"Estoy enamorado" comentabas, 

orgulloso y feliz, a tus amigos. 

[You would shower a thousand time, put on hair spray, and wait for her impaciently and the door to the school. Then you would go sit on a bench on the boulevard or at your parents' house. Time passed. The magic of the date filled your head with illusions. "I am in love," you would say, proud and happy, to your friends.]. 

Anywhere, it is a hilarious hatchet job.  Very enjoyable.  It is a book of poems so bad that just quoting from it is condemnation.  

1st poem of 2023

 

Poet, do you wash your clothes by hand?

Poet, do you hang them up to dry?

Poet, have your poems seen the wind?

Poet, have your poems seen the light of day?

Where did you learn that you weren't a poet

and what do you do to become one after all?

There's a guy on twitter posting semi-pretentious [or wholly pretentious] questions to poets, like how do your poems venerate the earth, so he inspired this poem from me.  

Short and narrow poem

 Two things

I detest

pretentiousness

narcissism

yet I am

an academic!

so really

I must hate

these things

mostly 

in 

myself 

Pretentiousness

I hate pretention

I tell myself

but do I? 

In other people, sure

I root it out in myself

too, won't say certain words

the pretentious ones

but is that enough?   

Epilogue

 I was wondering about the sizzle of bacon

but that is just the sound that kind of thing makes

no more mysterious than any other

just like green plants reflects light

that looks green to us

that's our name for that kind of chromatic "sizzle" in our brains

I was hearing people's "vocal fry"

and "up talk" on the radio 

then some nasal person being interviewed too

and judging them for those qualities 

in their voices

I probably shouldn't do that

even if I don't like it 

it will be ok 

it's like judging the odors of herbs when I come in the house

ENEMIES

 

  

I find the idea of having enemies silly

Where would I find one?

In alleyways of grief?

In forgotten childhood toolshed of twisted intentions?

What would I do with an enemy if I had one?

What enemy could harm me more than I have harmed myself?

****

What what I do with an enemy if I had one?

Plot slow revenge, steam open letters, 

booby trap my poems?

***

We could do harm to each other

by turns, or both at the same time

Anger, hatred, be careful when someone gives these gifts to you

They are not very good ones

***

And what of lovers?

They are easier to find than enemies. 

Not people to got to bed with

(Though there's that too!)

Or set up domestic arrangements

But anyone who will love you for a moment or two

Or deeply and long 

WASH ME!

 You can write

in dust

by taking away

the dust

Ode to Words

 I've always had a love affair with words.

I remember recondite and desuetude, I remember

when I first learned them, that is: the fuzzy feeling 

in my head and gut, much like being in love.  

I've never managed to learn the meaning 

of contumely. I look it up once in a while

and learn its meaning, but somehow it never "sticks." 

It seems like it should be an adverb but 

it is not. That may be the confusion there. 

That's a word I cannot love. 

Using words well is more vital than knowing them

in the abstract. A word misused causes a hiccup

or shiver in the universe

of words. But only through these mistakes

does language change like a vital organism.

Some think the words are mostly names of things,

objects or categories of things.  But this is 

not true. Who has seen a therefore or an at 

lying in the street? Who has seen a why?  

No, words are not names (though some are!)

But functions, ways of doing things

like writing a poem or asking for help.  

You would think poets would be good with words.

Some are, indeed, and those that aren't aren't really

poets, are they?  

Moderate to severe

 On pharma commercials actors talk

Off their"'moderate to severe" symptoms

Of various diseases.  

But surely moderate and severe are opposites?  

Speaking of bad poetry

 A year or two I got an essay to review, with the poems so bad that I rejected the article on that factor alone. Or rather, I would have rejected on that alone, but the article also sucked in other ways, predictably enough.  The poems were not even published ones; the author of the article found them in box somewhere in someone else's house. Where the hell are people being trained as scholars? 

Zagaweski

 Adam Zagaweski died. Here is part of his homage to Milosz, another Polish poet. I am impervious to this kind of writing. To me it is insufferably bland as it comes to us in translation. Here the effect is spoken about rather than accomplished in the words themselves.  Yes, poetry should transform us and make us believe that every day is sacred, but the trick is to do it, not talk about it.  I'm sure it is different in the original, but clearly people like this sort of thing in English, too, or translations of these poets wouldn't be popular:   

Sometimes your tone

transforms us for a moment,

we believe—truly—

that every day is sacred,

that poetry—how to put it? —

makes life rounder,

fuller, prouder, unashamed

of perfect formulation.