1. After reading much of it, one feels as if one could peel the skin from one’s face and probably feel much better for having done it.
2. Most folks can’t relate to a guy sitting scarved in a Parisian café, sipping at a café au lait, smoking a French cigarette and moaning about the philosophical problems that conservative politics present.
3. Most folks can’t relate to a poem about a guy sitting scarved in a Parisian café, sipping at a café au lait, smoking a French cigarette and moaning about the philosophical problems that conservative politics present.
4. John Grisham does not write poetry.
5. The average employed citizen deals with tyrannical propaganda at work all day, they don’t need more of it in the off hours.
6. Writers of poetry spend too much time with other writers of poetry instead of sitting down and writing damn poems.
7. Poets.
17 responses so far ↓
1 jancartier | 14 Jan 2008
OMG! You have been listening to Brian…and it works! This was a good one. Brilliant. Still chuckling…
2 candice | 14 Jan 2008
#7 rings true. Present company excepted, of course.
One of my friends from high school is doing a doctorate in poetry at the moment. She is okay, if off a little to the deep end, but her friends are kinda dreadful.
3 communicatrix | 14 Jan 2008
Haha. Word.
Most people don’t read poetry b/c they aren’t introduced to the good stuff–which is to say, the stuff they would relate to. Including me. (Starting with me.) I read you and Bukowski. Mostly you. So be it.
Poetry ain’t broccoli. People aren’t going to go for it, just because it’s good for them.
Hell, much of the time, it isn’t…
4 Robert Bruce | 14 Jan 2008
Jan - Brian knows what he’s doing ;)
5 Robert Bruce | 14 Jan 2008
candice - Thanks for the exception my friend. I couldn’t take a weekend community college course in poetry, much less a PhD… I’d rather have my toenails removed.
6 Robert Bruce | 14 Jan 2008
c-trix - You put me in big company there pal. I guess I win out of pure convenience, but I’ll take it ;)
And listen, regardless of how I may feel things are going in this little town, you guys still need to move on up.
?
7 AndrewE | 14 Jan 2008
I think another simple practical barrier is books.
*rereads the sentence alarmed and sad*
Poetry is not on the best seller shelves, it’s not in the doorway, not even on the first floor, you have to venture up flights of stairs, force through the hullabaloo, the cookery isle, the comic book stack, pass on ever deeper into the labyrinth of gardening and self help, references, ordinance survey maps, onwards to the glossy art and photography wall until finally you find it in a corner. They’re all lined up, well obviously they’re not all there, not in a million years, but there’s enough to get you going and you have them all to yourself. You can safely savour a few lines of this and a few of that with the knowledge that your little corner will be safe. Somehow, I kind of like the fact that nobody reads poetry.
8 Robert Bruce | 15 Jan 2008
AndrewE - Agreed. Obviously, the book isn’t dead, but man, in the case of poems… I’m not so sure it’s the way to go. The big names will always sell, but the wake up call came a few years ago for the little guys and the non-existent guys like me. Give-It-Away might be the only shot.
It’s going to be a good 10 years. I can’t wait…
9 Jecklin | 15 Jan 2008
Robert, did you know I majored in “creative writing” with an emphasis on poetry before I discovered massage therapy?
sigh…
anyway, I’ll tell you this, some of the best poetry in the poetry writing class (another sigh) was written by a nice, cleancut, straightforward young college baseball player who wrote poems about baseball.
I loved having him in that class. Made the whole thing bearable.
10 potterspoet | 15 Jan 2008
ammendment to # 7. poets (they’re all insane and broke)
11 Robert Bruce | 15 Jan 2008
Jeck - I did not. Makes sense about the baseball player, something he loved, etc.
Why have I never read one of yours?
12 Robert Bruce | 15 Jan 2008
pp - amendment no #2 to #7: and mostly self-important…
13 Jecklin | 17 Jan 2008
The creative writing program was great. Good group of students, plus good teachers–in particular Bin Ramke. I made a smart decision last minute opting out of the architecture degree path and going for broke with poetry.
Dan Beachy-Quick, though we are no longer in touch, were friends there. And he is one of my two favorite poets.
Though this isn’t totally accurate, I see you as the Bukowski…Beachy-Quick as the Ashbery. You both represent the best of the two streams (as I see it) in American poetry going.
With the exception of spur of the moment ditties and nursery rhymes, writing a poem just hasn’t crossed my mind in a couple of yrs. That’s why you’ve never read anything.
Here’s the thing…
my obsession (& passion) I felt for poetry was transferred to massage/bodywork.
The same for it as Work, Spirit, Thought, Feeling, etc etc whatever…and I never was in it as a leisure activity. Maybe nursery rhymes or silly children’s stories, but generally I prefer working outdoors.
That said, I still have a deep appreciation for a well crafted poem. Probably deeper than ever. I’m a good reader. And in a world where everyone thinks they are a poet or a writer or a star, that’s no little thing.
14 Zak | 20 Jan 2008
Very amusing.
I tried to read a Grisham book the other day, and I simply could not bring myself to go past chapter 5. The fact that quality exists here and elsewhere makes Grisham depressing.
15 Magnus | 22 Jan 2008
love it. this seems to be the same reason I would wear my Death To Coffeehouse Intellectuals T-Shirt to the coffeehouse. I pulled it off because basically, my ancestors made 12th century monks wet themselves on approach….
Give me more of the grist of life and ruthless culling of the mind for needless bullcrap and what this age tells us we should be. Man, I’m ready for an ale right now and impromptu prose with good friends who will bust my chops if I disengage from creation.
I enjoy sharing your stuff here with other teachers. Thanks.
16 potterspoet | 30 Jan 2008
another one…
those coming out with the brilliant stuff don’t do it enough.
ok, so that wasn’t very subtle. oh, well.
17 sue jeffels | 11 Feb 2008
Grisham may be depressing, Chandler however is poetry in prose I believe - although I tend to write what some might call doggerl on a regular basis I do sometimes venture into poetry. Here is a poem:
I was born in London way down south
And it’s there I grew up in a drafty old house.
We had fun
On those streets .
Where I played in my youth
But London today holds a different truth
The kids don’t sing,
They’re too busy dying
Shooting each other
While their mothers are crying.
Dead at fifteen from a shot in the gut
It shouldn’t have happened.
No it shouldn’t have, but
What can you expect when the adults feel free
To invade other countries.
Politicians engage in a killing spree
And the children’s response is
Why shouldn’t we?
The city of London is stained.
The blood of its children
is falling like rain on the street.
Guilty the adults who teach them it’s done
To get what you want at the point of a gun.
and you’ll find some doggerel on the site above
sue
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