Greatest Living Poet

Well, because in general I don't think people should read poetry blogs. Or poetry, for that matter. The blogs themselves are most successful in showing what's wrong with us. I guess we're waiting on that ideal googler, that person who will just ramble along after having read one of our delightful poems in a magazine or having overheard our name at a party. And doop-de-doo, here they come, experiencing our blog for the first time. Buying all our products and services, reading everything we ever wrote in one sitting and still liking us! Being even more intrigued! We're intriguing! We are able to intrigue! Googler falls in love with us and lets us know it! We are in love, a kind of shiny green apple love.

Kent wrote to me the other day, "Your [sic] a very good poet, too. But there are too many very good poets. We have to figure out something different." In Kent's case the "different" would be to find another gear, find his happy place. And anytime one is losing the argument it's smartest to change the subject. Like all of those Republican strategy-makers Kent seems to admire. I doubt whether Kent has *ever* read a poem of mine, it's just one of those things he writes. It's hard to imagine *anyone* ever having read a poem of mine. What a strange thing. I certainly don't want ______ for an audience, and yet, waiting for an idealized googler, I am stuck with _______.

But the poetry blogs have always been horrible, with certainly no exceptions. In the same way I guess that the New York Times is horrible. Information as a commodity, that sort of thing. It just feels icky. And the more you get to know any poet, the less you're gonna like them anyhow. If Holden Caufield did call all those writers he wanted to, he would have saw them for what they are. Disappointing people. Rampant careerist fucks. That sort of thing.

Everyone's relationship with the internet is personal. Your porn, your e-mail, your news, your illegal downloads. Where poems ever fit in (beyond postures and gestures and ways of nudging the competition away) has never been very clear. And I guess blogs can still function as a way to let people know your opinions are better than theirs. You'd like to think you can go into a bookstore and buy a poetry book (if they have any), but there always seems to be a reason not to. Cover too glossy. Blurbs too blurby. I picked up a book at random last night and read a poem about a father cooking pork. Poems ought to let you know when they've done something you'll like. There ought to be a way to search for poems inside this box: if you liked that, you'll like this. It is also set in a laundromat, beneath a bandana-stifled moon.

I think about this every time I get a massive spam-mail or see someone shucking a new chapbook: I think about why I can't find what I want. I accept that I'm crazy, or else I would have put away these toys long ago and become a lighthousekeeper. Guiding people through the waves. Or myself. Instead I'm stuck with you. And you suck. I hope you disappointing me haunts you.

In the old days poets would just write their names and contact information on rocks or the sides of buildings, hoping someone would happen by.