Greatest Living Poet

* Ron's patronizing "Reading is Fundamental" post Friday is vintage Dumb Ron. Young poets are probably doing fine and do not need to voraciously consume books by the handful like Sweet-tooth Silliman: who reads as if books were printed on swedish fish (Mmm, Swedish Fish!). There's lots of things young poets could be doing other than reading (most have to work for a living, but they could be fucking each other or sharing work or go to the movies of the zoo. Poems don't just live in books. They are everywhere and in the glint of a zebra's eye or across slickened genitals in an impossible blue light).

I like the "I gave up big jobs" line--he probably should have taken one so he wouldn't have to overcompensate on his blog like every goddamned day. Oh please hold me to your manbusom and show me what books I ought to be reading, Oh Ron! Tell me more about this New American Poets! There's more like 8 good poets in there and more headscratching then not. Maybe other people like being spoke to like Barney speaks to his parishioners. Suffice to say that one might consider having a little more respect for their audience, but Ron's probably bummed his readership has gone down due to the lack of comments this past week. It's not about you, RS--it's about the dirty rabble. And don't you forget it.

I also like how Ron thinks he *knows* who's got "the chops" to be a writer. All poetry teachers decided long ago that they were also clairvoyants. More likely it's the quiet lady in the back of the class whose work Ron hates that grows up to become the next Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. You don't reap what you sow: you simply get what you deserve in the end. Which is usually boned.

* One really profound way poetry blogs can bore the shit out of people is by mentioning other people. Why should anyone give much of a crap about who you hang out with? Isn't that what flickr's for? Who you had lunch with or who showed up at your reading may only be interesting to you. If you're dropping famous poet names it means you're a low rent nobody. Unless it's in the act of trashing them: I think everybody loves stuff like that: Hooray! Realness! Or do blog-readers really want to be *lied to*?

To me, using your blog for acts of unironic self-hyping should be almost totally verbotten in 2006. I mean, at least make a joke out of it (Title: I am Using My Blog to Alert You About This Event Because I'm Worried No One Is Going To Show Up). If you're blogging in the first place it's a sign to the rest of the world that you're a poet that can't just get by being a poet. You need to talk people into loving you day by day (I'm even further skeptical of the blogs that get by entirely by linking to other's people's projects--that just smacks to me of an even heavier level of name-dropping and desperately cries to me "See? I'm your den mother! Love me!" I'm very tough to please and most bloggers will never win my love. Also, appeals to self-googlers when it doesn't involve bowling for sex loses you 50 points, too. How will poets ever move beyond their most obnoxious and most self-serving behaviors if they are constantly being affirmed on-line each and every day? "Everyone else is doing it, etc." Neuroticism has always had an overrated charm on American Poetry. Fuck it and those who use it to get what they want.). I know most people don't know what to do with their blogs and have been taught that obnoxious self-righteous niceness is really the way to go. I put a very low value on being polite and a high much higher regard for being real. People who are fake polite are like those soccer players that fall down trying to get penalties: fucking annoying and not fooling anyone. Any encounter not interesting enough to make it into a poem isn't interesting enough for a superior poetry blog ("I fucked the Bush Twins / On the Brooklyn Bridge / Between wooshing Express Trains"). And passive-agressive blog stuff stinks like farts, while agressive-agressive stuff is like hot steamy internet jackpot.

Here's a handy guide to the ways I'd want to be blogged about.

1. Don't mention me on your blog. Too many people already know who I am.

2. Don't link to my blog on your blog. Too many people read this blog already. If you can help it, don't read this blog. You're just encouraging me to try to push you away even harder. It is a vicious game you and I are playing.

3. Don't mention me in comments fields--comment fields are about as interesting as poetry workshops. The worst by-product of the internet by far is the plurality of people who believe their opinion matters, when literally there are only a handful of people with opinions interesting enough to even bother reading.

4. Don't mention that I did or did not attend your reading. What an insane thing to do. If you want to ensure my attendance, promise me hot sex. If I attend your reading, do you think I need to be reminded about it on your blog? Or if I purposefully blew it off, you think I'm gonna forget doing that? It's extraordinary: the apparent belief of some, that things don't really happen unless they are confirmed on one's blog. Or that people who attend poetry readings need to see their names in the credits. Or that private conversations ought to happen in front of the entire class (most of the blog audience, as I've written, are just horny poets that can't get laid because they're old and mediocre--why talk to anyone through them?). People are busy, poetry readings are often boring (reading about them even moreso--unless you read inside of a glass display case, jump off a roof naked, get heckled by bagpipes (I wish more poets would do shit like that!)) and you should be thankful for the audience you get and not use your audience as anything more than a filled seat filled for that moment. Chances are if Ashbery (say) did show up he might just as easily have been bored and think you suck. People who photograph the audience are just hopeless, by the way. That look photograped audiences have in photographs? "Stop photographing me and fucking read." It's OK, by the way, if you're a nervous reader at poetry reading to win the audience over with a simple: "I'm a nervous reader at poetry readings like this." Most poetry schtick (91%) falls flat. Because most poets take themselves too seriously and are not funny at all. Frankly.

5. Don't say nice things about me on your blog. Wait til I'm dead. Then you can go on and on about how surprising sweet I am. You can trash me on your blog. That would be great. Let's get it on.

6. Don't flirt with me on your blog. I'll probably approach you if I'm interested. It's gotten almost impossible to judge someone's attractiveness online, in my opinion. It was silly to have internet crushes. Most crush list members were substantially disappointing in person and almost entirely uncrushworthy had I simply met them first (I don't believe much in the blog-friendship, either. Those are built on cliffs.). Most everyone can take a cute photo of themselves, cutting out beer guts and stuff (I SURE CAN). And, if you're flirting with me I'll probably never know or just be immediately skeptical. Moving away from being infatuated with crazies and toward those capable of handling some shit (Good Advice, Ted: feminine, marvelous, tough).

There's more--I'll think of it. I think for a long time with the reading series I ran, the poetry magazines, etc, some people abused my good nature and desire to facilitate things. Remember, I'm an Aquarius. I felt like, for a long time, I had to use my powers equally and not play favorites. In Boston I often felt like I was the only game in town and should therefore give everyone a shot. But that got abused. That's out the window. I'm a reasonable guy who wants to love you. But it's definitely *you*. I'm a publicist for a living and I've always hated publicists. About the only times I like getting pitched is when I don't know it. Hype yourself to me at your peril. I'm smart enough to figure out who's for real and who's a drag. I don't attack people I think are sweet. I don't hassle geniuses. Remember: this blog is about me. If you wanna ride, that's cause I'm a crazy-twisting roller coaster that'll make you feel like the bottom is falling out on you. Woooooosh.

* I don't think that anonymouse.org page is working.

PS: And you live in Brooklyn! I bet I can guess who you are!

PS2: What the hell is Freese-notis Weather? And why do people keep using Anonymouse?

* Alice Quinn doesn't just destroy the legendary status of dead poets by publishing their worst and most embarrassing poems for her own personal gain. She also memorizes a new poem a day and makes *her students* do the same. And I bet she dresses herself. No one thinks of her as anything but a hideously bloated gatekeeper in her own right and her legacy will be erased about one cigarette break after the contents of her desk hit the curb.

*Defeat NSA Wire Taps with Chewing Gum and a Chewbacca Action Figure! Like Fucking Macguyver or some shit! Somehow the New York Times will also be to blame for this.

* Seriously. Who told old men they could use computers, travel the internet, blog and that their opinions ought to matter? If it was up to them we'd all still be wearing double knits and playing Pong. Instead, because of the tireless work of the younger generations (represented ably by the cool young guy in the Mac commercials: see that's *me*, that's *us*!) I can broadcast my never-humble thoughts throughout the atmospheres. Hey, Pong is cool. But it's no Donkey Kong.

Old guy poetry bloggers tend to try to write from the same "Voice of God" point of view that we forgive Silliman for. Ron's a comedian first and foremost, a daily trip over the border to where someone has maybe heard of Fanny Howe and realizes that she's pretty fucking good and ought to get reviewed (although might consider publishing less than a thousand books a year). Then you turn around and drive home to where nothing you do matters and no one has heard of Robert Creeley or John Ashbery or _______. Ron gets a pass. And I've been on the record for years [link] [link] long before I remember any old white guy got around to putting him in his place. My fastballs go right under chins. But, hey, Ron was doing it long before any current old guy blogger. Without him they'd still be writing each other listserv messages or some shit. Ron let older poets know webpages *exist*.

So don't believe for a second that old guy bloggers don't adore Ron. They fear him, they adore him, they are lost without his comments fields (whether they ever commented there or not). He is their internet fetish Buddha. Yeah, I'm talking to you. Rub the tummy, bitches!

It is not the big names who old guy blog (do professors blog or blog comfortably?). It is the Lee Harvey Oswald types, in their depositories with a constant drip, drip, dripping in the background that makes them think they are constantly under seige from the universe when in fact the universe & all parties included have simply found a way of living that doesn't involve them. Where they see community and forces alligned against them it's simply the vast majority of the population who have never heard of them. And if they have heard of them it's because they comment or link to one's blog (if I get one more e-mail from a young blogger that says "Who is HG? Can you *Crush* him for me? He's in my comments fields! And he won't go away!"). Hey. That's just the truth. Nobody gives a fuck about you. You're not cute or smart, you don't start magazines or invite people to readings. You want to send us the poetry books that you keep in your hall closet and to see your names cascading down our blogspaces. And, during bouts of Kentmania, you want to e-mail everyone once a day professing love and ask them to post the same bogus info, about how you're in jail eating mushrooms or on your death bed. Old Guy Bloggers exist to wallow in and use pity as a kind of currency. "Oh poor me, I have no ideas and I am against anything that isn't Byron ever." Sure, Lee Harvey. Go back to writing Cliff Notes for a living.

This is all a round-about way of saying I for one am totally glad to be under your skin. It's funny when Mick Jagger says he hates Franz Ferdinand or whatever. He's Mick Jagger. Therefore his opinion matters. Poets who have never *accomplished* *anything* who think their opinions matter? Yeah, go vote for Nader. Blogging without gravitas is cute, but very 2004.

I blog to make holes in teeth and to tell you the truth before it's too late. We're all wasting our time, that's the fun of it. Old Guy Bloggers do not share our threshhold for shame, don't get our jokes and in general aren't very much fun to be around online or otherwise. When they get called douchebags it strikes them to their very core. The truth stings. But whatever keeps you coming back (and attempting to crawl this page anonymously, ha ha) you're here. Hilarious.

To consider oneself in my weightclass (no poetry bloggers are) is amusing enough. But keep on, Uncle Child Molestor, with your vapid no-noism of shit you obviously don't understand because you're 1) dumb and 2) bad poets and 3) douchebags and 4) humorless. I am not a part of your community. Stick to sniffing each others pits and waiting for the Great Kent to tell you what to say and do (Don't Tell Me You've Fallen Out With Him??). That men read my blog at all comes as a great disappointment to me. I still write for Harumi, my girlfriend when I was 6. I will light the Earth aflame until they deliver her back to me. In the meantime I get by with a few crushes and try to act unloveable. I'm angry I can't drink and I try to focus that anger on fakes, phonies, guys in fedoras, crappy overrated poets, people with freaky author photos, vampiric poets, suck-ups, cheats, poets with bad opinions, poets with bad blogs, poets who went to the New School and haven't gotten over it yet. You know, I punch the clock. And the crowd goes wild. In feeding the jackal I myself am fed. In a tangy lemon sauce.

So don't link to me or mention me or let me influence you in the slightest. I seek not fans, I want hot comrades. I don't want to stand out. Cradle me in your cute arms. And lighten the fuck up already. The next person who starts their daily blogging reporting on the weather in a mythic "poetic community" gets a water balloon Fed Exed to their attention. If you can't find beauty everywhere you're in the wrong business. And my poetic community revolves around Mets Scores at the Robot, Boston Dirt Dogs, Gawker Stalker, Think Progress, Hypnoporn and Whatever Pseudonym I Happen to Be Working on at the Moment. Remember! Poetry is Everywhere! And the ones who write about it most convincingly are the ones who don't seem to be writing about it at all!

I preach. Because I'm in my Jesus Year. And I wish to be crucified (to meet a nemesis or archvillian, now that would be sexy! Someone with a yellow ring that's as powerful as my emerald one). Those who use their blogs to make people *love* them more?--Wow.

Be cute or suffer!

***

Remind me to blog about how effective blogs are in raising the paranoia levels of paranoids. This is definitely about you. Honesty is a sign of love. If you want smoke blown up your ass I can recommend some (all) other weblogs.

* Wondering why interviews with poets are a huge waste of time?

"I read the dictionary for fun," she confesses.

"Scientific language often has its roots in Latin, so as a writer I'm really intrigued by it."

"I have really keen hearing. I'm crazily attentive to everything."

"I think of a line of poetry being a tightrope. I like to let it out and rein it in. The really long lines in some of the poems mimic the prairie horizon."

"Isn't all writing supposed to be experimental? Doesn't everyone strive to do something new?"

"I'm still stuck on page 825 of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy."

They must not have been rolling tape when the poet mentions she also *dresses* herself each morning. And how proud she is of that daily triumph.

***

The only poet interview I ever liked was the one with Weiners in the back of his Selected Poems ("I wrote lean poems because I was starving, etc"). Because it was *very* funny. Everybody else (on Earth) is completely full of shit. I like poems better than I like people. And I might like your poems, too, if you don't talk me out of it by sounding like a substitute Junior High Arts and Crafts teacher.

Although it is funny to think that Canadian poets get interviewed *in a newspaper*. Like what are the chances of that EVER happening unless it's the token "Isn't Poetry Funny: Everybody Writes It But Nobody Really Cares About It and No One Is Buying It" April article to spurn on sales of The Dummies Anthology of Unchallenging Poems Featuring Epiphanies Had While Walking A Dog So You, Dear Anthology-Buyer, Can Feel A Lot Less Like a Complete Failure as a Human Being ed. by You Know Who.

* The New York Times Book Review reviews poetry books once every blue Zadie Smith--so we're looking for substance and value here, kids. Next Week's ish offers Joel Brouwer's smurfy Ishmael Reed as Planet extended-metaphor-disguised-as-a-review (I need to stop doing these
this-and-that-connected-by-a-dash-nonword-words because it's really freaking out my white space) which does its gosh darn diddliest to irk in all the look-at-me ways that most poetry reviews suck (and the NYTimes weary about running them, prob). We come to find in the article how Joel's *students* feel about Reed's poems, too (confused, bewildered, horny, something like that). Golf-clapping! Nevermind a litany of the planet, the atmosphere, the aura, the upper atmospheric gases that block out the metaphoric twin suns, the weak way of talking about this book (as a way of saying he's so original! His poems have a *gravity* unlike the poems of other, you know, poems). Sun Ra is from Mars and Ishmael Reed is from Chattanooga! Woo! (Would the planet metaphor have be rooooolled out for a white poet? Readings are unclear, captain). Ugh, ugh and fucking ugh. Roll tide, Joel. There's just enough methane on your meteoriffic missive to sustain my ur-boredom! Do a level 5 diagnostic, why dontcha.

* Steven Segal, Rock Star. "I've played with the best of the best," he says, "and made a lot of people happy." If by happy you mean deliriously happy in a stoned-and-laughing-*at*-you kind of way. Has he reached the Shatneresque level of he's-so-awful-he's-fantastic? Jury = out. Hey, nothing could be as bad as the latest Radiohead cd. Rock on, Glimmer Man!