Greatest Living Poet

Check it out.

Hindi poet Shyam Jwalamukhi among the dead in blasts

Mumbai, July 13: Well-known Hindi poet Shyam Jwalamukhi was among those who lost their lives in yesterday's serial blasts in suburban trains here. He was 50 and survived by wife and son. Jwalamukhi, who was not a frequent user of local trains, was travelling by the Bhayander local to his home in Meera-Bhayander in neighbouring Thane district. A comedy writer, he was a contemporary of renowned Hindi poet Surendra Sharma.

***

Humorous poet Shyam Jwalamukhi, 53, got on a northbound train at the Churchgate terminus and ensured he got a window seat. He always tried to sit there to get inspiration for his verses, according to reports.

Jwalamukhi was killed outright during the blast, said police who found his identity card. The bombs, which targeted first-class compartments, killed more than 200 people in all.

"It was his hobby to sit near the window and write his poems from the observations he made," his friend Subash Kabra said.

"A day earlier... he talked as if he had already seen his death and accepted it. He was a legendary poet who used to find humour in every situation of life and that was his greatest strength."

***

Meanwhile, 50-year-old Hindi poet Shyam Jwalamukhi was among those killed in the blasts.

Not a frequent user of local trains, the comedy writer was travelling by the Bhayander local to his home in Meera-Bhayander in Thane district.

* I've decided to auction off this Vintage "I Invented Flarf" t-shirt. 100% of the auction price will be donated to Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services (Check out their website and make a donation even if you don't want my shirt.). Buy a piece of Flarf history (I'll wash it before I send it to you, I promise.)

* Where's all the Ron Love while Ron's Away? Seems like it's just coming from comment field refugees who are sad that the swimming hole is closed this summer [link] [link]. Curtis Faville has probably eaten his own face by now. Although "Language Poetry is For Jerks" is a chapbook title waiting to happen (Effing! Call me! I can have you a manuscript in about an hour!) You're only as good as your last post. Even Ronaldinho! Leave your greatesterest blog for a week and nobody even bothers to miss you! WTF?

Killing Me Softly With His Song [Album Version]

* I sit, coiled, like a fucking snake, waiting for someone else (interesting) to fuck with me (who I can then _devour_, BANG!). Without provocateurs we are blank, with nothing to gossip about ("What was that head-butting French guy thinking? Does Anne Coulter really want to beat 9/11 widows with a socket wrench?") At some point I *will* get new tricks. Until then...*you know*. BANG! With my fangs! In your fucking neck! Pow!

It would be fun to run at people completely at random. The problem with Being Funny (or trying really hard to be) everyday is Being Funny Everyday. But what would be funnier than taking someone out blogwar style that was completely loveable and innocent? Like beating on a bunny with an aluminum bat (or *Better* having a bunny beat on me with an aluminum bat). Satire moves in mysterious ways but it should only makes you *stronger*. If it doesn't then you're probably broken. Who told you you had the right to be so sensitive (Time to revive Whiny Self-Important Poetry Victims?)? I just want people to stand up to me (or guys like me). If there was a World Cup of Moping Americans would win. See you in tall grass! Hiss! Hiss! #1 on the crush list has new flarf!! Kiss Kiss!

Snow Strong As a Theorem

To modulate the darkly stoical
whose circumference is nowhere:
a fierce, magnetic clarity while searching
the already attained, the microcosm achieved.
It is impossible to translate the exigencies
of a pride one finds but rarely.
But the poignance says "Recover!".
Few can temper the expression
of pathos with as much elegance
or that good old Columbia charm.
So deftly whimsical with violin ruins.
On the edge of experiment yet the
center of the universe is everywhere.
Every nuance an incredible mastery.
One is reminded of an exciting circle.

Will Donald Hall refuse to visit with Laura Bush?? The world waits and I molt...

PS: Does *anyone* miss Ron Silliman's Blog?

Teach Me Tonight

* Seriously. Can someone explain to me why the #1 choice of professions for poets has become putting other poets in debt? I understand the Cycle of Hazing. We were hazed thus we haze. But is there any poet in America that actually thinks they can make *every* poet that happens by their workshop a *better* poet? I doubt it. They choose a few that are talented, give themselves credit for that talent, and then drink themselves into another morning.

But, knowing this, how do we approach burgeoning professors of the next generation? It's good that we're taking jobs from geezers, I'm always for that. Fuck anyone over 40 :o! But that we're simply satisfied to continue the cycle? Problematic. Just because you assign your friends books rather than some geezer professor's selected syllabi of friends, or make them read The New American Poetry instead of The Norton Anthology of Poems that Sound Like They're Ashamed to be Poems doesn't mean you're _reaching_ students. There are as many kids that wanna write Orpheus and Eurydice poems for the rest of their lives as there are that wanna flarf it up. What happens to Orpheus, Jr. when you give him or her Petroleum Hat, a book I think Kicks Ass. SOME IF NOT MOST POETRY STUDENTS WANT TO BE MAINSTREAM POETS AND ARE TRAINED FROM AN EARLY AGE TO LOATHE ANYTHING THAT'S NOT FIRST-PERSON NARRATIVE (see also: every lousy old counter-revolutionary boring blogger). Your tastes will not equal their tastes. The poems you LUV might crush their little souls and make them running screaming for the soft and billowing fields of prose. I hope you're proud of yourself. Which might be fine by me: poets ought to get tougher and be able to be pushed around less, not more. Recent run ins make me think that poets are about as tough as basement-dwelling dungeonmasters and their nerd-class -1 enchanted friends. And I'm talking about poets that have met me! Who know the persona is bullshit! Toughen up, you wussies. Poetry isn't for the weak-kneed and the cowering! We're marginalized throughout the land because not enough have the courage to stand up for Anything, not enough are willing to say Anything interesting (for fear that anything over a tiptoe sends their Careers Kaput) and because we act like we're all for each other but we're actually just backchanneling each other about what a dick everybody else is. Way to go. This is a front-channel. Get tougher or go write a novel. Who needs more boring, benign (non-hottie) poets? No one. Shape up, punks.

At best, any professor in an American College or University is a Vichy Collaborator. At worst, they are Klink. Who, as we know, knows and sees nothing. Adjuncts are just following orders, pity them. Papergirls make more. But the cycle of teaching, like the cycle of abuse seems to grant only the right to teach and to abuse: not to actual lift students out (aren't they supposed to be Creating Independent Thinkers? How's that Coming Along?).

So, literally, any professor: tell me how you sleep at night. And not just professors: anyone who charges poets anything to be in the same room and absorb their (no doubt limitless) advice on the subject of being a more successful poet. What did you do in class today that was worth putting kids into perma-debt and putting yourself at the head of the class. Howcome there are no Poetry Nascar drivers? Or poets willing to take one for the team and actually get in front of some damned cameras or microphones or whatever? When Ginsberg died it was on "World News Tonight". When most poets croak they barely hit google news. So people who decry any poet that says Look At Me are simpering dumbasses (self-loathing closethumpers who feel like poets should neither be seen or heard. How's that working out for you, margin-boy? There is no grace in being invisible. Every poet already is. Anyone who allows themselves to be silenced by anyone deserves to be silenced.). I'd also like an example of any poet who is remarkably better just because they went to workshop (like workshop is such a happy place for poems to live). How much credit can much-too-busy-and-too-career-driven poet teach students (other than how to be an obnoxious, neurotic mess) that getting laid, being a few years older, reading some stuff and being considered a poet in the eyes of other can't get them? Not a whole lot of credit. There are no Robin Williamses telling you to stand on your desk. Why not have classes on schmoozing, the correct ways to eat cheese and drink wine, grant-writing and fellatio for dummies? Wouldn't those be more worthwhile curriculum for the chicken soup of the young poets' soul? Everyone knows poets who inexplicably get things they are much too lousy to have: must have been the Air Jordans! Let's just drop the pretense it's about poems at all: which insults us. We're broke but we know better.

We handwrote Evangeline for punishment in 8th Grade and spent most of High School focused on what the White Chickens *represented*. What will you tell your kids about poems? It's 10 o'clock, where the fuck are they. The desire to have "one's summers off" should not be the determining factor in who stands in front of classrooms. Why anyone would even want apostles is beyond me: like WHAT a hassle. Let this blog be your Lecture Course: the pill marked placebo cost you more than just your student loans. And what punishment should *pushing* such narcotics be awarded? Especially after you've seen the Oz behind the curtain and she looks like Gilbert Godfrey. I vote for a noodle spanking, under a hot Naropa sun, surrounded by orange-unied monks-in-training praying that the next time around you spend it as something useful like a three-eyed flounder. Gurgle! Subverting the immortal lines of a Faginism: Maybe Poets Shouldn't Teach for Five Years...

Poetry books are incredibly exciting, although sometimes you wouldn't know by the covers. We ought to proudly strut our poetic stuff with the kinds of commercial jacket art that can turn your typical OK-selling poetry book into a coast to coast masterpiece. Brandon Downing's DARK BRANDON was one of the most exciting books I read last year. Title? Fantastic. The cover? *Pretty good*. But couldn't it be better? Couldn't the reader get an even better sense of the kind of fun and intrigue that was to be found within its covers? I'd say Fuck Yes.



Doesn't that look like a book you're gonna tear right the hell through and buy another copy of? In fact, it is so good a cover, it works for ANY book of poems.



Thanks for playing our game.

People Who Died ( LP Version )

Pakistan Literary Giant is Dead.

Alive and Kicking

* As of this writing, Hayden Carruth is not dead. He does, however, probably have boogers in his beard. That, however, is unconfirmed. To repeat: Hayden Carruth did not die last year. Please stay tuned for further updates.