Greatest Living Poet

New naked photos of Jimmy. Very Graphic. Very Not Safe For Work.

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.

"I'm so hard-pressed / My mind tied up in knots / I keep on recyclin' the same old thoughts." The 3 Dylan records I could find with 5 star reviews upon their release were BLOOD ON THE TRACKS [check], LOVE & THEFT [hunh?] and his latest [no]. The significant musical and lyrical difference between MODERN TIMES and UNDER THE RED SKY [2 stars] is lost on me. I do not like this late cowboy pencil moustache warbler phase. It's doing nothing for me (much like the late Johnny Cash let's-get-him-to-sing-anything phase). His band has all the twangy charm of studio mercenaries. We're supposed to be thrilled that he knows who Alicia Keyes is. "I roll & I tumble / I ride the whole night long." I couldn't even listen to the whole thing straight through for free. Those weren't the first five tracks of a five star effort. If tedious 7 minute songs with indecipherable, insignificant and interchangeable lyrics and melodies is what you're looking for, head directly to your closest retail outlet. But critics are playing some kind of funny on you, or they decided that they're finished holding Bob up to any kind of standard anymore. We expect nothing of Bob, he delivers nothing. These tracks seem as forgettable as the cabs that pass you that *don't* give you a ride home. There must be some charm in becoming an artist a younger version of himself wouldn't have been able to stand. This is not a great age, an age of great music. As we sit and wait for something great to come along, we wish Dylan would do *something*. If this is "the voice of God" then it's a C+ World. I like my 5 star cds urgent & risky, not innocous and elevatory. Coming soon to a grocery store rotation near you.

I wrote to myself "When the fire is almost out any spark seems bright."

Lucipo on Hip-Hop here (if you dare).

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* You can tell what kind of poetry reading you're at by the response of an audience. Open mic slammers clap between every poem. Academic readings are deadly quiet, least you miss a semi-colon emoted from Seamus. Experimental poets smoke weed in the front row of their readings. It just depends. There's the heckling school, great when it's done well and lousy when it's not. But I write today in praise of that poetic hmmmmmm, given after a particularly piquant final line, a sort of tangible essence on the air as if someone was cooking turkey at the reading (and wouldn't that be something if they were?). It rises in the throats, requires a finger up across the considering jaw, and when done correctly gives everyone in the room a shiny feeling in their thorax that lasts a minute. Kind of the way some record store employees will clap furiously when they recognize a song that the band is playing 5 bars into what they're playing. That's "Jane of the Waking Universe!" they think to themselves. And they let the band know, secret Book House Boys eyebrow rub style. Clap clap clap!

I gave the hmmmmm a try over at Jordan Davis' latest reading. An audience should exhale at the end of every poem, it seems to me. Like an Austrian tennis pro slapping the ball back to the reader. Podiums can feel as lonely as bus stations, and there ought to be some way to let the readers know they have *changed* us. Barring indoor pyrotechnics, I believe by claiming the poetic hmmmmm, this can be accomplished.

Try it at home and see what you think. Read this poem aloud to yourself and then let a hmmmm sound rise from your throat (slowly, slowly, let it build):

Beefy Forgiveness

My brothers thought it might turn
Into a teradachtyl instead of a butterfly.

Poop across windshield makes a dusk
The corn inside of which refuses to pop.

Everyone's already slept with the groom.
We killed the leprechaun for his sugary breakfast cereal.

Marshmallows in wheelbarrows, the tongue
Is the tastiest meat. I lie in a field of wolftraps,

Sonically aware of the new ways to kill the unwanted baby.
When Wolverine slept with Magneto it was a real mess.

[Pause for a four count.]

[Hmmmmmmmmmmm!]

The poetic hmmmmm can be traced back to Emily Dickinson and Amy Lowell's UMass Amherst reading in 1899, first enacted by President Chester Arthur. He may have been falling asleep, it is not known. The Amherst Daily Bell reports it thusly:

"And the creepy poetess who lived in the attic read some nonsense about a grasshopper in a spiderweb reading Proust. The president then made a great noise that risethed in the throat that startled many in attendance. They had only attended to get blurbs from Amy Lowell. But this sound here-after became a gesture, a way of saying to the reader 'Yes! Yes! We're with you! Now giveth me a blurb!'"

Poetry is the lonliest business. Only onanism can match it, but there's obviously much bigger payoffs to that magnificent art. Let us proudly once again hmmmmm when the poems get poemy.