Print This PostWhen I was young, I wanted to stain the world with my permanence which is why, I suppose, I became a poet.
This is no longer the case. Old Four seasons songs from the early Sixties are more canonical than the vast majority of poems. In point of fact, a good poetry trivia question would be “name four poems from the 1960′s not written by Ginsberg, Bly, Merwin, Plath, Sexton, or Creeley.” Hell, most students could not name four poets prominent in the sixties other than these poets, much less poems. They probably could name five or six rock bands. I am as guilty as anyone. Although I can name perhaps thirty poets who became well-known in the sixties, and perhaps 20 poems (I know more, but have a terrible memory for titles). But I can name at least two hundred pop songs, dozens of televisions shows, and movies. Poetry is not even close in terms of having pride of place in my long term memory. It’s not as enjoyable as “Surfer Girl” for most people, and you can slow dance to “Surfer Girl.”
So what? What’s my point? I guess my point is there’s no point to writing poems except to write them. Being published, even winning major awards, are activities quickly swallowed up by the youth obsessed, pop culture obsessed amnesia of our so called “civilization.”
This past summer, I refused to write. I turned down three readings, none of which paid, because after thirty years of doing this shit, spending money, even gas money just to get in front of people’s faces (usually familiar) does not have the same glamor it once did. I understand poets who are just starting out wanting to read anywhere, even if they have to pay for the privilege. When I was 24 or 25, taking a thirty minute car ride, or hour train ride to read in an open (not feature, open) was something I enjoyed. First, gas was a lot cheaper. Second, the poetry scene seemed full of promise. It had that indefinable whiff of possibility–almost sexual. Now I don’t catch the scent and gas is always hovering near 4 bucks a gallon, and it seems every poet out there has taken the same fucking workshop, or is writing the same brand of spoken word. When I first got on the scene, I met poets who were avid readers–and they read some amazing poets, poets you would not consider par for the course of bar readings: Oppen, Olson, Reznikoff, Creeley, Ignatow, Paul Blackburn, Louis Zukovski, Levertov, Kathleen Frazier, Robert kelly, Larry Levis, Charles Wright, etc, etc, and we would go to diners after readings and actually talk poets and poems, and music, and art–not grants, not who is winning what or teaching where. I loved the poets I knew and they varied widely in age and background. This has vanished. This is how the scene now goes:
1. It’s all open readings, and one I heard about where the host begins and ends the open with a ten to fifteen minute recitation of his own work–which means he is the featured poet every month.
2. Slams where it’s as much about acting chops and looks as poetry and in which nothing truly different ever wins–just like academic poetry
3. Closed readings where the feature is not followed by an open and he or she has credentials that qualify him or her as a “noteworthy” poet.
Other trends:
- Features no longer stay for the open readers.
- Open readers show up late in order to miss the feature and read, or show up, do the open and split before the feature.
In my home state of Jersey, there are still a good amount of readings, but no one seems to go out to the diner anymore. It’s pretty business-like. I remember in 1991/92 I sometimes had as many as twenty poets go out the diner after a Poets Wednesday reading, and Edie Eustice, when she ran the series with Sofran Mcbride in the late 70s, early 80s had ten to twenty poets come back to her house. People would drink, eat, talk, play the piano and stay sometimes until the wee small hours–not anymore. There is less friendship on the poetry scene, and yet more scolding of me for not seeing it as a “social” event. Well, where the fuck is the social event if people don’t break bread together, eat, drink, flirt, fall in love, sit around a piano? Spare me. Social my ass. I was raised better than that. That’s what the Irish call a teetotaler’s orgy–six pieces of watercress, one cracker, and not a smile cracked to compete with the sticks up their arses. The aesthetic is BORING. Even when I helped the students run the Belmar reading here in Binghamton, we’d go to Kennedy Fried Chicken after a reading and get chicken and coco bread, or we’d do something. If no one is getting paid, then it ought to have a festive atmosphere. Someone ought to puke, or fall in love, or stare gloomily at the bushes and pee on the azaleas. Forget it. We are all so “functional” but is it functional to be this lacking in spirit? If so, why do it?
So now I do things to stain the world with my impermanence. Yesterday I made a fence completely out of tree limbs that had fallen in a storm. I used a potato peeler to take off the bark, and made one rule: no nails, or rope, everything done by the force of gravity and placement. The fence pleases me. It is about a hundred feet around, and rises and falls in height. I loved peeling the bark, fitting the limbs just so, knowing a really good wind storm or a drunk friend will send the whole thing crashing. I made mirror fish out of pieces of broken mirror. I did everything except write poems. My wife writes a poem everyday. I don’t want to write. Two years ago, it was all slammers at the Belmar, and I felt an ugliness I can’t explain. I paid people out of my own pocket at the Belmar (to the tune of about four thousand dollars over three years), helped the students, and, in the end, all it did was get me a bad reputation as a “drinker.” Hell, half the time I was not drinking–just having fun, but having fun in this modern bung hole we call the arts is deemed dysfunctional. In the end, no one was grateful for what I did. Instead, I had to listen to them act like Puritan Burgomeisters. I was thinking: Put all these snob ass, hypocritical purists on a cigar box!” Freedom and the arts? Horse shit. I know when its time to leave.
