Monthly Archives: May 2020

Schneider Pt II

In today’s bastardized tongue a “Conservative” can claim that title even though he/she wants to peer into people’s bedrooms & women’s bodies. A “Libertarian” can claim it part of his/her creed that corporations can run roughshod over the environment & the populace’s health—for poor corporations need to have liberty just like individuals— in fact MORE liberty than individuals. And a “Liberal”, today, can say with a straight face, that it’s fine & even constitutional to censor books, games & ideas if it offends someone for ANY reason— especially if it “Harms Children!”— the ultimate skirt for cowards to hide behind. For “Liberals”, especially, the NEED to tell truths (a noble pursuit— to “Liberals”) trumps the WANT to entertain (a frivolous waste). So few poets today— of any stripe— enjoy “foolin’ with words” (as Bill Moyers might grin)— they must SAY something; oblivious to the fact that all words & phrases have meanings, & by occasionally letting wordplay guide one, you get ideas anew, & sometimes a better way to express the original idea desired. But to that ilk joy, knowledge, & such discovery become gauche— how dare you contemplate or luxuriate when there’s so much suffering!

( how DARE you ! )

Poetic Sanity within the Asylum: CosmoDan

Schneider Called It in 2001 !

Dan Schneider on Robert Bly:

Bly falls into didacticism—a trait he always displays with audiences—reading & rereading the most inconsequential images, lines, stanzas, & poems as if of cosmic import. It’s also the dead giveaway of a man unsure of himself, his talent, & in need of constant reinforcement. But then he’s always played the “insecure liberal”, wasting time & energy in politics that should go to art, who needs to show his/her innate goodness, go to a [3rd World country/rehab center/orphanage/social activist group] to see how the other ½ lives, translate 5th rate poetasters into English, & leach bad poems from the transformative period so crucial to their growth as a poet/person. It’s all part of the co-opting of language & freedoms by so many groups—PC Elitists among them.

Poetic Sanity in the Asylum: CosmoDan

 

Submerged in Suck

Did you ever feel, as someone interested in Poetry (a dozen readers  just headed for the door, careful on your way out, guys—) you were alone, or at least in a beleaguered minority, upon surveying the landscape of contemporary poetics and wondering why it SUCKS so much? Have you ever thought that poetry is utterly useless— and yet you persist in your love of lyrics and old-school versification? Do you sigh, and stifle suppressed rage upon reading those effete little poem-scrawlings in the margins of well-known Old-Media magazines and reviews? Do you struggle to comprehend how on earth Billy Collins and Rupi Kaur have become so well-known?

Are you haunted by ghosts of English teachers and textbooks that have hammered into your skull trite ideas like:

  • say it in a new and startling way
  • use descriptive language
  • paint a picture with words of something that is special to you
  • break rules of punctuation and scrawl freely
  • let stream-of-consciousness free-association be your only guide

Ideas such as these are great for elementary school; but extended onward and upward to adulthood, filtered through the silliness of advanced degree programs and abstruse chapbooks (read by 17 people who are all department heads), the result is massive SUCK.

By Suck, I mean, more specifically:

  • incoherent modernist free verse
  • intentionally cryptic obscurantism
  • Marxist drivel
  • lame attempts at Dadaism
  • wry and irrelevant observations
  • self-centered confessionals
  • strident (and/or boring) appeals to identity-politics

If you ever languished in such dismal swamps as these,

YOU ARE NOT ALONE !

What a relief, dragging oneself through the stinking sludge, to stumble upon a mud-crusted crate, kick it open—and be blinded by the blazing rays of Dan Schneider’s brilliance. Over the next few days, I shall be posting some pearls I found in the Cosmoetica treasure chest.