Tag Archives: modernism

Dada Knows Best

golden-calf

Rebellion—for too long the status quo,
is, in our day, a predictable show.
Antichrist irony, absurdity
shockingly daring incongruity
no longer shock the bourgeois, you know . . .

Alone in the temple of glass with a rock,
you’re out of traditional symbols to mock.
Surrealists did it much better than you—
and it meant a lot more in ’32.

You chew your cud on the cattle-wagon
overused shock-tactics—moo !—now draggin’
or herding aboard the iconoclast train
(b)lowing through boxcars your bovine refrain:
“to, um, make people think . . .”  Oh Lord, how uncouth.
Nihilist narcissus—tell me, what’s Truth?
Must creative always be subversive?
I discern, in your frenzied discursive,
a dull and predictable lack of life.
While you brandish that plastic butter knife
I  seem to note, in your constant thrust,
dearth of artistic ability.  Must
bohemian acolytes (some yawning)
ever be deer in the headlights, fawning
before the ironic gesture? It’s sad;
the bitter is sweet but the art is bad. . . .

They circle hors d’oeuvres on opening night
like moths around white wine in candlelight,
cerebrating in a modernist void:
contemporary aesthetes, overjoyed
to know once more that life has no meaning;
the planet is doomed; that kings are queening;
that chic just arrived, escorting philosophy
(Forgive us, Duchamp, for all this monstrosity).

I long for Hudson River School sunsets
Old Dutch Masters, religious art, portraits,
Red, green, or black propaganda-art?  NO ! 
The view does not merit the price of the show.
I’m dada-ed to death, beyond the surreal.
Conceptual gimmicks have failed to conceal
your want of ability, values, and faith
In the book you despise it is written: thus saith
the fool in his heart: that there is no God . . .

You: Postmodern Art—to the firing squad!

Dada Firing Squad

 

Drop Pens – STOP the DRAFT !

Here’s to avant-cryptic stanzas
Nihil-angst extravaganzas,
Vapid free-verse, endless Haiku…
such may cause the Muse to strike you.
Dada, Tanka, Cinquains, Centos
existential verse mementos –
yes, they’re mildly amusing forms
but finally fail to transcend norms
of poetry-induced despair
(a common modern-day affair)
brought on by formless abstract lines
of current verse. The warning signs:
eye-rolling, growling, throwing books
yelling at websites, dirty looks
at writers with advanced degrees,
a raging sense of vague unease
with life and letters. Damn what’s new…
one wonders what we’re coming to.

When meaning is replaced by style
and editors extol the vile
you know that doom is on its way.
The poets don’t know what to say
but fool around, devoid of rhythm
(that’s why no one wants to hear them
let alone READ them). What a lark;
like rain-soaked matches in the dark.
Poetic dullness thus delays
to kindle light or spark a blaze.
Sad vocation: analyzing
wordy scribbles. Agonizing
over esoteric twaddle
(makes one want to hit the bottle –
or the poet). Was it ever
this way? Will the next endeavor
lift us toward the lyric splendor
or return us back to sender…

To a Progressive Poet

Your poems read as staggered prose;
the rhythm of the words escapes you.
One assumes, un-mused, you chose
a free-verse prison to run into.

You are modern. And it shows
in lack of structure, meter, beat.
Your emperor, set free of clothes
meanders on unsteady feet

exposed as naked, fending blows
from anarch subjects bored to tears
by cryptic, existential woes
and dreary imagery. One hears

within the verbiage you compose
a load of godless free-form tripe.
The lyrical ebb achieves new lows;
the scent is somewhat over-ripe…

Flux Danger

The Amazing Muses’ Amusing Mazes

When painters who paint about painting
meet writers who write about writing,
self-conscious redundancy
bordering lunacy
ends in esthetic in-fighting.

Such modernists, right about nothing
(mostly nihilists mad about something)
are so lost in the process
they vent all their excess
in metacognition:  dull writing.

You poets who muse about musing –
unaware you are reader-abusing,
provide a terrific
verbose soporific
yet not of the reader’s own choosing…

I long for some sheer virtuosity –
but I’m stifled by all the pomposity.
This dull erudition,
“sub-metacognition”,
is purely artistic atrocity.

You thinkers who think about thinking
drag my spirit far lower than sinking.
What we want is a Word
which we haven’t yet heard –
so ’till then I’ll just drink about drinking.