Tag Archives: poetry sucks

A Limp and Fangless Thing

       There are about six people who buy new poetry, but they are not feeling very well. I bumped very lightly into one of them while walking down the sidewalk, and for a while I was terrified that I would have to write to eleven MFA programs explaining why everyone was going to have to apply for grants that year. The last time I stumbled upon a poetry reading, the attendees were almost without exception students of the poet who were there in the hopes of extra credit. One of the poems, if memory serves, consisted of a list of names of Supreme Court justices. I am not saying that it was a bad poem. It was a good poem, within the constraints of what poetry means now. But I think what we mean by poetry is a limp and fangless thing.

Alexandra Petri: Is poetry dead? 

Read full piece HERE

To the Perplexed Reader

…since the would-be quantitative poet was obliged to remember constantly the arbitrarily assigned “quantities” of the English syllables he chose to use, quantitative composition was a laborious academic-theoretical business, like all such nonempirical enterprises more gratifying to the self-congratulating practitioner than to the perplexed reader.

P. Fussel, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, Ch. 4: The Historical Dimension

Interplanetary Herdsman

Jah-jahoviah  spells Joseph and Judah;  confusing…

A glance in the Book says the two shall be one.

Higher purposes shown to the tribe of His choosing

Revealing in vision the name of Jah Son.

As the heathen intensify darkness, accusing

Swift messengers fly from that coastline in sun –

Thanks and praises  for radio.   Angels are using

All stations to further His will being done.

Life eternal encoded in musical phrases

Invincible lion,  so rhythmically dread

Vibrations of  Zion with power that raises

Each listener up from the sleep of the dead.

Theological reasoning floats  into space;

HALLELUJAH.   Tune into the echoing  bass…

L of J