This is certainly the longest poem I've ever written and likely seems an odd choice to post after a few days of 4-liners. In a humorous tone it speaks of the prominent role that writing holds in my life. It is certainly not the most profound of my poems or even my favorite. I have many poems with more emotion pressed into them than this one.
To be really honest, this is probably my show-off poem. A well-kept secret is how competitive writers are. We feign humility about our craft while in reality delighting in our perceived victories over lesser writers, especially our published rivals. In a way this piece is my challenge to a duel, a beckoning of my literary competition who write either trite greeting card fluff OR write such esotertic and inaccessible rambling that readers can only pretend to know what the hell the poet is saying. And after several lines, they give up and don't care what the poet is saying. The poet is still talking and doesn't realize that everyone but the editor has left the room.
My mentor, Stellasue Lee, herself a Pulitzer nominee, and I agree that unfortunately most of the reading public has never read poetry that is both extraordinary and understandable. Thus they equate poetry with something of light or sappy rhyming greeting card verse OR they consider and dismiss poetry as inaccessible high art for some obscure and strange tribe of intellectuals who seem to genuinely understand and enjoy Russian opera and a Latin Mass.
The assumption that viewers of the recent Inaguaration made is that Elizabeth Alexander must be one of America's best poets to have been invited to write and recite an original poem for such a historic occasion. Worse, viewers are inclined to rate the poem itself as "great" because of its context. Surely, we'd only have the best of the best read an original poem at an Inauguaration, right? Afer all, only four of 44 Inaugurations have had such a recitation. So the assumptive leap is...that must have been great poetry. We didn't understand most of it, but it sounded pretty, and it's the Inauguration, so it MUST be really good. Right?
Folks, here's the bottom line....if a poem or a poet's body of work is so dumbed down that most of it would work in a Hallmark card, it's not great poetry. If a poem or a poet's body of work can only be understood by elitists or by readers on LSD, while it may even have some elements of genius in its lines, it is not ( in my opinion ) great poetry. In my opinion great contemporary poetry makes language dance to a tune that a skilled reader can follow. It is said that "art is man's attempt to explain his humanness." If the only one who comprehends the (published) poet's "explanation" is the poet himself, he has pleasured himself rather than serving his reader. Thus great modern poetry is both artistically exceptional AND intellectually accessible. ( I am quite intentional in speaking only to the craft of contemporary poetry. I consider classic poetry and classic literature to be another beast altogether and I am most unqualified to address them as my comments would reveal more ignorance than insight. I would have you know that I am a great lover of Shakespeare and Led Zeppelin lest you think I have no appreciation for classic art.)
Thanks for enduring the Introduction. Now, enjoy the show...
POETS ANONYMOUS
I really tried NOT
to write any poetry yesterday
but…
I couldn’t help myself.
So many triggers.
Just a phrase I said to the bartender,
at most a haiku.
Do not pour me a sonnet even if I beg.
Just a taste of sound will do me
and I’m certain as sunrise
I won’t pull a Milton
and end up face down in an epic.
But when the poetry flows,
regardless of who buys,
I forget all responsibilities to my day job
and my night family, and I’m ready to
put the complete works of heaven and hell
on my tab.
I don’t resist and hold up well-- not when
Michelangelo himself sculpts the clouds
over the north ridge like he did today,
not when two unrelated objects
connect the dots
and discover they are cousins,
not when an old love song
beats me up in a back alley.
I left the bar early tonight,
passed a bookstore on my way home,
and I don’t remember buying the 6-pack.
I thought perhaps I could just READ the poetry.
Just hang out,
watch and listen,
maybe smell the imagine on Ted Koozer’s breath
without craving it. Ha! For me reading Billy Collins
is the step right before
ordering a Tom Collins and then the next thing I know
I’m so drunk I think I understand T.S. Elliott.
(I want you to know that I never try to drive
or rhyme a vehicle in this condition.)
I have an intuitive sense about my blood-poetry level
so I don’t get behind the wheel and risk being caught
weaving in and out of logic lanes or
driving analogies
the wrong way
on an exit ramp.
Back home, before I could call my sponsor
I was tossing back shots of the color lavender
the sound of the word eucalyptus,
and the silky feel of her breath
draped around my neck.
I drowned my sorrows and joy by binging
on a January landscape where everything
green and worthy had been blown off,
frozen off,
killed off, or
put to sleep.
I twisted the cap off something better left <unsaid>
and took a long draw of the fire
so the burn could slide down like lava.
(Regret is a great sipping whiskey
but it goes straight to the head on an empty stomach
and straight to the toilet after that.)
I poured doubles of unrequited love
on the rocks, a steady stream of verse
that eroded and smoothed the jagged edges,
slicked the stone tops
so that I fell trying to cross.
I know, I know; I should have stopped writing
and poured out the rest,
but I probably would have gotten my
tongue stuck in the drain.
I need help; I know that.
I’ve got unopened poems hidden under my car seat,
a few publishable ones ……shhhhhhhhhhhhh!
….stashed behind the canned goods in the pantry.
Some half-written pieces jammed in my desk drawer
and a file full of cold drafts wedged in between my passions
and my common sense.
I’ll have one helluva hangover in the morning,
surrounded by wadded up empties
on the bed and floor.
I'll probably go to confession,
re-dedicate myself to prose and journalism , to something
that sells and tells people what to thinkfeeldobelievesaywant.
I’ll sober up and write my column for the newspaper and tackle
the Chapter 6 re-writes of an overdue manuscript.
Because poetry is cotton candy—pink sugar air fluff on a stick.
You can’t live on something which has no nutrients and
just evaporates in your mouth like that.
Poetry is peppermint schnapps, candy cane liquor
so sneaky that before you know it, your liver is as shot as your
punctuation and line
breaks.
I’ll really try NOT
to write any poetry tomorrow
but…
I don’t know if can help myself.
I pull so many triggers.