Antiplath

Today I ordered some antiplath business cards. Pretty spiffy. They’re double-sided glossy, get here in a week or so.

Any time I post a poem on here, my own or someone else’s, there are zero comments and the post gets hardly any singled-out hits. What gives?

I’m going to assume you all had terrible poetry teachers who made you read indecipherable, dense crap, had no idea themselves how to read or understand it, and so they made up vague generalizations about symbolism and love and death and hyperbole and then berated you if you didn’t “get” the poem in the same way SHE did. It’s always a female teacher who ruins poetry for a class. Always.

And in high school, too. A time when you can really appeal to all the sex and death and rebellion that IS in poetry, only your teacher sucks and doesn’t know how to read poetry - or else is frigid or too obtuse to see sensuality all cloaked up in pretty words like clothes waiting to be taken off- so she ends up ruining it for everyone. By making you slough through some cryptic, koan-like, nunnified Dickinson (I STILL don’t get most of her poems) or else some gag-inducing Barrett Browning sentimentalist fairyland dribble. I mean the girls tend to like that stuff but the boys - god, can you imagine worse torture for a 16 yr old boy?

So.

There are other kinds of poems out there.

There are ways to read poems. Lots of ways. Thirteen ways and more, some say.

Now I’m not going to talk about my terrible day (so far), my banging headache, how stabby I am toward my co-workers right now or how confused I am about life in general right now. Nope. We’re going to discuss poetry like it SHOULD be discussed. With relish, libido and juice. Because poetry is all about sex and death, the two driving forces in life, and that is some compelling reading, if done right.

So take that memory of Miss Archer or whomever ruined Shakespeare and all things rhyming for you and burn it. Put it aside. Pretend it never happened. Forget all of your preconceptions about what constitutes poetry, k? This shit is sexy, fun, transcendental, inspiring, it cracks open the world in a way that only poetry can … otherwise I wouldn’t have spent 6+ years studying and writing it. People, I’m lazy. I wouldn’t spend so much time on something if it were boring or impossible.

So begins the Antiplath Poetry Course Whether You Like it or Not.

We’re gonna start with Mark Strand. Here’s a poem of his in it’s entirety.  Now, that click you heard? That was your brain locking down - OPEN IT BACK UP. And read:

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

- Mark Strand

Strand turns poetry into lunch. Or dinner. A five-course one. “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth” … the speaker’s slobbering. Poetry is like bacon grease running from his face after a post-midnight drunken feast standing naked in his kitchen. He has an apetite that cannot be satiated, though he is happy trying, and that hunger is for poetry. 

And the librarian doesn’t get it. She’s dry. She has no hunger like his. She hides her hands in her dress… hands grasp, feel, caress, hit - we experience much of our sensual lives through our hands. She hides hers, rejecting sensuality. Of course she’s sad.

(Or maybe her hands are cold. Whatever. I’m just throwing stuff out there; all of this is open to interpretation.)

“The poems are gone/the light is dim” — The speaker has eaten all the poems and it’s late. The dogs are “on the basement stairs and coming up” — dogs could represent what? Animalistic need? What about that librarian? The speaker’s got his eye on her and he’s hungry… all the poems are gone… she’s the only thing left…

And she knows it. She stamps her feet and weeps. Their legs are burning like brush, burning with what? Lust? Seems so. And the speaker becomes like one of the dogs when he licks her hand. She’s frightened though. She doesn’t understand his need, her buried needs, or else she does on some primal level but she’s frightened of her own sexuality.

In the last three lines, the speaker is transformed 100% into a dog-figure - I just mistyped that as “god” - interesting type-o - He “snarles at her and bark”s — no longer offering gentle friendship. He’s hostile now. He “romps with joy” in the bookish dark. I love “bookish dark.” You ever been in a library at night when all the lights are out? That’s bookish dark. It smells like dust and old paper and wood.

All this sex and lust and animal nature and sensuality and conflict… IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF POETRY.

There are good poems out there, lots of them, and there are countless wonderful poets. However, for every genuinely good poet, there are ten half-assed hacks who think they are good and who will force you to read their awful scribblings. And for every fantastic, inspiring Poetry or Lit teacher in high school, there are about a hundred terrible ones who ruin the written word for thousands of kids.

So, on that note, I’d like to dedicate this post to Mr. Richardson. Thank you for being so cool (and so hot… *drool*) and for showing us Brazil at the end of the semester. And for encouraging our class to seek out the dirty bits in Shakespeare.

/antiplath is starting to think that teaching English Lit might be fun

At the time of writing, the subject suffers minor burns on her body due to neglectful personal care, a twisted, pulsating headache, fond memories of Tom Waits, a feeling of tender regret for oh so many things left undone and a bloody lip.

She isn’t sure why or how her lip got bloody.

TOM WAITS IS TONIGHT!

/that is all.

Melancholy
by Baron Wormser

Weakness—the pale succumbing to loneliness,
Refusing to admit anyone else, indulging
The blue perquisites of adolescence
Long past their sensible deliquescence.

He knew it but went on drinking and regretting,
Not calling his friends and regretting,
Making scenes over nothing and regretting.
It helped to make him despise himself,

Which was, he sensed, what he wanted. He was
Then, in his oblique way, at ease to wander
The city’s brazen or quiet streets, conjuring
Random lives and how the slim arc
Of emotion was pulverized. Back home, he put
On some Monk, lay down, half-cried.

“Melancholy” by Baron Wormser, from Scattered Chapters: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2008. Reprinted with permission.

Earlier I decided to go through the remaining cardboard boxes in my house left over from the move nearly two years ago (don’t even say a word), so I bought some storage things and started rifling. Lots of photographs I’d forgotten about, lots of memories stirred up - the Sargasso detritus welling up from the still parts of my brain… I have a problem with segmenting my life, not connecting causes and effects, the past with the present - which as you may imagine causes problems. And repeated mistakes. But overall it was a great experience, going through all that stuff, especially the photos.

As I walked out of my front door to toss the empty boxes, a man was walking down the street and saw me. He asked me if he could have a glass of water. I shook my head no and went back inside, locked the deadbolt and the chain, too. Then I felt horrible. What if he really just wanted a glass of water? And I just refused him … because I was here alone and I didn’t want to get into a conversation and possibly panhandled… But I did the right thing, I was assured. And I probably did. But part of me wonders what if. And that part is tied to the fact that a homeless man was sleeping on the porch of the semi-abandoned house next door for most of the afternoon, and I basically ignored him. As most might say I should. But maybe he was thirsty too? I never know what to do in those situations. I feel easier about refusing the panhandlers at the intersections in town. They just piss me off. I’m trying to get to work and they stand in front of my car demanding money for their church group or basketball team… that is somehow easier to refuse. But a guy asking for a simple glass of water… I dunno.

Part of me thinks I should have just given him some water and let him be on his way. But it’s never that simple. There’s a conversation about hard times, usually, some rehearsed story about how he needs eight bucks for the YMCA or gas money to go see his kid… and the last time I opened my door to a man asking for water, he ended up passing out in the street in front of my house (this was years ago) and I had to call the fire department - they ended up dealing with him, but it took about two hours, phone calls to relatives and lots of unwelcome drama before it was done.

I don’t need any more drama. I’m at full capacity. No drama is good drama. And plus there’s a place down the street that stays open late - they’d probably give him water there. But this is going to bother me for a while, I can tell. Moral dilemma: open your door to a stranger off the street and risk mugging, death or at best frustration? Or quit being scared of other humans and help a guy out? The problem is, experience has taught me that no and I mean NO good deed goes unpunished. So maybe I do learn from the past after all.

“They love each other, but they’re ill at ease in each other’s company.” Such devotion wells up in the woman’s dark glances, yet she remains obstinately silent as though fearful of bursting into tears or unburdening her heart in a flood of banal complaints. Her eyes are beautiful, eloquent, and frightened, and seem to be telling the man: “You’re a clumsy lover… you don’t begin to understand me… I don’t really know you, and you scare me… You sneer at everything I like… You lie so well! You possess me completely, yet I can’t trust you… If you knew what limpid springs you wall up within me because I fear you! What am I doing here at your side? Would that this music could free me of you forever! Or else that this violin would stop before I find out more about you! You yearn for my undoing, not my happiness, and what’s worst in me assures you of your victory.”

- from “After Midnight” by Colette

Story here.

This is so terrible, but every time I see a picture of him I just picture him in Bridget Jones’ Diary in the book launch scene… *sigh*

Henry Rollins is at Tipitina’s tonight to do a spoken word show.

Henry Rollins, Spoken Word
Tipitina’s, 8 p.m.
501 Napoleon Avenue, Uptown
Tickets: $15, $20 for couples
Resources: Tipitina’s website | Herny Rollins’ website

“In the ’90s, Henry Rollins emerged as a post-punk renaissance man, without the self-conscious trappings that plagued such ’80s artists as David Byrne. Following Black Flag’s breakup in 1986, Rollins was been relentlessly busy, recording albums with the Rollins Band, writing books and poetry, performing spoken word tours, writing a magazine column in Details, acting in several movies, and appearing on radio programs and, less frequently, as an MTV VJ. The Rollins Band’s records are uncompromising, intense, cathartic fusions of hard rock, funk, post-punk noise, and jazz experimentalism, with Rollins shouting angry, biting self-examinations and accusations over the grind. On his spoken word albums, he is remarkably more relaxed, showcasing a hilariously self-deprecating sense of humor that is often absent in his music. All the while, he has kept his artistic integrity, becoming a kind of father figure for many alternative bands of the ’90s.” - Steve Huey, AllMusic.com

—–