Showing posts with label Monday Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monday Love. Show all posts

Monday, October 13, 2008

A Long, Long Time Ago (Monday Love)

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A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How Kaltica v. TomWest used to make me smile.
And I thought if I knew my Poe
That I could make those people know
And they'd be enlightened for awhile.

But T.S. Eliot made me shiver
With every paper he'd deliver.
Griswold on the doorstep;
I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried
When I read how Greeley's Tribune lied,
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the music died.

So bye-bye, Poets.Org,
Sang my song to Kaltica,
He's just a cyborg,
All the mods were thinkin' it's Houlihan's pie,
Singin' Christopher, you have to die!
Christopher, you have to die.

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Borg Queen's First Appearance



senilesovereign

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Did you write the book on Poe,
And do you have faith in God below,
If the Raven tells you so?
Do you believe New Critical
Can save your reading soul,
And can you teach me how to read real slow?

Well, I know that you're in love with Poe
'cause I saw you rhymin' at the Go-Go.
You both read his prose as well
All was fine until he fell.

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a notebook of poems and a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died.

I startin' singin',
Bye-bye Shelley's music and Poe,
The Raven was the maven
Now it's college and Crowe,
Ezra Pound made it new,
But the new it won't go,
And the Fugitive boys are sadly unable
To say why so much depends on a patient etherized upon a table.

Now for a hundred years we're on our own,
And moss grows fat on university stone,
But that's not how it used to be,
When the critic sang honestly
Without Oxford and Harvard's ivy
In a voice that came from you and me.

Oh and while scholars were looking down,
An -Ism stole poetry's radiant crown.
Movements, cliques and schools
Proved at last that all are fools,
And while Eliot scanned the French,
Pound thought on a London bench
To pursue Yeats' used-up wench
The day the music died.




We were singing,
Bye-bye, Shelley's music and Poe,
Hello William Carlos Williams
And the stench of Rimbaud,
Art was once a noble calling,
And now it's all show,
This is the day that we die,
This is the day that we die.

Helter skelter in mid-century swelter,
Pound flew off to an Axis shelter,
Obscenity wins a Bolingen.
Then the troops return to college
Finding the Moderns in charge of knowledge:
John Crowe Ransom's professors win.

But now the Beats and Ginsberg loom,
Festive-counter to New Critic's gloom,
Whitman and Williams take the field,
Modern poets refuse to yield,
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?

We were singing,
Bye-bye, poetry that is good,
Every animal's a poet in the Sacred Wood,
Society sucks so your sucking is good,
Singin' whatever is me is OK,
Whatever is me is OK.

Oh there was The Waste Land in one place,
e.e. cummings taking up space
As Emerson's Dial started up again.
So come on Pound be nimble, Pound be quick!
Butler Yeats sat on a candlestick
And William James is Emerson's dearest friend.

Oh, and as I watched the Modern stage
Consolidate its little rage,
No poet born in hell
Could break that Harvard spell,
And as the critics made it right,
The moderns won without a fight,
And Emerson was laughing with delight,
The day the music died.

He was singing,
Bye-bye Mr. Jingle Man,
England's my ruler and New England's my land,
There's a Golden Dawn coming that you don't understand,
My disciples call the shots, and I'll tell you why:
They made sure that you died,
They made sure that you died.

The 20th century sang the blues
While Eliot talked against the Jews
And Hugh Kenner knocked Millay.
I went down to the ancient store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But Vendler said the music wouldn't play.

Then all prayed to the Cred Machine,
The platitudes grew and the poets schemed,
Only blurbs were spoken,
Great poetry was broken.
And the three men I admire most:
Shakespeare, Pope, and Plato's Ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.

And they were singin',
Bye-bye to Genius and Poe,
Brought Shelley to my teacher
But he wanted Rimbaud,
Warren, Tate, and Ransom
Crashed the Chevy below,
Singin' this is how we'll all go,
This is how we'll all go.

I started singin'
Bye-bye, Shelley's music and Poe,
The Raven was the Maven,
Now it's Workshop and Crowe,
Ezra Pound made it new
But the new it won't go,
Singin', "this'll be the way that we go,
this'll be the way that we go."



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More Borg Queen



CoyoteFitzy says,

Borg Queen, lonely at the top? The song is "Stop Coming to My House," by Mogwai. STAR TREK and all related images/media are owned by Paramount.
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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Guest Writer: "What IS Poetry?" (Monday Love)

(This post originally appeared as a comment on Can There be Poem Criticism without PoBiz Criticism?. Monday Love has offered his/her definition of poetry [Big bold letters = admin emphasis]. How might we expand on that definition? Or should we? Is poetry like porn and art in that "we know it when we see it"? )

Matt hates po-biz on a personal and visceral level. Plus, because he's a student of Jung, he seeks ways to understand tribal and universal and personal behavior, so he's not motivated to “let go” of his hatred of po-biz on a personal, or a psychological, or a symbolic, or a philosophical level. This is going to make for some interesting insights--and for some rants.

Poetry should always be at the center of our discourse; if po-biz or Jung take over, we're likely to get lost in the woods.

What is Poetry? Poetry, when significant, engages with universal human pains and pleasures in a unique manner.

The chief problem with po-biz is that it has nothing to do with universal human pains and pleasures, but with day-to-day administrative and commercial aspects of what poetry has become in our day--and what has it become?

Does poetry today serve the audience of a Homer or a Dante or a Shakespeare or a Milton or a Pope or a Byron or a Tennyson or a Frost? No, it does not.

“Star Wars” serves the Homer audience. The Bible serves the Dante and Milton audience. Chick-lit serves the Byron and Tennyson audience. Self-help and naturalist non-fiction serves the Frost audience. Pope's audience has simply withered away, or is scattered here and there among the other audiences.

Why should a “Jung person” or a Christian or a “Star Wars” fan read poetry?

In most people's homes today, there is refrigerator poetry and there are discussions around the table in which “poetry” of the kind that is published today can be said to exist.

Poetry emerged after the dark ages as a substitute for religion, but that role has pretty much run its course. Poets are no longer sages or revolutionaries anymore. They have a very local existence, and they don't provide what can not be easily found elsewhere.

Po-biz adherents will simply shrug when they are accused by those like Matt who say they are not “up to task.” They will say, "Look at what poetry has become. That's not our fault."

Monday Love

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Guest Writer: Monday Love Weighs in on "Foetry Politics"

(This post has been elevated from the comment section of the Writing Forum Survey. In his post Can There Be Poem Criticism Without PoBiz Criticism?, Matt Koeske responds to Monday Love.)

Many who love poetry look at ‘foetry politics’ and say, ‘but what’s this got to do with poetry? If editors and poets use creative marketing and fund-raising methods which are not pure as the driven snow, if coteries exist in which friends support each other, so what? This has always been done and always will be done, and there are enough honest platforms out there for poetry, so what’s the big deal? If I really love poetry, why should I care about this nonsense? It’s trivial to me.’

Poets.net probably needs to answer this question.

Corruption is more wide-spread than anyone realizes.

Po-biz is very, very small and almost all the coteries are connected, and if you don’t happen to belong to one of these coteries, you really will lose out on a slice of the pie.

'Group-think’ permeates po-biz, due to the existence of coteries. This is a subtle point, because it is true that coteries and ‘group-think’ which arises due to coterie behavior is normal and there is nothing wrong with it, per se.

However, since poetry does suffer from a severe lack of open markets (because poetry doesn’t sell on its own and requires university subsidy and fees collected from contests which are run and won and judged by a relatively small group, consisting largely of these defined coteries) this ‘group-think’ does stifle free discourse, not from any conspiracy, but simply from the nature of coterie group-think, which, again, is quite normal.

“Group-think’ is really a misnomer, because ‘thinking’ isn’t really what occurs; it’s really a non-thinking gesture which prevails, an irritation with lively and original investigation; any ‘thinking outside the box’ is viewed with suspicion, since the insularity of 'group-think' is unconsciously rewarded and defended for the survival of what is essentially an entity which exists accidentally, not out of any necessity.

Coteries exist for themselves, not for the sorting and processing and development of new knowledge, and too much activity in the ‘knowledge’ area sends out warning signals to the coterie or club. Coteries always appear ‘innocent,’ precisely because they are ‘accidental’ (they contain persons X, Y, and Z for various social reasons, and most, if not all, are perfectly healthy reasons).

Coteries are ‘innocent,’ because they exist, not abstractly, but socially; they have no agenda beyond, ‘these are my friends and we together doing what we love.’

These ‘innocent persons’ are the first to protest when ‘necessity’ is introduced: “You are nothing but a coterie, you are not helping poetry, per se, poetry requires a more systematic investigation of…” These sorts of comments are those which immediately send up the flags, and this, in a nutshell, characterizes the current struggle between “Foets and anti-Foets” in poetry, today.

The coteries react with ‘innocent’ indignation (‘you hate us merely because we exist’) and the outsiders reply, ‘yes we hate you because you exist (for yourselves) merely.’

What gives the debate outlined above even more momentum is the following: The coteries become more and more enamored of the 'friendly' nature of the coterie-process and gradually become less enamored with intellectual debate and process, while the outsiders continue to become more enamored with intellectual debate and process, resenting more and more the friendly nature of the coterie process.

The rift widens, and the two sides become more and more irritated with the signals given off by either side. The coteries can smell the type who is ‘desperate for argument,’ while the outsiders feel they are quickly labeled a ‘troublemaker’ for daring to argue about anything substantial. The ‘anti-argument’ and the ‘argument’ sides solidify into their respective identities, and the end result is that the coteries grow more and more anti-intellectual while the outsiders grow more and more ferociously intellectual and argumentative; but even worse, the status quo of the coteries, in order to secure intellectual respect, will strive to be intellectual in highly bizarre and technical ways, while the outsiders, striving to appear friendly, to make up for a lack in that regard, turn timid and acquiescent--thus both the outsider’s passion AND the inquisitive intellectuality of the insider’s coterie-status quo become diminished to such an extent, that poetry loses even the minor edge it once possessed.

A great dishonesty finally prevails, with coteries pretending to be intellectual in more and more Byzantine ways, scaring more and more laypersons away, while poetry outsiders fall into toothless and ‘out-of-touch’ impotency.

Since poetry is ‘market impotent’ in general, coteries come and go fairly quickly, even occasionally receiving new blood from the quarrelsome, anti-social outsider.

So the rift exists in the first place, then becomes diminished, and sometimes disappears, but in a process, as described above, which damages poetry as a social entity and as an art.

Discussion within poetry loses effectiveness, for no one is talking to each other about poetry with an independent spirit; fashionable theories and ideas are repeated and shallowly discussed, everyone looks to each other, attempting to get clues as to what to say next, radical anti-intellectual statements are allowed to pass, since no one is prepared, to defend, in any substantive manner, any intellectual idea or principle, the whole of this idea having been eroded by groups staking out positions in the manner described above.

So here we are back to where we started: “for no one is talking to each other about poetry” and this was the initial complaint upon which I launched this commentary. It may be pointed out that I am guilty of the same thing, since here, at some length, I am demonstrating the problem of which I complain: verbosity which has nothing to with poetry; but the careful reader will see that I am clearing ground so that discussion of poetry might exist in a more fruitful manner; and also I would remind the reader that poetry can not be boiled down to ‘itself;’ the structure of po-biz will always matter, just as who writes the canon and the textbooks and the reviews and who writes the poetry, will always matter, beyond ‘the poetry’ itself.

Monday Love

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