December 13, 2007 by Les Smart.

Barry, Barry

Big and hairy

How did your muscles grow?

What’s your excuse

For steroid use?

Don’t tell us you just didn’t know.

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December 11, 2007 by Les Smart.

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December 9, 2007 by fbk.

Les reminds me of many of my rants about poetry and modern poets in my earlier years.  I’ve calmed down a bit on the subject after finding formalist poetry magazines and that there are still writing programs where forms are taught.  All is not lost on the subject, even if one might think so if all one sees is Poetry.

But, today, I come not to rant about poetry, but to share a bit in this season of sharing.  It seems your humble curmudgeon is associated with an organization that does a Christmas collection program every year for a local shelter.  And so, I buy a stuffed animal to make a child smile.  This year, the critter that attracted my eye was a big ape or monkey-like thing.  Its arm and leg on each side are of a piece and adjustable as to length.  So, the owner can make their monkey have short legs and long arms, long legs and short arms, or medium length limbs all around.   Or even one leg short with a long arm and the other side with a long leg and short arm.  I’m sure this fellow will be quite fun for any child.  But, a store-bought monkey is something anyone could have.  It isn’t unique, even if nice for a child in a shelter for battered women and children.

So, I usually decide to include a little poem to make each stuffed animal a little more unique.  I print the poem off on nice paper, roll it up as a scroll, and tie it onto the animal with a ribbon.  Here is this year’s inclusion:

Montmorency “Monty” Monkey

His arms and his legs can be long or quite short
and he’ll misbehave like a terrible sport.
He’ll bounce all around like an acrobat clown
erasing all traces of gloom or of frowns.

There are other things that our Monty might do
Like waltzing around in your mother’s best shoes,
Or swinging from lamps to go hanging on Gramps
And drawing the curtains to climb like a champ.

A monkey’s a monkey and not like a child,
Who could not misbehave and never runs wild.
So, play all you want with wild Monty the monk,
But do be polite and don’t act like a punk.

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December 7, 2007 by Les Smart.

     I have been writing, reading, and reading about poetry for almost four years. I believe that the powers that be today in our poetry world and many poets in that world are snobbish and elitist. The standard of “good” poetry today has been fabricated of elements that make merely understanding a poem a struggle for an average reader. My suggestion that poets might consider widening the appeal of their work frequently is met with a question that demeans the average reader and demonstrates the elitist attitudes of many poets, “So, you want me to dumb it down?”     

     Before continuing to read this rant, go to any on-line bookseller’s site and do three searches: 1) understanding novels, 2) understanding short stories 3) understanding poetry. If you actually do this you will find that virtually nothing exists in the first two searches, but what about the third?     

     The Modern Era of poetry (1901-1045) was a time when poets decided to break from traditional poetry to experiment and be innovative. Free or open form poems became popular because they were not as restrictive as rhyming and metered poems.     

     The Post Modern Era (1945-1989) continued with this experimentation, but the content became more ironic and confrontational. The beat poets emerged and experimentation flourished.      In the current Global Era there is a mix of ethnicities, forms and rapidly shifting images affected by electronic media, the instant society.

     Through it all, the quest for originality and the infusion of Symbolism has moved the art form far away from the common reader. The vast public only experiences poetry today in popular song lyrics and greeting cards.

     (The Poetry Foundation did a survey of readers in this country and the statistics should be alarming to the striving poet. You can look it up on their web site. You will find that only about 14% of the public read on a regular basis and a very small portion of those readers read poetry. Why? Ask your non-poetry reading friends.)

     Symbolism was a movement that began during the Victorian Period primarily in France. Charles Baudelaire was it’s founder and Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, and Paul Valery forming a group that almost created a completely symbolic world. They were trying to evoke states of feeling or awareness, often without discernable, concrete meanings. Suggesting things without stating them directly.

     This use of symbols is referred to as private symbols because it leaves two parts of symbolic patterns out and open for the reader’s interpretation. (Hour-glass sand = passage of time = aging or wedding ring = marriage = love and commitment) Symbolism leaves out the last two parts and the reader has to either determine what the author meant or provide their own association. Think of what a recent divorced person or someone in a gay relationship might conjure up when they read about a wedding ring.

     Now let’s throw into the mix the fact that originality is highly desired today, new images, new symbols, new metaphors, new similes, new, new, new. One of the worse things a poet can hear at a critique today is that their poem or any part of it is cliché. We must be new and original.

     Unfortunately, with this quest for originality rhymed and metered poetry is no longer respected. (Try to get some published.) Traditional forms are seldom used and even the old standard Sonnet is often bastardized in search of originality.

     What I have found as I interact with other poets is that many can’t handle rhyme or meter. Strictly structured poems like Ballads, Sestinas, Villanelles, and Rondeaus are way beyond anything they wish to attempt. Yet they will say that the forms are too restrictive to allow them to express freely.

     I fell like the little boy who speaks up in the crowd and tells the emperor he is naked. All the poets around me are interpreting poems and talking about how beautiful they are. They say, “poems don’t have to mean, they just have to be.” They say, “don’t ask a poet what their poem means, tell them.” I have a friend who wants me to at least agree with him that a poem doesn’t have to have intent.

     Poems are usually short and sweet, perfect for our generation of the five-second sound bite. Yet, how many people buy poetry books? How many major publishers publish poetry? Are you satisfied that your greatest possible audience is a small portion of the 14% of Americans who read on a regular basis?

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December 5, 2007 by Les Smart.

Is there anyone out there that truly understands the majority of the poems published in Poetry?

 I receive a gift subscription to this erudite publication and every month I attempt to read it and, if I have the energy, I try to understand the poems they’ve published.  Now, I’ve been struggling to write poetry since August of 2003, I read a lot of poetry, I attend poetry workshops and poetry readings, I read books about poetry, I’ve been published and I have a BS degree in Education.  So - why is it that reading Poetry makes me feel stupid.

 This publication is held up as one of the most respected in the field and yet, as I peruse the work on their pages, I want to shout, “Someone tell them Emperor he’s naked!  Please stop trying to make believe any of it makes sense!  Please!”

 This, unfortunately, is the drivel that the elitist poetry establishment who are more deeply embedded in the halls of academia than Bin Laden is in the hills of Pakistan.  It is being protected and revered by them more voraciously than extreme Islamicists defend their beliefs.  In the process the figurative heads of understandable poems are being lopped off and held up in ridicule.

 Mention rhymed meter poetry to a poetry professor and watch him sneer before he gags and/or giggles.  Read a lyric rhymed piece at a gathering of these snobs and be prepared to be stoned and, if they can see past their turned up noses, they may even hit you.  What must they think of Frost, Service, Longfellow, Poe, and so many of the masters?  Are they willing to denounce and reject their work as ‘non-poetry’?

 Thank you for reading my rant.  I am on my way to the Hallmark store to read some published poetry I can understand.  Don’t tell the poetry establishment.  I don’t want to risk a possible Fatwa.

 Les

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November 3, 2007 by fbk.

Reading back in the blog, I saw one of my first posts and the reference to Lyn Nofziger.  I used to read his wonderful blog wherein he often had silly doggerel poetry about politics and events of the day.  It wasn’t meant to be serious.  He certainly never considered himself a serious poet with those bits and pieces.  But I think that kind of thing is more likely to be remembered and appreciated than most of the serious poets working, just as Ogden Nash is a bigger part of the popular poetic culture than many who took themselves more seriously.

There aren’t many like Lyn that I know of.  I have seen poems in National Review.  And of course, there is the incomparable F. R. Duplantier with his Politickles.  But there aren’t too many out there who seem to be having fun with light verse at the expense of their political opponents, at least not on the Republican and Libertarian side.  Since we at the Attila the Hun School of Political Science do not bother reading the liberal magazines too much anymore, we may be missing a new trend there.  But traditionally, combining liberal politics and poetry comes out more earnest than fun.  So, where have all of the light verse artists gone?  Have they all gotten serious?  Are they just in the deadly drought of media attention deficit?

I think I’d welcome a candidate who had a twinkle in his eye and a limerick on his lips to counter some opponent’s windy gustations.  Maybe it’s even time we had a Poetry Party of America?  Maybe that would get more people engaged in politics if the candidates would have to frame all of their debates in verse, preferably limericks?  It could start a whole trend with new parties representing different streams and subgenres in poetry.  Someone might have the next Presidential nomination all “rapped” up.  Maybe we could put the stress in the language and get it out of the politics?

This started to be a post about politics alone and how I seem to feel less engaged with politics this year.  It migrated and twisted and turned, but in a sense, it did get there.  Would a metrist get me more engaged this year?  Perhaps not.  But it might give us all a bit more levity and leavening in this extended political season to make it more bearable.

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July 7, 2007 by fbk.

There once was a politician
of fam’ly quite patrician.
His service was long,
And most called him wrong,
But hist’ry would write his edition.

Damn, but I do miss Lyn Nofziger!

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