Quiz: Poe-tical, or not?

[Monday Love]

Sim,

Poe wrote a great deal of non-fiction.  This would bring his poetry output to below 1%, but you are right, it probably takes longer to write poetry, so my 1%, as near anyone can tell, is probably pretty accurate.

Literary judgement test?   The quickest way to determine literary judgement?  Let the subject use five sentences to comment in any way they wish on some obscure stanza or couplet, then have the subject rewrite the couplet or stanza in order to improve it.

Poe would have enjoyed this sort of thing, by the way.  He liked to play down the importance of 'great' writers; he liked to find out hidden acts of copying and imitation.  Poe stole from obscure classical writings.   He spotted thieves, but it takes one to know one.   He was influenced by the crackpot politics of his day, and hated the crackpot transcendentalists in his own crackpot manner.  Poe disliked British writers; we think of Poe as a dionysian bohemian, but he was a satirist, and a fierce patriot, and lived at a time (d. 1849) when many Americans saw a British Empire who secretly desired in all sorts of ways to yet crush her upstart colony.  (One of these ways was to support writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, who Poe despised.) Poe used literature to teach principles, but was pretty good at hiding this pedagogical aspect of his writings, fearing readers would find it boring.

Monday

[alan]

CD Wright?

Forrest Gander?

Nope and nope.  One more guess and then I'll tell.

[Poet K]

Emily Galvin?

[leander]

Ramke or Revell?

[poetastin]

Cordle?

[alan]

Nope -- it's my favorite foet: Janet Holmes, who is participating in the godawful embarrassment that is known as NAPOWRIMO -- a poem a day, no matter how crappy.  Thankfully, she realizes her mistake and takes them down each day.

[Sim]

Admin has only had two beers this evening. :drinkers:

Better tell us some forbidden truth.

[Monday Love]

Nope -- it's my favorite foet: Janet Holmes, who is participating in the godawful embarrassment that is known as NAPOWRIMO -- a poem a day, no matter how crappy.  Thankfully, she realizes her mistake and takes them down each day.

Smart move on her part.  She tries so hard to be clever, but she's not very good.

"makes me doubt your faithfulness
much less your loyalty"

 :lol:

what putrid writing!

And that photo--she doesn't smile with her eyes, does she?  When you get creeped out by someone's smile, it's not a very good sign.  If you're trying to be creepy, that's OK, but she's trying to be all sexy and coy, smiling behind her hair.  Poor thing.

And that interview with Eli Noah Gordon...how insipid!   Doesn't he and his collaborator/interviewer/friend realize how cliched and boring they sound?  No humor, no insight, just the same old crap.   They love every poet/have been influenced by every poet who ever lived, they love poetry so, so much, but they still understand that other people who are not poets are real people too...  and then he says he thinks it's "slimy" to write blogs, even though he has tried (and failed) at it several times. Do Eli Noah Gordon and his friends know how much pretense and triteness and self-servingness oozes from these interviews?  I don't think they know.  I really don't think they get it.

[alan]

And that interview with Eli Noah Gordon...how insipid!   Doesn't he and his collaborator/interviewer/friend realize how cliched and boring they sound?  No humor, no insight, just the same old crap.   They love every poet/have been influenced by every poet who ever lived, they love poetry so, so much, but they still understand that other people who are not poets are real people too...  and then he says he thinks it's "slimy" to write blogs, even though he has tried (and failed) at it several times. Do Eli Noah Gordon and his friends know how much pretense and triteness and self-servingness oozes from these interviews?  I don't think they know.  I really don't think they get it.

I skimmed that interview too.  Very, very hard to take. :vom:

[alan]

To You

The more I read poetry, the more
I realize how much you get around.
Almost every poet mentions you with an intimate concern
that makes me doubt your faithfulness
much less your loyalty. You once said . . .
oh, you told dozens of others the same,
you wounded them,
appeared to them in dreams,
abandoned them. You did things
they will never forget
and still they love you, they want
you back. What am I going
to do with you? When
will you ever learn?

[jester17]

Desiderata Redux
   

Dear editor:
Please accept the following poems for consideration in your upcoming issue. I have been writing poetry since I was twelve, and I believe my experience raising five children in the light of God's face gives my work unique life and makes these pieces worth publication in your periodical.

Dear editor:
Please accept the following poems for consideration in your upcoming issue. My poetry has been seen in Gotta Right Network Litmag, and local newspapers here in Polix, Arizona. I have been running my own paranormal investigations business, drinking hard, reading ancient history and grieving continuously since the unsolved disappearance of my wife, and best friend of eighteen years. I believe this gives my work a distinctive spirit and makes these poems worth publication in your periodical.

Dear editor:
Please accept the following poems for consideration in your upcoming issue, my first book of poems, Small Things, was selected by The Lower Rhode Island Poetry Society as fifth runner up in the Lower Rhode Island Poetry Society Chapbook Contest. I am a Patient Care Assistant with the Lower Rhode Island Hospice. My poems have also appeared in Poetry Rhode Island, and Rhode Poems. I believe the worldliness of my verse makes these poems worth publication in your periodical.

Dear editor:
Please accept the following poems for consideration in your upcoming issue. I have been the recipient of two Goldfish Fellowships to study and translate Antarctic poetry, and have been teaching poetry writing from the platform of Plato's Republic for the US Naval Academy these last ten years. My poems have appeared in Tokyo Quarterly Haiku, Paradelles From Cannes, The Baghdad Ghazal, Villanelles for Snooty Euro-Types and Poems That Might Have Come From God's Mouth. My first four books of poems now regularly appear in rotating shows for the MOMA and the Guggenheim. I've been commissioned by the Vatican to create poetic busts for the last ten Popes, have won the Nobel Prizes in Literature and Peace each twice, and just last year took the silver medal for the 15,000m during the Summer Olympics in Kenya. I believe these poems may be worth publication in your periodical.

[Monday Love]

To You

The more I read poetry, the more
I realize how much you get around.
Almost every poet mentions you with an intimate concern
that makes me doubt your faithfulness
much less your loyalty. You once said . . .
oh, you told dozens of others the same,
you wounded them,
appeared to them in dreams,
abandoned them. You did things
they will never forget
and still they love you, they want
you back. What am I going
to do with you? When
will you ever learn?

This Makes Me

This makes me
want to go to Boise State and pay thousands for an MFA degree.  This makes me want to
get into this poet's world.  
This is some bitchin' writin'
and this makes me want to

scream
you told dozens of others the same
scream
you told dozens of others the same
scream
you told dozens of others the same

I want to learn
oh, you told dozens, dozens, dozens

learn from you

they want

you back

at Boise State

if you'll have me

m' lady

oh, I feel silly writing this

is it me or is it them

or is it...