New poem: 200 BAD POEMS FOR BILLY COLLINS

'Everybody is born with at least 200 bad poems in them. It's best to get rid of them
by college.' --Billy Collins

hello Billy

you don’t know me

but I read your recent comment

and bundled 200 of my poems,

leaving them at the bottom of your driveway

for potential evaluation

I’m aware of how hard it is

to be accepted by Academia--

particularly when you, Billy Collins,

write poems that are easy

for most people to understand

and, to a lot of poets,

it means you’re not trying hard enough

okay, I get it,

you made that 200 bad poems comment

to keep your credibility

with the poets eternally upset

over how you sell more books

than they ever will

also, there’s that desire for intellectual bragging rights

when you appear onstage with Paul Simon and Aimee Mann

and get super-duper-eager to claim your poems

as existing on an equal plane to their lyrics

so go on, Billy,

keep talking about how elevated you are

and how bad all the beginners are

plus all the self-educated poets

like Adam Driver’s Paterson

(in the movie of the same name )

of course, they’re bad too

because they choose not to publish

or share their art

through accepted channels

with people like you

so, here are my 200 poems

destined to enter your blue recycling can

without even a glance at my cover letter

as you regret your long-ago misstep

of criticizing MFA programs

during one of your book tours,

believing this outburst of candor

about homogenized poetry

led to amateur me

annoying distinguished you

Billy Collins explains serious poetry training to you.

In the past, I've appreciated Billy Collins's skill at being both well-crafted and accessible.  I even saw him a couple of times- (Skirball Cultural Center and Pepperdine University).

At Skirball, he seemed to be critical of MFA programs (which most poets consider vital to being taken seriously).

But he now seems to be no more than the kind of pedant routinely found in poetry circles--the kind of person who will inevitably make a snide reference to first-person poems (often, young poets start by writing about their experiences) as diary/journal entry poems or "teenage angst."

And, to top it off, you're not "real" if you don't read every syllable of The Classic Poets/Authors/Thinkers.

Here's Billy harrumphing at perceived Straw Amateurs  via the NPR website:

It really  lies in the simple act of reading tons of poetry. And I mean not just stuff you find in magazines but if you really want to be trained in poetry you need to read Milton — you need to read Paradise Lost. You need to read Wordsworth — you need to read Wordsworth's 'Prelude.'"

"That's if you want to take it seriously. If you don't want to take it seriously, you can just get a 79-cent pen and express yourself," he laughed. "No one's gonna read it with any pleasure because ... you haven't paid attention to what happened in the past."

My two cents on the "Poetry Slam" article in HARPER'S.

The article in Harper's is written by an English professor at the University of Virginia. And it's essentially someone adopting a rebel-in-academia stance venting about poets (Merwin, Muldoon, Graham etc.) being too "opaque and evasive" when writing at length, not to mention not writing verse more actively engaged with the modern world as it is.

At the same time, Adrienne Rich is downgraded by Mr. Edmundson for not having enough of "the gift of artful expression" and giving audiences "eloquent, polemical prose." Notice the slap of the word "prose" in his quote.

It's an essay that seeks to slaughter sacred cows (Edmundson's comments about the homogenizing effect of MFA programs on poetry match up with what Billy Collins said a few years back at a Skirball Center reading in West L.A.), but also proving that Mark Edmondson doesn't want to take any time looking at small presses and lesser-known print and online journals to familiarize himself with men and women that aren't Household Names in the world of poetry (a la Brendan Bernhard's article in LA WEEKLY about fourteen years earlier).

Coda: Regarding the poetic world as seen uniformly by Victor Infante, Derrick Brown and others.

For the sake of inclusion, here's a link to Victor Infante's public rifle-butting of me--as included on my Facebook page/wall: http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=10150115147426192

And now, I'll go ahead and mention some inconsistencies/behavioral quirks shared by the good, think-alike people that Victor namechecks:
1. I've been told in the past that it's not good to self-publish.  This doesn't stop Rick Lupert from putting out his own books under the Ain't Got No Press moniker (mitigating factor: Rick occasionally does anthologies like the recommended-by-me POETS HAGGADAH).

2. I am not supposed to criticize Amber Tamblyn's poetry books (apparently because she's smart, hip and successful)--but it's okay for, say, G. Murray Thomas to use his review column on Poetix.net to knock Billy Collins' recent BALLISTICS.  Yes, Murray thought Collins' work in BALLISTICS was subpar.  But it was hard not to smell the jealousy on Murray's part--Oh, why oh why doesn't my print-on-demand volume COWS ON THE FREEWAY get at least one-tenth the attention Billy Collins does?

3. I'm certainly not supposed to criticize anyone who "hasn't done anything" to me.  By that logic, if Victor Infante was an HBO executive, he'd be telling Bill Maher to stop being "mean" on REAL TIME.

And, of course, if I say anything about the self-described wonderful people of LA/LBC/OC that is not wonderful, then I'm blessed with accusations of mental illness and--in one ugly case--a false accusation that I might be a wife-beater.

I'm just puzzled that all these self-described wonderful-and-successful poets of LA/LBC/OC are so insecure that they feel the need to take me so deadly-serious that they engage in shut-him-up-no-matter-what-it-takes reactions rather than having some sense of nuanced thought and perspective about their actual place and impact in both the real and literary worlds.

When poetry reviews become more about gatekeeping than reviewing.

This is a continuation of the previous blog post--which mentioned long-time Long Beach poet/writer/ex-NEXT magazine editor G. Murray Thomas and his attempts as a reviewer to alert poets re what they SHOULD be writing to meet his standards of "depth" and "craft."

It's the eternal conundrum for a critic/reviewer: to evaluate poems in terms of the standards the poet aspires to (entertainment, profundity, mastery of form, etc.) or to take the easier path of reviewing the poetry the critic/reviewer would LIKE to see.

As I evaluate them, Murray's reviews tend to be 25% of the former and 75% of the latter.

To make a brief lapse into Ad Hominism, someone I'll refer to as Infante Terrible has caterwauled on his blog about wanting to determine what poets and poetry should "survive."

And when poets (especially those who haven't made a huge impression outside of their own cliques/scenes) decide to become gatekeepers, they seem to be desperate to make a mark on poetry in any way possible--for a few momentary opinions *with their byline) to "survive" after they leave the Earth. If that turns out to be tilted-nose disdain for self-published chapbooks or throwing spitballs at Billy Collins because he sells too many books, then so be it.

Ultimately, it's the public that makes the final decisions about the poetry that should "survive"--and it's the poet's job to carry on regardless of whatever reviews he/she receives for his/her labors.

Another piece of deathless wisdom from Tim Green of RATTLE.

"But you can't make money writing poetry. And I'm thankful for it. Our poverty keeps us pure."

That's Tim Green of RATTLE from a recent blog post of his called POETRY IS NOT A RACKET.
Mr. Green's wonderful, fragrant aroma of self-regard and poetry protectionism can be found on his blog: http://www.timothy-green.org/ And I never fail to be irritated by poets proclaiming there's artistic purity in the valleys of obscurity.

It's a given that, in an America which chooses to treat poetry as something equivalent to the foods that children are forced to eat because they're "good for you," poetry is generally not going to sell in mass quantities. And, when it does, the knives tend to come out--with Billy Collins now being a new target of literary scorn. (How much of this is jealousy and how much a referendum on Collins' continuing worth as a writer post-success may never be totally quantifiable.)

But it would be nice to see small press poetry volumes try to sell more poets' works in, say, the multiple-thousands--or at least see more poets-published-by-small-press' works available in bookstores of their hometowns (noticing, for example, that Brendan Constantine's LETTERS TO GUNS isn't easy to find in L.A. bookstores--indie or corporate).

[UPDATE 7/13/11: here's a comment from cfisher:
Tim Green also spams you if you submit to his journal. (Although to be fair, I think 99.5% of these obscure and useless journals do that now.) To me, that shows how little these journals respect their writers. But Green is quite upfront about it: he actually says that if you don't want the spam, don't submit!

Well okay then, no problem!

As for Billy Collins, I wrote to him once and never received a reply, and thought it was kind of dickish.] 

National Poetry Month is just one day away.

April is National Poetry Month--and here's a link to a YouTube video of two of my poems about poetry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh0D17w-aq8&feature=channel_page

I'm now a member of the Bad Review Club!

It's been a banner fortnight for bad reviews of artistic output. First, Bruce Springsteen took a fair amount of flak for his latest album WORKING ON A DREAM being, in some critics' viewpoints, little more than nonessential pop music with subpar lyrics. Then, Ron Rosenbaum (a critic/essayist I used to read when he still wrote for THE NEW YORK OBSERVER) weighed in on Slate.com with an angry takedown of Billy Joel...an artist who basically said good bye to pop/rock in 1993 and surfaces only occasionally to do play-the-old-songs tours either by himself or with Elton John. Rosenbaum christens Joel as "The Worst Pop Singer Ever" here: http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/

And then, it became my turn.

G. Murray Thomas, who used to publish the NEXT poetry-reviews-and-events-calendar magazine, now is a reviewer for poetix.net. Recently, he reviewed a chapbook of mine called YELLOW TREE RED SKY. The review can be found at this link, along with deserved praise for a chapbook by Pasadena's Mary Torregrossa and a peeved, he's-coasting take on Billy Collins' recent BALLISTICS: http://poetix.net/reviews.htm

This is the first time I've experienced an in-print review of a book of mine--and if Murray had given it boundless praise, I would have written a blog column about it too.

Essentially, Murray disliked the book overall, while offering some praise for a couple of poems and meant-to-be-constructive criticism (which, whether taken or discarded, should always be welcomed by reviewees).

But it seems like one particular poem in the book caused an inflammation of discomfort in Murray. The poem is called "it's not just you" and I'll reprint it here:

it’s not just you

I read the news today, oh boy
about the lucky poetry venues
that made the grade
it made me kind of sad
to know you ushered me in
ten years ago
and are now letting me and others know
about the poetry venues
that are too highfalutin
for cheap entertainers like me
I remember a lot of poets
no longer active on the scene
(or in some cases not on the scene at all)
who were mainstays ten years ago
now even if a few of them came back
they probably wouldn’t be accepted
in the new poetic order
it’s not just you that’s making things clear to me
I’ve been told to get educated
and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously
but I like being a cheap entertainer
and committing the sin of being easy to understand
so it’s time for me to go quietly
into that gentle night
reserved for sig rumanns and margaret dumonts
declaiming into microphones

about their hot new pantoums
as the audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
in approval
if it doesn’t make most hosts
and some audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
it just isn’t poetry anymore

[The poem makes a brief reference to a column Murray wrote citing favorite LA/OC poetry venues: http://poetix.net/reviews_of_venues.htm ]

Now, let's print a few excerpts from the review to examine Murray's references to this poem:
Terry McCarty is up front about his ambitions for his poetry. In “it’s not just you” he states “I like being a cheap entertainer/ and committing the sin of being easy to understand.” This would seem a pretty easy ambition to live up to.

Yes, he is easy to understand. There is not a single poem here where I wondered, for even a second, what the poem was about. (With the possible exception of “shya lebuff,’ but that’s only because I’m not up on my pop culture -- who is Shya Lebuff anyway?) That’s fine. I’m not one who considers being easy to understand a sin in poetry. In fact, I believe that the audience should be given, at the very least, an understandable entrance into a poem.

However, if a poet makes being easy to understand their ultimate goal, he or she is usually in trouble. More on that in a minute.

But in all his poems, he refuses to go very deep. His poems skim across the surfaces of his subjects. Also in “its not just you,” he writes “I’ve been told to get educated/ and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously,” an option he rejects in favor of being the aforementioned “cheap entertainer.” While it would be easy to read this as mere laziness, I prefer to take him at his word —that his ambitions like somewhere other than “well-crafted” poems. But he seems to have confused depths of meaning with craft, and rejected it as well. The result is he prevents himself from even hitting his own modest goal.


If McCarty doesn’t want to make his audiences think, I guess that’s okay, But if that is the case, I do wonder why he’s writing poetry.

Philosophical differences aside, I do like the poetry of Murray's I've read and even recommend his one sold-in-regular-bookstores-and-Amazon compilation COWS ON THE FREEWAY.

[And, for some further context as to Murray's poetry ideals, here's a rave review for Milo Martin (ex-Onyx reading host) by Murray in this column from November of last year: http://poetix.net/reviews_1108.htm]

But I do take some exception to being called lazy (even if its just an inference) and having questions put to me as to "why" I'm writing poetry.

When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven years ago, there were coffeehouse and independent bookstore readings that made room for just about everything, like a variety show: "serious" literary poetry, traditional rhyme-and-meter verse, monologues, stand-up comedy, musicians, etc. etc. And Murray seems to have cast his lot with the hosts and influential poets in LA/OC that seem to think that only "serious" poetry should be allowed with the other subsets I mentioned above actively and/or tacitly discouraged.

I remember a few years ago at the Moonday reading at Village Books in Pacific Palisades when, after reading on the open-mike, Holaday Mason (a well-known L.A. literary poet) performed her five minutes. The late Anne Silver (then a Moonday co-host) spent a minute or two copiously praising Holaday for her work--and, to me, the message was ultraclear; I was too depth-free and craft-poor for such a distinguished reading. I got Ms. Silver's message--and never returned to the reading again.

Time to say it again: for poetry to flourish--particularly at a time when there will be renewed jeers over the idea of the arts being essential in a near-Depression economy--a big tent needs to be pitched.

It's not to be expected that all poetry will be to the liking of everyone--tastemakers, professional/amateur poets or civilians who prefer merely to attend.

But at some point the "poetry community" needs to stop pushing the poetry-eugenics nonsense that poems should be nothing more than gilded creations engineered to be admired for their complexity and intricacy--sort of like building a scale model of the QUEEN MARY in a Sparkletts jug or (to steal a phrase from the late Robert Mitchum) construct a replica of the Taj Mahal from matchsticks.

Otherwise, there's going to be an increase in boring, arid, intended-more-to-impress-than-enlighten-or-even-stoop-to-entertain "craft-conscious" word art which will likely go unremembered a month from now--let alone a decade or even a century.

[UPDATE 2/4/09: Here's an example of what I described in the last paragraph. One of Robert Pinsky's weekly poetry picks for SLATE: http://www.slate.com/id/2210318/]