Bad Poetry Is Good

Pushkin recites. A painting by the great Repin

June 3, 2012

Only I understand my own poetry.

If I read another poet

and get to the end of the poem

without being bored,

that makes her

a good poet.  People tell me that William Butler Yeats

was a great poet but I'll be damned if I understand him.

There are poets who play games with words

in such a way that the poetry bends the wind so that it ties knots in itself.

Listeners are embarrassed at their lack of comprehension.

So they applaud, to hide their gullibility, and the poet goes on to become a great poet with audiences at colleges and books on shelves at stores.

Another kind of poet writes in plain English                    

but, god help us, the poems rhyme, or they
use words like Wind, or Clouds, or Geese,
or Mountains.

For god's sake write in plain English. Or French.  

Or Serbo-Croatian. 

Let's start again.

I love MY poems.  I love Pablo Neruda's poems, just because I do.

e.e. cummings?  Hey, come on.  What a goofball.  

And Bukowsky; that's as close to real as poetry ever gets.

Mary Oliver is obviously wise;

Wise poets fill me with envy.  I'd like to be wise and not just barking mad.

I don't read very much poetry.  There's such a to-do over it, but poets rarely get paid. 
Rich poets are always terrible.  It isn't about the poetry.  It's about the poet.  We need poets,

badly, desperately.  But we don't need poetry at all.  So I guess the best thing

is to be a poet who doesn't write. 

Just don't tell anyone about me.