Tuesday, February 17, 2004

 

For some reason, for a long time now, I've wanted to write a poem called "And Then I Ate Your Grandmother." I think I got that phrase, or the basis for it, from my sister. When you're going on and on about something she doesn't want to hear, she interrupts you and says, "and then I ate it." It's supposed to be the coup-de-grace, a wall of a sentence, finishing off your interminable rambling. A charm against the loquacious varieties of nonsense. And when I read academic arguments on poetry, it's sure not to be long before I think to myself: "And then I ate your grandmother."

Craig Hill's Poetry Scorecard has posted the first matchup in what's meant to be a contest of sorts between School of Quietude and Post-Avant poetry. I hate both those labels. The first is intentionally demeaning, if sometimes accurate, and the latter undefinably pretentious without the saving grace of being funny. If the Post-Avant were called "The Quiklions" or "Milkshakerites," or something, I could accept it. And then there's the poems. Poem one suffers not from quietude so much as laziness: it spells itself right out there for you; there's nothing for the reader to grasp. I like the second one better, great attention to sound, but it's light on meaning . . . a tone poem on time that serves mostly as a showcase for noises. Can't sense and aesthetics blend harmoniously?

Am I being mean? But, oh ho, I am mean. I eat tarantulas with tabasco sauce for breakfast and my hobby is to chew tenpenny nails into diabolical symbols and then spit them out onto highways where they pop tires. Mean.

But I digress. Schools. Movements. These kind of definitional tags are further annoying to me because of this new project of sending things off for publication. I don't know if I'm "post-avant" enough for any of the hip journals, or quiescent enough for the staid ones. I wish they had some service like the handwriting analysis they advertise in the back of Parade Magazine, wherein you send in a sample and in three weeks a letter comes back from some wacky savant who has peered into the secrets of your double-looped "O"s and so revealed your personality to you.

But why buy into that? Must I accept that, in order to write, you have to parcel yourself out into some pre-ordained box and concentrate on fulfilling your weenie little niche? I've got frigging rhyming poems about sea captains jostling with tongue-in-cheek discourses on Marrianne Moore's shopping habits and the exploits of a superhero cowgirl who may or may not be an allegorical representation of an abstract noun. And a rant against Huey Lewis and the News.

What label could I put on that?

Eh. Enough ranting from grumpy me. I just have to suck it up and go write cover letters. It makes me feel like Oliver petitioning for more gruel. "Please sir, would you accept this poem?"

Would you? I'll be your best friend. Aw, c'mon....*sigh*

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

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