Praises for the Insect and Mammalian Dead
I had a nice day today.
No one cursed me.
No one asked me odd questions.
I went to work a bit late.
I checked my mail and answered some of my correspondents
and then settled back to see what else might happen.
It was cold today.
Not as cold as yesterday but
I have the feeling it will be colder tomorrow.
My friend Jane’s boyfriend died suddenly from liver disease.
This should not have been a shock but it was.
To her.
To his children
Everyone is angry at everyone else at a man who lived life
on his terms and died on his terms and not the way you’re expected
to die.
It will be cold thank God for several more months.
Men will stumble up to me on 9th avenue and ask for money.
They will say it is for food.
Perhaps it is.
People will call me to solve difficult problems involving
mice and rats and other pests.
They will be arrogant and they will be willing but they will be
desperate.
They will be asking me for answers that aren’t simple.
I will fail in my explanations.
I will offer biological and social explanations but in their fear,
in their worry, they will dismiss them.
To the people that I talk to everything I say is stupid.
Like everything we say to a lover we think is leaving.
Don’t go.
Don’t I do this or don’t I do that.
Didn’t I buy you this or didn’t I comfort you then.
It’s all stupid.
My consolation and explanations are all hollow.
Real.
But hollow.
You have mice. You have them because you’re a human in a densely
populated region of the world populated by a rich mess of other humans.
Not everyone gives a shit about mice like you do.
Not everyone lies awake worrying about the bedbugs biting.
Some of them come from places where the bedbugs are like flies.
Some of them come from places where if you raise up your head
someone else will lop it off.
Cherish your mice, your rats, your roaches, your bedbugs!
Love them as you love your sons and daughters.
They are your children!
They live with you as much as you with them.
They huddle in little clutches terrified of destruction and they don’t even
know about terrorists or nuclear devastation or satellites.
The little bugs and mice are the meek.
They wait patient under your stove for your castoff crumbs.
For your drops of water.
For the condensate on your pipes.
They are your poorest children.
They have no other home but yours.
You wretched misers of capital.
You own your apartments!
You own your lawns!
You own your skin and your hair and your sons and daughters!
But all of you muddle under the same dull January sky.
Each of you struggles for a bit of food, a spot of conversation,
the day your boss says, oh, what a nice idea.
This is the time to consider what will come.
Spring and rebirth and a thousand mice and cockroaches.
Ants and termites and love.
You’ll strut down the avenue and duck into little cafes and they’ll
feed off your leavings happy as pets.
They are your children.
They will grow strong and happy and democratic.
They will feed at the common table.
They will join with the bacteria and the viruses and the multitude of plagues
to usher us into the world of paradise.
Say all power and all praises to our Children!
Grant them health and joy!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Poets and Poetry
Okay, I said I'd write about why you shouldn't listen to poets talking about how they write. Here's why. They're lying. Well, maybe not lying, but making it up. They're talking about the act after the fact. Someone asks them how they do what they do and they come up with an answer. Whenever someone asks you a question you're supposed to answer and poets are always flattered that anyone asks them anything so they answer.
But really, it's all postscript. While they're writing they have no clue. They're writing. Later, they're editing but that's not writing it's just part of making shit look right. How and why they choose what they choose is locked inside them in secret places they may not even know about.
It's always good to hear poems in process. It's always good to hear poets read their work and see how it changes and watch the moves they make and the changes they make but why they made them and when aren't things set in stone. It's true when you're learning how to write people help you through this process. Or hector you through it. Or badger you. But once you understand how to put a poem together you just put it together. Oh, you might reach out to people that know your work and ask their opinions but your responses to that are largely instinctual and based on past responses.
I know I write something and if I think it's good but not done I'll send it to people I trust for comments. They say stuff. Sometimes I just do everything they say. Sometimes I do part of what they say. But honestly I never think much about the reasons. The poem has a place and a voice. I say it. There's grammar and structure and words and stuff but everything else is me and my cluttered world and I'm never entirely sure exactly what I intended.
But when I'm done and you ask me how and why I did what I did I'll give you an answer but it's a mishmash of reality. It's more like asking someone who just woke from a dream asking them the structure of the dream. To them it makes perfect sense but as they become more aware, more part of the world the structure disintegrates and they're left with just the dream. Odd and compelling but only a dream.
Last night I dreamed I was at a poetry/food festival. We were at a pre festival meeting of the faculty lying on surfboards in a lake. The leader of the faculty, Howard Levy, was asking for our thoughts on where the festival should go and I had a million ideas. After all, what a great marketing concept: The Food Network meets Longfellow. I sort of woke from the dream and sank into a new dream where Howard had just recently passed away. Apparently he'd been gravely ill throughout the entire process. We were all stunned. A great loss.
Then I was with my friends Danny and Eliot talking about the death of a poet from the East Village. He was a lousy poet with a bohemian schtick that sustained a meager career in a marginalized world. I told them who gives a fuck. He was a nice guy but his work sucked. They were appalled. I said, come on, this guy wasn't Bukowski! He was wasn't Jack Micheline! He was a near psychotic street person that just showed up week after week year after year reading the same scribbled verses on index cards to anyone that would listen and none of them had anything to recommend them. I said a poet should be someone who builds something real and solid and they said oh yeah, what about Frank Lloyd Wright! And I said Falling Water was a shitty building that is falling down and was leaky and nearly uninhabitable and they were really angry at me. I realized I'd chosen a lousy metaphor and was doing everything that I could to extricate myself from my own trap. They just got madder and madder at me for my high hattedness.
You could at this point, mention Moondog or Antler or even Hal Sirowitz as poets who transcend their schtick and take it to a place that is glorious. You could say, Jack you bourgeois idiot! You'd be right.
It was all just a dream. But it did get me to thinking about a cruise theme idea: Poets & Food & Booze. Travel the Caribbean with Mario Batali, Pedro Pietri, and shit loads of great wine. It might not generate any great poems but everyone would eat better than they usually do and they'd be in a better climate and the booze would be free!
One can dream.
But really, it's all postscript. While they're writing they have no clue. They're writing. Later, they're editing but that's not writing it's just part of making shit look right. How and why they choose what they choose is locked inside them in secret places they may not even know about.
It's always good to hear poems in process. It's always good to hear poets read their work and see how it changes and watch the moves they make and the changes they make but why they made them and when aren't things set in stone. It's true when you're learning how to write people help you through this process. Or hector you through it. Or badger you. But once you understand how to put a poem together you just put it together. Oh, you might reach out to people that know your work and ask their opinions but your responses to that are largely instinctual and based on past responses.
I know I write something and if I think it's good but not done I'll send it to people I trust for comments. They say stuff. Sometimes I just do everything they say. Sometimes I do part of what they say. But honestly I never think much about the reasons. The poem has a place and a voice. I say it. There's grammar and structure and words and stuff but everything else is me and my cluttered world and I'm never entirely sure exactly what I intended.
But when I'm done and you ask me how and why I did what I did I'll give you an answer but it's a mishmash of reality. It's more like asking someone who just woke from a dream asking them the structure of the dream. To them it makes perfect sense but as they become more aware, more part of the world the structure disintegrates and they're left with just the dream. Odd and compelling but only a dream.
Last night I dreamed I was at a poetry/food festival. We were at a pre festival meeting of the faculty lying on surfboards in a lake. The leader of the faculty, Howard Levy, was asking for our thoughts on where the festival should go and I had a million ideas. After all, what a great marketing concept: The Food Network meets Longfellow. I sort of woke from the dream and sank into a new dream where Howard had just recently passed away. Apparently he'd been gravely ill throughout the entire process. We were all stunned. A great loss.
Then I was with my friends Danny and Eliot talking about the death of a poet from the East Village. He was a lousy poet with a bohemian schtick that sustained a meager career in a marginalized world. I told them who gives a fuck. He was a nice guy but his work sucked. They were appalled. I said, come on, this guy wasn't Bukowski! He was wasn't Jack Micheline! He was a near psychotic street person that just showed up week after week year after year reading the same scribbled verses on index cards to anyone that would listen and none of them had anything to recommend them. I said a poet should be someone who builds something real and solid and they said oh yeah, what about Frank Lloyd Wright! And I said Falling Water was a shitty building that is falling down and was leaky and nearly uninhabitable and they were really angry at me. I realized I'd chosen a lousy metaphor and was doing everything that I could to extricate myself from my own trap. They just got madder and madder at me for my high hattedness.
You could at this point, mention Moondog or Antler or even Hal Sirowitz as poets who transcend their schtick and take it to a place that is glorious. You could say, Jack you bourgeois idiot! You'd be right.
It was all just a dream. But it did get me to thinking about a cruise theme idea: Poets & Food & Booze. Travel the Caribbean with Mario Batali, Pedro Pietri, and shit loads of great wine. It might not generate any great poems but everyone would eat better than they usually do and they'd be in a better climate and the booze would be free!
One can dream.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Me and Rats
Some of you know I worked once upon a time on rat farm. Specifically I worked at West Jersey Biological Supply for Dewey Parker, my friend Suzy's dad. Dewey's rat farm was a supply house for high schools, colleges, and research facilities in the Northeast. He raised white lab rats primarily. He once told me they were pedigreed white rats...but more about that later. He also did some toxicology testing for the beauty products industry testing shampoos, etc on live rabbits and brokered preserved animal parts for use by classes in various schools (sharks, lambs eyes, and on and on). Periodically he'd have hamsters or goats but mostly it was white rats and mice.
I got the job because Ralph Leeds quit. My friend Chuck Holstein was working there and asked Mr. Parker if I could have the job. Dewey had me come to the house and we went out to the building with the rats. It smelled mostly of sawdust, sanitizing agent, and a vague urine scent. While he was discussing my duties a woman and her young son walked in with a rat in a cage. The boys pet. It was sick and they took it to Dewey to see what he could do. He said it was probably going to die but if they'd like he'd give it a safe place to live, a clean cage, food, water and comfort till the end. Followed by a dignified burial. They thanked him and left Dewey, me, and the rat behind. I looked out the window from the second floor and saw them about to get in their car. Just then Dewey pulled the rat out of the cage by it's tail, spun it several times and whacked it on the end of table. Then he tossed it in the trash. Well, that's done, he said. That was my first day on the job.
I lasted about a month. It turns out I was allergic to the hay the rabbits bedded down in and got asthma and had to quit but I learned a great deal about rats and work.
Anyway, you probably all know I'm an exteminator now. I send people out to kill rats, though usually not as directly as Dewey and I did back in the day. I've also written recently about my love for Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old House". I'd forgotten it's long section on rats. It's of a piece with Robert Sullivan's book "Rats" and in many ways takes place in the same byways of old Manhattan. I was interviewed by Kaz Janowski of BBC Radio for a companion piece on the book. I expounded over a couple pints of beer about rats and found myself on the radio at length. You can still listen to my ramblings if you google my name and rats and the bbc.
Finally to bring this little piece to a merciful ending you know I recently visited the Mutter Museum. While there I noted it was funded by the Wistar Institute. I went back and reread "Rats" and noted that the great rat catcher of London, Jack Black, had bred a highly specialized breed of albino white rats and sold them for quite a pretty penny to the Wistar Institute. The Mutter Museum is associated with the Wistar Institute. I called my friend Suzy on the phone and asked her for Dewey's phone number in Nevada. She asked, why? and when I said I needed to know what kind of rats he bred, she said Wistar, he bred Wistar rats.
I've probably done this story before but in less detail. What I'm trying to talk about is the long trail of coincidence and mystery that life makes as it moves along. Where to begin? My name is Jack. I kill rats. I write about rats. I killed the white rat offspring of history's greatest rat catcher. His name was Jack. I was interviewed by the BBC and knew of none of this except how to kill rats. Mr. Mitchell gives less than a line to laboratory rats, doesn't even know they're descended from royalty (Jack Black was the Queen's rat catcher!). Mr. Sullivan knows more but only cares about the ones in his alley. I am not afraid of rats. They're fairly easy to kill. I'm fairly easy to kill. Think about it...rat spelled backward is tar...which means nothing.
But all together it's a great, rich stew on a cold, snowy day. I suggest you pick up a copy of "Rats" or "Up in the Old House", cook up some stew, settle down with a pint of good stout and read about New Yorks most unheralded denizens. I'm going to.
On tap for tomorrow: Why we shouldn't listen to poets talking about poetry
I got the job because Ralph Leeds quit. My friend Chuck Holstein was working there and asked Mr. Parker if I could have the job. Dewey had me come to the house and we went out to the building with the rats. It smelled mostly of sawdust, sanitizing agent, and a vague urine scent. While he was discussing my duties a woman and her young son walked in with a rat in a cage. The boys pet. It was sick and they took it to Dewey to see what he could do. He said it was probably going to die but if they'd like he'd give it a safe place to live, a clean cage, food, water and comfort till the end. Followed by a dignified burial. They thanked him and left Dewey, me, and the rat behind. I looked out the window from the second floor and saw them about to get in their car. Just then Dewey pulled the rat out of the cage by it's tail, spun it several times and whacked it on the end of table. Then he tossed it in the trash. Well, that's done, he said. That was my first day on the job.
I lasted about a month. It turns out I was allergic to the hay the rabbits bedded down in and got asthma and had to quit but I learned a great deal about rats and work.
Anyway, you probably all know I'm an exteminator now. I send people out to kill rats, though usually not as directly as Dewey and I did back in the day. I've also written recently about my love for Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old House". I'd forgotten it's long section on rats. It's of a piece with Robert Sullivan's book "Rats" and in many ways takes place in the same byways of old Manhattan. I was interviewed by Kaz Janowski of BBC Radio for a companion piece on the book. I expounded over a couple pints of beer about rats and found myself on the radio at length. You can still listen to my ramblings if you google my name and rats and the bbc.
Finally to bring this little piece to a merciful ending you know I recently visited the Mutter Museum. While there I noted it was funded by the Wistar Institute. I went back and reread "Rats" and noted that the great rat catcher of London, Jack Black, had bred a highly specialized breed of albino white rats and sold them for quite a pretty penny to the Wistar Institute. The Mutter Museum is associated with the Wistar Institute. I called my friend Suzy on the phone and asked her for Dewey's phone number in Nevada. She asked, why? and when I said I needed to know what kind of rats he bred, she said Wistar, he bred Wistar rats.
I've probably done this story before but in less detail. What I'm trying to talk about is the long trail of coincidence and mystery that life makes as it moves along. Where to begin? My name is Jack. I kill rats. I write about rats. I killed the white rat offspring of history's greatest rat catcher. His name was Jack. I was interviewed by the BBC and knew of none of this except how to kill rats. Mr. Mitchell gives less than a line to laboratory rats, doesn't even know they're descended from royalty (Jack Black was the Queen's rat catcher!). Mr. Sullivan knows more but only cares about the ones in his alley. I am not afraid of rats. They're fairly easy to kill. I'm fairly easy to kill. Think about it...rat spelled backward is tar...which means nothing.
But all together it's a great, rich stew on a cold, snowy day. I suggest you pick up a copy of "Rats" or "Up in the Old House", cook up some stew, settle down with a pint of good stout and read about New Yorks most unheralded denizens. I'm going to.
On tap for tomorrow: Why we shouldn't listen to poets talking about poetry
Monday, January 15, 2007
Up In The Old House
I'm reading "Up in the Old House" for what must be the 30th time. I'm reading the parts about Old Man Flood and the Fulton Street Market. My company did pest control in the market for decades. I could never figure out what we did because at 8am they pulled up stakes and moved on. What exactly were we doing. Anyway, I like Old Man Flood and the parts about him make me want to eat oysters, which I hate. But they reminded me of old men and women I knew years ago in New Brunswick. They were old and drank too much (which is putting it mildly) and they were like Mr. Flood without any passion or joy or words.
Here is a poem I just wrote about my friend Tommy, Bang Bang, Barrowman and New Brunswick, circa 1982.
Tommy Barrowman
I meet other people in bars beside Mario.
Tommy Barrowman for instance.
Tommy was born to a well bred family in Skillman
His sister endowed a library in her will.
Tommy was a drunk.
He was small and he was incontinent.
He had spent his youth traveling the world.
Merchant Marine.
One of the other men at the bar told me he and Tommy used to off load
vessels in Persia.
Tommy, Thomas, Tom Barrowman called himself Bang bang.
He’d say, “I’m Bang Bang Tommy Barrowman
what do you think about that”
He’d come into the bar off the short bus from the senior lunch program.
At the beginning of the month he and his friends drank like kings.
At the end of the month they drank like bums.
Really, all month long they drank the same.
Tommy listened to late night talk shows.
Tommy pissed and shit in his pants.
Tommy lived on the top floor of an SRO.
Tommy was blind and diabetic and a worthless hunk of shit.
Tommy said, “I’m Bang Bang Tommy Barrowman, what do you think of that”
Tommy’s friend Ora Nixon was a fat giant drunken woman.
She’d come into the bar shortly after Tommy.
Her family had been rich as well.
There is a part of Edison NJ called Nixon.
In the 20’s or 40’s it blew up in a horrible munitions accident.
Or sabotage.
Ora sabotaged the Nixon name in her own way.
So there we all are at the bar.
Tommy and Ora and me.
Tommy is banging his shot glass and talking and talking.
Ora is flirting with the bartender.
Which is scary because she shit in her pants and she
weighs easily 300 pounds.
I’m watching the rich scions of the 30’s wasting their lives
in an old mans bar in New Brunswick New Jersey.
I’d ask them to tell me a story but I know they can’t.
They don’t remember shit about Persia or Nixon.
They were young once and angry and all that youth and anger
brought them here.
Tommy writes me poems.
They all rhyme.
None of them make any sense.
Well, that's the poem. I used to have Tommy's poems but I think they're all gone. Like me or you in a few years.
Here is a poem I just wrote about my friend Tommy, Bang Bang, Barrowman and New Brunswick, circa 1982.
Tommy Barrowman
I meet other people in bars beside Mario.
Tommy Barrowman for instance.
Tommy was born to a well bred family in Skillman
His sister endowed a library in her will.
Tommy was a drunk.
He was small and he was incontinent.
He had spent his youth traveling the world.
Merchant Marine.
One of the other men at the bar told me he and Tommy used to off load
vessels in Persia.
Tommy, Thomas, Tom Barrowman called himself Bang bang.
He’d say, “I’m Bang Bang Tommy Barrowman
what do you think about that”
He’d come into the bar off the short bus from the senior lunch program.
At the beginning of the month he and his friends drank like kings.
At the end of the month they drank like bums.
Really, all month long they drank the same.
Tommy listened to late night talk shows.
Tommy pissed and shit in his pants.
Tommy lived on the top floor of an SRO.
Tommy was blind and diabetic and a worthless hunk of shit.
Tommy said, “I’m Bang Bang Tommy Barrowman, what do you think of that”
Tommy’s friend Ora Nixon was a fat giant drunken woman.
She’d come into the bar shortly after Tommy.
Her family had been rich as well.
There is a part of Edison NJ called Nixon.
In the 20’s or 40’s it blew up in a horrible munitions accident.
Or sabotage.
Ora sabotaged the Nixon name in her own way.
So there we all are at the bar.
Tommy and Ora and me.
Tommy is banging his shot glass and talking and talking.
Ora is flirting with the bartender.
Which is scary because she shit in her pants and she
weighs easily 300 pounds.
I’m watching the rich scions of the 30’s wasting their lives
in an old mans bar in New Brunswick New Jersey.
I’d ask them to tell me a story but I know they can’t.
They don’t remember shit about Persia or Nixon.
They were young once and angry and all that youth and anger
brought them here.
Tommy writes me poems.
They all rhyme.
None of them make any sense.
Well, that's the poem. I used to have Tommy's poems but I think they're all gone. Like me or you in a few years.
Fun Being Me & Stuff
Well today it is a little fun being me. On Friday my friend Barry Seiler sent me a note congratulating me on having "Fun Being Me" picked by Bob Holman on About.com as one of the years ten best books of poems. I'm not usually comfortable with bragging but this kind of made me feel very, very good. Here's what Bob said about the book:
7) Fun Being Me: Poems, by Jack Wiler
(CavanKerry Press, Ltd., 2006) The joke, of course, is that Jack Wiler thinks his life is not fun so he invites the reader to have fun. The fun is no irony. It is the glint of real that sparks every line in his new book, in his face, in his decision to live it straight, not fancy. Wiler is one of our most underrated poets, and if you haven’t read him yet, here you go. In this book he even broaches his time with AIDS, a topic till now verboten for him. The bleakness, the searing truth of it, stops you cold. But, as he says about his brother (us) in “The Taste of Beer in Late Fall,” “He needs to know. / I need to tell.”
And here's a link to the page so you can see all the other books he liked and hopefully buy one or two.
http://poetry.about.com/od/poetrybooks/tp/bestbooks2006.htm
We all need the dough and all of us need the shot in the arm. So thanks to Bob for his kind words and for honoring the work. I'm deeply grateful and honored. Thanks also to About.com for even having a page and place for poetry.
Hopefully now I'll write more poems to justify this hype:)
7) Fun Being Me: Poems, by Jack Wiler
(CavanKerry Press, Ltd., 2006) The joke, of course, is that Jack Wiler thinks his life is not fun so he invites the reader to have fun. The fun is no irony. It is the glint of real that sparks every line in his new book, in his face, in his decision to live it straight, not fancy. Wiler is one of our most underrated poets, and if you haven’t read him yet, here you go. In this book he even broaches his time with AIDS, a topic till now verboten for him. The bleakness, the searing truth of it, stops you cold. But, as he says about his brother (us) in “The Taste of Beer in Late Fall,” “He needs to know. / I need to tell.”
And here's a link to the page so you can see all the other books he liked and hopefully buy one or two.
http://poetry.about.com/od/poetrybooks/tp/bestbooks2006.htm
We all need the dough and all of us need the shot in the arm. So thanks to Bob for his kind words and for honoring the work. I'm deeply grateful and honored. Thanks also to About.com for even having a page and place for poetry.
Hopefully now I'll write more poems to justify this hype:)
Sunday, January 14, 2007
No Fuck the Eagles
Well the Saints were a hungry dynamic team. They kicked the Eagles up and down the field. It's a sad day in Philly.
Ah well, there's always next year.
At least now I have a team to root for on the way to the Super Bowl.
Go Saints!
No thoughts on poetry today. Johanna's party ended at 4:20am. I got up walked the dogs and now am going back to bed.
Sleep tight America, don't let the bedbugs bite!
Ah well, there's always next year.
At least now I have a team to root for on the way to the Super Bowl.
Go Saints!
No thoughts on poetry today. Johanna's party ended at 4:20am. I got up walked the dogs and now am going back to bed.
Sleep tight America, don't let the bedbugs bite!
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Eagles
This blog was originally designed for me to talk about the Eagles in real time during games.
It had nothing to do with poetry.
Right now is Johanna's birthday party so my house is filled with transexuals and gayboys who could care less about football but it's half time and the Eagles are up by 1.
My brother Ted is probably almost having a coronary.
Mick could care less.
It's a tough match up. The Saints are the most dynamic team in the NFl and have a lot of heart.
Fuck them.
Go Eagles.
More to come....
It had nothing to do with poetry.
Right now is Johanna's birthday party so my house is filled with transexuals and gayboys who could care less about football but it's half time and the Eagles are up by 1.
My brother Ted is probably almost having a coronary.
Mick could care less.
It's a tough match up. The Saints are the most dynamic team in the NFl and have a lot of heart.
Fuck them.
Go Eagles.
More to come....
Thursday, January 11, 2007
On Being a Poet
Maybe some of you have the same problem I have. What does it mean to be a poet in 2007? Of course, it's the same dumb question we probably had in 1978 but I'd like to think about it a little. Poets are really marginalized nincompoops. Even the best of the them or the most famous dwell in a world that most normal people could care less about. We spend our time writing poems that we hope will be important, or change peoples minds or whatever the fuck each of us thinks poetry can do but the simple fact is most people in the US of A could give a rats ass about poetry.
They read it in high school cuz they had to. Maybe they wrote some poetry when they were young and full of passion but then they got jobs and went to work and poetry receded into the background. Some of us continue to write and sweat shit about readings or getting our ditties published or our books or whether we're any good at all. We get almost zero feedback except in small groups from other nincompoops just like ourselves.
So why do we do it? We may be the most marginalized art form in America outside of quilting but at least quilts cost a bunch of dough.
So what should this shit do? Why do we write it? What does it matter if it's good or bad or indifferent? Why go to grad school or take workshops or have conferences with teachers of poetry? What do we want to happen next? I have book of poetry I'm proud of but quite honestly it might as well be a math textbook written in 1958. With the exception that at least a bunch of kids in 1958 had to read the math textbook.
So?
We all admire or find work we find of value. It makes us feel in a way that no other art form makes us feel. It is exciting and vibrant and real but no one and I repeat no one but us reads it. It's like being a jazz musician in a country where no one listens to music.
I think we all want to change this. I look at efforts like the Dodge Festival or the National Book Foundation or the thousands of websites devoted to poetry or the even more numerous university and small presses committed to the art and I see a real desire by poets to be heard and read but it seems to be read and heard only by other poets.
I read my poetry out loud and the only people in the audience are other poets waiting to read in the open. This sucks.
Poetry can be more. I'd like to see more poets more actively involved in making poetry a living art form. That doesn't mean just hip hop for the kids or a festival or what ever the fuck people come up with. It means a conscientious effort by poets to encourage people to hear and read good writing. This kind of means submerging your own desires for some marginal fame to a greater goal.
I think people love poetry when they hear it out loud. I think they like poetry when it's clear and part of their lives. I think poetry got involved in an argument back in the 30's about the bourgeousie and the common people and that it lost its way. I think that for a couple minutes in the sixties and seventies it seemed poised to be a real art form again but sank under the weight of ego.
Poets don't always give a fuck about anything but themselves. This is nonsense. Who cares about your stupid problems or your ride to work or your backyard. Quite honestly, who really thinks that a poem ranting about George Bush is going to have more effect than organizing a real political movement against his imperial presidency? Poetry can galvanize societies that are oppressed and marginalized but in the USof A that is not the case for the bulk of the poets going for MFA's. They are comfortable middle class folks talking about their comfortable middle class political opinions. Do that at the polls. Register to vote. Vote often. Go to town hall.
Your poems should be real and true and dare I say it? Engaging. Like a novel. Like a great painting or movie. Find a way to make poetry part of regular life. Read in your town at the local library. Read poems you didn't write but that you love. Encourage people to read work you love. Don't read your work out loud unless it's good or unless you're in an arena where that's the point. Don't bore people. Leave them wanting more. Be a savant. Be a prophet. Be a savior. Be a sinner. But please don't be dull and pedestrian.
Think of Larkin's poem about his parents. Any chump on the planet can appreciate that. He's bare and naked and angry but anyone can get what he's talking about. "Whose woods these are I think I know"...everybody in New Hampshire or Vermont or Maine knew just what the fuck Frost was talking about. He wasn't talking down to people or lecturing them or hectoring them. He was giving them a place of their own.
Well, that's it for tonight.
Here's one more from Mario
Mario Discusses the Roots of Information
I’ve been in the bar for several hours.
It’s late afternoon, mid-winter.
The streets are slush filled.
The sidewalks are mountains of blackened snow run through with dog shit,
old banana peels, tissues, and slack, used condoms.
Some ugly, arctic decay.
Mario comes in.
As usual I’m not expecting him.
I smell his Pall Mall before I hear him.
Mario Infirme says, “Don’t shit where you eat”.
I say, “huh?”
I say, “I’d never shit where I eat.”
He says, “everyone says they don’t but everybody does.”
He says, “I know because I spend days sifting through their shit.
Reading it like turgid tea leaves.
Breathing deep, clearing the mind, till I can understand its secrets.
Because everybody’s business is my business…our business; as it should be.
He says that everyone’s shit is a little different but in the end,
shit is shit.”
“Like you,” he says.
“That broad at the blood bank in ’79 or your cleaning lady in ’88.
You might not shit where you eat now but you did once upon a time.
You will again.”
“Your shit is a river that runs to your heart.
Once I read your shit I know your heart.
Once I know your heart I know you.
Once I know you I own you.
Ask Hoover.
Ask Kennedy .
Ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Ask your brother.
Ask your priest.
Ask the guy selling dirty kebabs on the corner.
Ask that fool.
Ask the first Bush or the second.
Nobody’s shit doesn’t stink.
That family has shit that reeks to heaven but just because it reeks
doesn’t mean it can’t have purpose.
That’s my job.
Making something out of it.
I’ve watched men shit their pants just listening while I told them.
It’s a gift.
Telling men stories about their own shit.
You should try it once in a while.”
He stubs out his cigarette, drains his whiskey, and walks like a ghost into the twilight.
Hope you like it. Sleep tight. Pray for our boys on all the shores they guard. Pray for your family and friends. Enjoy this life you've been given...it will end soon enough:)
They read it in high school cuz they had to. Maybe they wrote some poetry when they were young and full of passion but then they got jobs and went to work and poetry receded into the background. Some of us continue to write and sweat shit about readings or getting our ditties published or our books or whether we're any good at all. We get almost zero feedback except in small groups from other nincompoops just like ourselves.
So why do we do it? We may be the most marginalized art form in America outside of quilting but at least quilts cost a bunch of dough.
So what should this shit do? Why do we write it? What does it matter if it's good or bad or indifferent? Why go to grad school or take workshops or have conferences with teachers of poetry? What do we want to happen next? I have book of poetry I'm proud of but quite honestly it might as well be a math textbook written in 1958. With the exception that at least a bunch of kids in 1958 had to read the math textbook.
So?
We all admire or find work we find of value. It makes us feel in a way that no other art form makes us feel. It is exciting and vibrant and real but no one and I repeat no one but us reads it. It's like being a jazz musician in a country where no one listens to music.
I think we all want to change this. I look at efforts like the Dodge Festival or the National Book Foundation or the thousands of websites devoted to poetry or the even more numerous university and small presses committed to the art and I see a real desire by poets to be heard and read but it seems to be read and heard only by other poets.
I read my poetry out loud and the only people in the audience are other poets waiting to read in the open. This sucks.
Poetry can be more. I'd like to see more poets more actively involved in making poetry a living art form. That doesn't mean just hip hop for the kids or a festival or what ever the fuck people come up with. It means a conscientious effort by poets to encourage people to hear and read good writing. This kind of means submerging your own desires for some marginal fame to a greater goal.
I think people love poetry when they hear it out loud. I think they like poetry when it's clear and part of their lives. I think poetry got involved in an argument back in the 30's about the bourgeousie and the common people and that it lost its way. I think that for a couple minutes in the sixties and seventies it seemed poised to be a real art form again but sank under the weight of ego.
Poets don't always give a fuck about anything but themselves. This is nonsense. Who cares about your stupid problems or your ride to work or your backyard. Quite honestly, who really thinks that a poem ranting about George Bush is going to have more effect than organizing a real political movement against his imperial presidency? Poetry can galvanize societies that are oppressed and marginalized but in the USof A that is not the case for the bulk of the poets going for MFA's. They are comfortable middle class folks talking about their comfortable middle class political opinions. Do that at the polls. Register to vote. Vote often. Go to town hall.
Your poems should be real and true and dare I say it? Engaging. Like a novel. Like a great painting or movie. Find a way to make poetry part of regular life. Read in your town at the local library. Read poems you didn't write but that you love. Encourage people to read work you love. Don't read your work out loud unless it's good or unless you're in an arena where that's the point. Don't bore people. Leave them wanting more. Be a savant. Be a prophet. Be a savior. Be a sinner. But please don't be dull and pedestrian.
Think of Larkin's poem about his parents. Any chump on the planet can appreciate that. He's bare and naked and angry but anyone can get what he's talking about. "Whose woods these are I think I know"...everybody in New Hampshire or Vermont or Maine knew just what the fuck Frost was talking about. He wasn't talking down to people or lecturing them or hectoring them. He was giving them a place of their own.
Well, that's it for tonight.
Here's one more from Mario
Mario Discusses the Roots of Information
I’ve been in the bar for several hours.
It’s late afternoon, mid-winter.
The streets are slush filled.
The sidewalks are mountains of blackened snow run through with dog shit,
old banana peels, tissues, and slack, used condoms.
Some ugly, arctic decay.
Mario comes in.
As usual I’m not expecting him.
I smell his Pall Mall before I hear him.
Mario Infirme says, “Don’t shit where you eat”.
I say, “huh?”
I say, “I’d never shit where I eat.”
He says, “everyone says they don’t but everybody does.”
He says, “I know because I spend days sifting through their shit.
Reading it like turgid tea leaves.
Breathing deep, clearing the mind, till I can understand its secrets.
Because everybody’s business is my business…our business; as it should be.
He says that everyone’s shit is a little different but in the end,
shit is shit.”
“Like you,” he says.
“That broad at the blood bank in ’79 or your cleaning lady in ’88.
You might not shit where you eat now but you did once upon a time.
You will again.”
“Your shit is a river that runs to your heart.
Once I read your shit I know your heart.
Once I know your heart I know you.
Once I know you I own you.
Ask Hoover.
Ask Kennedy .
Ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Ask your brother.
Ask your priest.
Ask the guy selling dirty kebabs on the corner.
Ask that fool.
Ask the first Bush or the second.
Nobody’s shit doesn’t stink.
That family has shit that reeks to heaven but just because it reeks
doesn’t mean it can’t have purpose.
That’s my job.
Making something out of it.
I’ve watched men shit their pants just listening while I told them.
It’s a gift.
Telling men stories about their own shit.
You should try it once in a while.”
He stubs out his cigarette, drains his whiskey, and walks like a ghost into the twilight.
Hope you like it. Sleep tight. Pray for our boys on all the shores they guard. Pray for your family and friends. Enjoy this life you've been given...it will end soon enough:)
Monday, January 08, 2007
The Plight of Writers
It's the new year and everything is sort of back to normal. Luis is normal. Willa is normal. Peter is slightly perverted. We've hired two men who seem decent and hard working. Bob is pleasant and thoughtful and the customers are relatively quiet. In the land of poetry I did my time at the New Years Day gig and now am on a hiatus till February when the poetry mill kicks in again. But at least now I have a good car to drive to gigs in and a book and even new poems.
Today I went a googling and found that Bob Holman on his about.com poetry space had made mention of my book in his summary of poetry in 2006. I was flattered and delighted. Here is what Bob said:
"The joke, of course, is that Jack Wiler thinks his life is not fun so he invites the reader to have fun, Fun Being Me (CavanKerry). The fun is no irony. It is the glint of real that sparks every line in his new book, in his face, in his decision to live it straight, not fancy. Wiler is one of our most underrated poets, and if you haven’t read him yet, here you go. In this book he even broaches his time with AIDS, a topic till now verboten for him. The bleakness, the searing truth of it, stops you cold. But, as he says about his brother (us) in “The Taste of Beer in Late Fall,” “He needs to know. / I need to tell.” "
That's not too shabby. Most of us poor schmoos dwell in the outer darkness wondering whether anyone reads our work or likes it or whether it's any good and it's always a rare treat to hear such high praise from a man who knows of what he speaks. Bob has done yeoman work in the trenches of poetry for decades. Besides being an accomplished and brilliant writer in his own right he's also responsible for nearly singlehandedly saving poetry in NY. What a nice thing to have a man like him say such nice things about me.
More than that, how nice is is to know so many great poets and to have heard them over the years.
Performances rich or silly or dull and desparate but always from men and women who cared about the word. Where would one go to pick the best ones? To say this was a night so bright that poetry owned the world. I must have had the chance to hear dozens of nights like that. Thanks to folks like Bob, and Miguel Algarin, Danny Shot, Andy Clausen, Eliot Katz, Joe Weil, Jim Haba, Bruce Isaacson, and a hundred more, a thousand more.
So, let's make 2007 a year of words and verse and cantankerous, verbose meanderings. Blessed be the poets for they shall never inherit anything. They wouldn't know what to do with it even if they did.
Let's make this the year we all try to be Jack Micheline or Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso or Charles Bukowski or Elizabeth Bishop or Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. Let's be mad crazy saints. What the fuck, it can't hurt. Ha ha.
Today I went a googling and found that Bob Holman on his about.com poetry space had made mention of my book in his summary of poetry in 2006. I was flattered and delighted. Here is what Bob said:
"The joke, of course, is that Jack Wiler thinks his life is not fun so he invites the reader to have fun, Fun Being Me (CavanKerry). The fun is no irony. It is the glint of real that sparks every line in his new book, in his face, in his decision to live it straight, not fancy. Wiler is one of our most underrated poets, and if you haven’t read him yet, here you go. In this book he even broaches his time with AIDS, a topic till now verboten for him. The bleakness, the searing truth of it, stops you cold. But, as he says about his brother (us) in “The Taste of Beer in Late Fall,” “He needs to know. / I need to tell.” "
That's not too shabby. Most of us poor schmoos dwell in the outer darkness wondering whether anyone reads our work or likes it or whether it's any good and it's always a rare treat to hear such high praise from a man who knows of what he speaks. Bob has done yeoman work in the trenches of poetry for decades. Besides being an accomplished and brilliant writer in his own right he's also responsible for nearly singlehandedly saving poetry in NY. What a nice thing to have a man like him say such nice things about me.
More than that, how nice is is to know so many great poets and to have heard them over the years.
Performances rich or silly or dull and desparate but always from men and women who cared about the word. Where would one go to pick the best ones? To say this was a night so bright that poetry owned the world. I must have had the chance to hear dozens of nights like that. Thanks to folks like Bob, and Miguel Algarin, Danny Shot, Andy Clausen, Eliot Katz, Joe Weil, Jim Haba, Bruce Isaacson, and a hundred more, a thousand more.
So, let's make 2007 a year of words and verse and cantankerous, verbose meanderings. Blessed be the poets for they shall never inherit anything. They wouldn't know what to do with it even if they did.
Let's make this the year we all try to be Jack Micheline or Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso or Charles Bukowski or Elizabeth Bishop or Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. Let's be mad crazy saints. What the fuck, it can't hurt. Ha ha.
Monday, January 01, 2007
The New Years Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club
What a wonderful place is the Bowery Poetry Club. What a disastrous, torturous day is this reading. Hour upon hour of poetry. Good, bad, smug, political, dull, overlong, read in the face of alarms and sirens. Why read one poem when you can read two. Or three? I was supposed to read between 6 & 8 but asked Danny to intercede and get me moved up. He was successful.
My friend Joe Weil was not and at some point came up to me around five cursing his fate and stormed off into the preternaturally warm global warming oil industry friendly Saddam hanging streets of New York. Oh, I think the verse got the better of me.
He just stomped outside and bitched and then came stumping back in. The world needs more Joe Weils and less bad poets. In fact if Joe Weil was president we would never have invaded Iraq. We might not have done much else but you got to take what you can get.
I'm kind of being a little mean here. I heard a bunch of funny, cool poems. Taylor Meade, an 82 year old man, was more hip than anyone in the room. Regie Cabico and his crew of actors were funny and cool and Eve Packer did a nice tribute to James Brown. Steve Cannon was thankfully and blessedly brief. The world's greatest poetry critic.
My friend Karen asked for more Mario... here's a new one:
Mario Infirme Takes a Drink
Mario Infirme is at the end of the bar.
It’s two in the afternoon and there’s no one
In the bar but the bartender, Mario, and an old guy reading the Post.
Mario says, sit down, sit down.
I sit down and he says what’s your pleasure?
I say bourbon he says one turkey on the rocks
And then he leans forward and says
What do you know?
I say Mario I know almost nothing.
He says, that’s what everyone says.
Everyone says they no almost nothing
But in the end they know everything.
He says while I was in the bureau we interviewed dozens
Of people who knew nothing but time
after time they gave it all up.
They knew things they’d forgotten,
Things they’d put in the back of their minds.
He says that with a little gentle persuasion
They could be led to the truth and it was always
Dirty, always incriminating, always
and here he takes a sip,
always what we were looking for.
Take the Rosenbergs.
Maybe they didn’t know shit about the bomb.
But they gave us dozens who did and if
they’d had a half a brain they could have walked
but instead they take the pipe.
and still they told us all they knew.
People want to talk says Mario.
Even me.
I hate having no one to talk to, no one to hear my stories.
Oh yeah, I can sit in this bar and fill your ears with shit.
But it’s just that.
It’s just shit.
I can’t tell the truth because I don’t know anything either.
I know I want to talk but there’s nothing to say.
So I sit here in this dusty bar sipping shitty whiskey
and think about what I would say if I were asked.
Talk of bombs and guns and deals and broads but
really most of the time I was just an accountant
poring over the books of men like me.
Men who thought they knew everything but really
really knew absolutely nothing.
I thought I knew who was right and who was wrong.
I thought I could look in a man’s eye and know
he was dirty but it turns out I was the one who was
dirty and now I’m in this dirty bar drinking
with you and feeling sorry for myself.
Who knew?
Who knows anything anymore.
All we know is what we’re told and no one
tells a good story anymore.
That's all for now. Sleep tight America:)
My friend Joe Weil was not and at some point came up to me around five cursing his fate and stormed off into the preternaturally warm global warming oil industry friendly Saddam hanging streets of New York. Oh, I think the verse got the better of me.
He just stomped outside and bitched and then came stumping back in. The world needs more Joe Weils and less bad poets. In fact if Joe Weil was president we would never have invaded Iraq. We might not have done much else but you got to take what you can get.
I'm kind of being a little mean here. I heard a bunch of funny, cool poems. Taylor Meade, an 82 year old man, was more hip than anyone in the room. Regie Cabico and his crew of actors were funny and cool and Eve Packer did a nice tribute to James Brown. Steve Cannon was thankfully and blessedly brief. The world's greatest poetry critic.
My friend Karen asked for more Mario... here's a new one:
Mario Infirme Takes a Drink
Mario Infirme is at the end of the bar.
It’s two in the afternoon and there’s no one
In the bar but the bartender, Mario, and an old guy reading the Post.
Mario says, sit down, sit down.
I sit down and he says what’s your pleasure?
I say bourbon he says one turkey on the rocks
And then he leans forward and says
What do you know?
I say Mario I know almost nothing.
He says, that’s what everyone says.
Everyone says they no almost nothing
But in the end they know everything.
He says while I was in the bureau we interviewed dozens
Of people who knew nothing but time
after time they gave it all up.
They knew things they’d forgotten,
Things they’d put in the back of their minds.
He says that with a little gentle persuasion
They could be led to the truth and it was always
Dirty, always incriminating, always
and here he takes a sip,
always what we were looking for.
Take the Rosenbergs.
Maybe they didn’t know shit about the bomb.
But they gave us dozens who did and if
they’d had a half a brain they could have walked
but instead they take the pipe.
and still they told us all they knew.
People want to talk says Mario.
Even me.
I hate having no one to talk to, no one to hear my stories.
Oh yeah, I can sit in this bar and fill your ears with shit.
But it’s just that.
It’s just shit.
I can’t tell the truth because I don’t know anything either.
I know I want to talk but there’s nothing to say.
So I sit here in this dusty bar sipping shitty whiskey
and think about what I would say if I were asked.
Talk of bombs and guns and deals and broads but
really most of the time I was just an accountant
poring over the books of men like me.
Men who thought they knew everything but really
really knew absolutely nothing.
I thought I knew who was right and who was wrong.
I thought I could look in a man’s eye and know
he was dirty but it turns out I was the one who was
dirty and now I’m in this dirty bar drinking
with you and feeling sorry for myself.
Who knew?
Who knows anything anymore.
All we know is what we’re told and no one
tells a good story anymore.
That's all for now. Sleep tight America:)
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