I
I cannot fathom modern poetry.
Too damn deep perhaps; perhaps too shallow—
Perhaps I bring a mind too long fallow—
Unfertile soil for what it sows in me.
I search for hard edged skeletons beneath
The meat—but find it soft and limp, hollow,
Bloodless, without shape—too often callow
Lamentation: “Look at me! Look at me!”
I want tougher stuff! I search for that brisk
Form, the rhyme, the fierce metrical constraints
That agitate, dig out, smelt heuristic
Ores, mined from our rich veins, rewarding risk
With the exact explosive word—not taint-
ed mush, gone all gooey narcissistic.
(5/21/07)
II
Poems must be short—don’t strut Shakespeare, Milton,
All the epicists, dramatists, whose verse
Wallows in endless pentameters, stunned
Language—dull recitative—rehearsal
For the few arias that sear the heart.
Verse can’t sustain its destiny so long.
Verse must strike hard, must hurl its flaming dart—
Consume us now! Not dribble on and on.
Yes! Poems must be engorged, prepared to burst.
Their incandescent lines must, first, set hooks,
Captivate, cater to our eager thirst.
Then, when we are wholly drunk, explode—brook
No escape. Coiled language strikes—our spasm:
Intense delight, word-induced orgasm!
(Or—at the very least—slipp’ry wit-wrought
Lines (storming through breached sensory portals)
Thrusting up gasps—diaphragm-deep chortles!)
(5/28/07)