I Dare Me

Yesterday a poet named Matthew Guenette, young guy from out of town, read at Black Bear Bakery on a double bill with Rockwell Gray. Guenette is a social satirist -- currently a rare type of poet -- who knocks "things" like Katie Couric, and grocery stories so big "the aisles have storm drains." Audience laughed. I liked his work enough to buy his book Sudden Anthem (2007) from Dream Horse Press. He sold all the copies he brought.

My work also has a satirical streak and I decided in a flash to gallop out to my car, scoop my book Fierce Consent out of the trunk, run back and give it to him. I did, surprising him. I told him, "I'm doing this because we are alike. "

This was bold of me but I sensed that it was the right time and place. The day's horoscope ("there will be a small window of opportunity") and old maxims went through my head: "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Would the book better off in my trunk? Hardly. I hope it'll make him laugh too.

"Starving in a Garret"

Writer (usually poet) is always, in the popular mind, "starving in a garret." I wondered whence came this phrase and image of our profession. Looked it up. The original "born in a cellar and living in a garret"comes from the 18th century. The word "starving" replaces "living" in the19th century, whence comes this romantic 1856 painting, "Death of Chatterton." Seventeen-year-old poet Thomas Chatterton committed suicide in 1770. He actually WAS going to starve, and chose to poison himself. The phrase and image endure; has nobody come up with anything more accurate? I mean, bummer!

Credit Lord Byron, in "Childe Harold" (1812) for making a powerfully attractive figure out of a brooding, reckless young artist who, in real life, would give anybody a pain. I can see Byronic poets wearing black and smoking cigarettes on Delmar Blvd. even today.

Magnetic Poetry for the MTV Generation

John Ashbery's poems play with language. Rarely there's a line or two that's clear. But mostly not. It's rather like that "Magnetic Poetry" they sold a kit for. So knock me over with a feather when I heard, just recently, that "Ashbery is the most influential living poet" for the MTV generation. It's probably mostly because he's gay and has a good haircut. In fact I threw out my copy of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror thirty years ago today.

If, like me, you can hardly believe today's young are so gullible, look here in the NYTimes where Ashbery's poems were picked for "commercials" on "MTVu" -- MTV's special station for college campuses. Poetically, college-campus popularity is the last exit to Brooklyn. In the same way, the Boomers dug Richard Brautigan. Woot. To stay sane -- and write well -- don't trouble yourself with "most influential living poets."