2009 ILE poetry CONTEST giggity goo!

April Has The Cruelest Poems

I keep writing poems
too mean to put out in the world.
Little girly stabs at people
who love me, who are readily identifiable,
the poems pulled from a field guide
of my resentments, written down
to spare my husband the tedium
of one more spoken version.
Not that I’m not
making him read endless drafts.

You always hurt the ones you love,
bite the hand that feeds you,
tell all.

My victims—
one whose hypochondria sours
every dinner conversation, another
whose slathering greed for goods
is the nation’s soul-rot writ small.

I could keep the poem a secret,
like a love-child of shameful parentage.

Fictionalize—turn dog-trainers
into lace-makers, unfaithful boyfriends
into treasonous atomic scientists.

The subjects would fail to recognize themselves.
After all, why would I do such a thing?

If all else fails, lie. Tell her or him
the poem is about some other person
named “Janice,” or “Dad.”

But what if, despite all this coyness,
the poem became famous? It could happen.
And these very people, my loyal supporters,
would be the first ones I’d tell. What then?

Oh, scabby wretch, festering in grievance,
whose friends and family lack all perfection—
how I made it this far will surely puzzle my biographers.

The experts advise to write what you know.
But what if you can’t? What if your one
quickly-dimming filament of decency
mandates that you hold back?

Even monsters deserve compassion.

o hai, thx rogermexico

I am expecting verse from the following ppl by close of business tomorrow

elmo argonaut
beth parker (hey look she posted synchronicitiously while I was writing this message!)
beatrix kiddo

o shit

okay well i guess i know what i'm doing tonight

This is a guest post from my dog

TUGJBHHINGS III CAN MN SMELL;

bBY SNITTER

RAINBOLSW

LOVE

ABSZTARCT CONCEPTS SUCHY ASD PI
BUT ONLY TO THESD TENTHV DECIMAL

am having a major crisis of confidence here

EIII, just so you know, my poem upthread was a serious entry.

Are the spelling errors '(sic)' or do you want them corrected? ("bourgeoise", "fascists")

Sorry to be a bastard but these are important aesthetic choices dude

leave the mistakes in - I feel that the immediacy is more important

louis stop editing and start writing

(xpost) 'cause that shit was straight of the top of the dome, yo...

BethParker, glad you are hear. your last entry brought to mind a line from Ashbery: "He is a monster like everyone else but what do you do if you're a monster?"

*here. jesus. just woke up.

1 Minute of Decadence

I want a parrot.
I want a parrot and some pistachios.
Sure, I could ask for world peace
But all I really want in life
Is a parrot and some pistachios.
(Actually, fuck a parrot)
I want some pistachios,
A lion bar,
(Maybe two lion bars?)
Yr lovin’, a cup of tea
And some new shoes.

who is this ashbery person you keep talking about

EIII, just so you know, my poem upthread was a serious entry.

― snoball, Thursday, April 30, 2009 12:14 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

also how did I get elected MC of the 3 ring circus

just cuz I yell at people doesn't mean I want to be the boss I just like yelling at people

hey elmo are you going to sneepo de mayo this sunday

if you finish yr poem I will buy you a beer and a smoke

dude I basically nominated you as thread champion with the first response, now act like it

champions don't walk they get carried

some have said ODB should not be a model for my behavior but there it is

I couldn't actually think of a good response to that one, so in a way I suppose you have won the thread already, if not the poll (although you've got a pretty good shout imo)

Now excuse me while I fashion a litter out of discarded sheets

gold and plat'num laurels on my wall

We Staggered Like Bonsai

We staggered like bonsai through the general
assent of glasses, trailing streamers
from our heels and freshening
drinks with a vengeance.

Understand, we expected this
to happen to other people. There had been no call
for laughter, nothing insidious at the get-go
to suggest that we would find our tongues

So soon. We were twins, and fatherless,
standing on our own feet under the gaunt
lanterns, plumped up with savoir-faire, game now
for skinny-dipping and all sorts of June buggery.

The wind came up and blew the crows clean
Out of the pines.

nice!

but we all know in our heart of hearts abbott's dog is taking this thing in a walk

figured if i'm going to peanut-gallery i might as well show u mine... but yeah, abbott's dog pwns. holding out hope for a dramatic late entry from a puppy to make it a contest

ok i have gone from 0 poems to 2...one of which is a discretable extract from a longer poem i was working on recently, the other of which i completed pretty much just now...not sure which one i prefer

can i be a sneaky bastard and submit both? or will i have to give my dog all the credit for one? or will i have to choose? :(

p.s. i do not have a dog

edward i certainly hope that you are kidding about the Ashbery thing.

as in:

Soonest Mended

BY JOHN ASHBERY

Barely tolerated, living on the margin
In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued
On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso
Before it was time to start all over again.
There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,
And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering
The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting
The whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.
And then there always came a time when
Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile
Came plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,
Only by that time we were in another chapter and confused
About how to receive this latest piece of information.
Was it information? Weren’t we rather acting this out
For someone else’s benefit, thoughts in a mind
With room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),
Our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?
To reduce all this to a small variant,
To step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau—
This was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.
Alas, the summer’s energy wanes quickly,
A moment and it is gone. And no longer
May we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.
Our star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.
Now there is no question even of that, but only
Of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,
With an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across
The upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away
And cannot quite see, or a wound will flash
Against the sweet faces of the others, something like:
This is what you wanted to hear, so why
Did you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers
It is true, but underneath the talk lies
The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose
Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.

These then were some hazards of the course,
Yet though we knew the course was hazards and nothing else
It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,
The clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.
They were the players, and we who had struggled at the game
Were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes
And moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.
Night after night this message returns, repeated
In the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,
Yet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,
The being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,
Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes
To be without, alone and desperate.
But the fantasy makes it ours, a kind of fence-sitting
Raised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,
Solid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,
But like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression
Not too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day
When it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering
Like this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning
Is a delusion, and I agreed, adding that
Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,
That the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint
None of us ever graduates from college,
For time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up
Is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.
And you see, both of us were right, though nothing
Has somehow come to nothing; the avatars
Of our conforming to the rules and living
Around the home have made—well, in a sense, “good citizens” of us,
Brushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept
The charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,
For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.

well done "john ashbery" i think you might be red-hot favourite now :)

oh shit wait you have broken the 40-line limit sorry DQ'd

i mean, i just don't get how someone couldn't know who Ashbery is, that's all.

I think kidding was occurring.

Ed III not only totally knows Ashbery but has probably written essays on him. I think he may have been telling you to chill with the JA lovin' :-P but hey I could be wrong, you never know with ILXors

er yeah Beth put it much more succinctly

see, this might be why i only have a few fellow friends who are writers-- you guys suck at sarcasm. for reals.

and btw, i am no john ashbery lover.

as in, there was no way anyone could have read sarcasm into that post without knowing something about edward, and i know little.

(i wrote many many pages on Ashbery in my day. and have read Flow Chart twice. have since moved on.)

I never got round to studying Ashbery. The focus of my attentions was a small facet of American Modernism circa 1930 which I have been unable to since stop banging on about.

Ashbery obsession undergrad went into serious Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge obsession. by the time i finished it was all Susan Howe and Jorie Graham.

OMG Susan Howe had a pivotal role in my 1979-present day paper! "Singularities"! What a goddamn text! The Adirondacks occupied me

Susan Howe is my girl! Defenestration of Prague is one of my personal favorites. Also 'My Emily Dickinson,' which is awesome.

An essay I wrote tying in "Singularities", Lyn Hejinian's "My Life" and Deleuze/Guattari "Nomadology" was like one of the sweetest things I ever basically wrote in an academic context

OK I totally need to read more Howe, cheers

i'd get a hold of "The Europe of Trusts" next. it's a three-book collection of some of her best work aside from 'Singularities.'

groovy stuff :)

I think I should probably post my poetry now, although I am absolutely torn between the two possible pieces

this is about the only thing I've written lately that's anything, and I put about 5 mins of effort into it so I dont expect any compliments.

(emotions)

they may not be focussed as much as they should
or turned into a nice portrait, lamp or flowering garden bed -
sometimes I just throw them like plates
against a wall
and regret having to clean up the mess afterwards
and perhaps I don't discipline them well or
often enough
How dare she, they say, such rowdy misbehaviour
But they are the engine room of my creativity
the children I don't have
the fuel that makes my head keep burning
when all around the rest of me is ashen
get away from me with that firehose

post it country matters!!!

also, i encourage all of you to look into the poet Lisa Robertson-- i have been in a workshop with her this semester, and she is a wonderful woman and smarter than most any person i've ever met. here's twenty minutes of her reading: http://www.archive.org/details/Books_Bookshelves_Poetry_120508 .

ooh awesome! am listening now. sensations shall formulate...

meanwhile, here's a completely brilliant British poet reading his masterwork, a poem described by J.H.Prynne as the most important of this millennium so far (in four parts):

Ooh, sorry, that's quite a bit to scroll past. Way to derail the thread :-/

Am liking the Robertson! Too dense for me to unpack or even describe on first listen, but a sustained and echoing chamber of angst swaddles her careful syllables...it engages, alarms. Will return to her. Wish I knew of such workshops on this side of the Atlantic. Not sure they really much exist.

"Angst" meant positively, not as the dirty word it's become.

OMG lj, that's my MA tutor. Just saw him read on Tuesday.

I have also only just recently discovered Susan Howe. I only really like visual poetics/typographical poems, and I can't contribute to this thread... but I do have plans to start writing some stuff for a performance piece sometime soon. (I will very likely chicken out of this.)