‘Poetry’ seems to have passed to hard days.

Years ago in my quest for poetry I bought the softcovers issued by two university presses.  The writers were professors who believed they were poets.  All were a chore to read  — solipsistic, incomprehensible  —  because they did not honor the way a reader’s mind worked.  They worked against it.  They strove to be ‘difficult’.  They locked the reader out.  All the poems that appeared in NYRB or the New Yorker were the same  —  junk pretending to value.  Like Basquiat.

I talked to two knowledgeable fellows about this state of affairs  —  one a tenured English professor and one a nationally recognized poet  —  a real poet.  Both abhorred the situation.  The English professor said his friends felt the same way but they did not want to make waves by invading another’s field, throwing bombs, starting useless feuds, etc.  Soon they would be retiring and wanted a smooth transition.  The poet and I had previously discussed this situation, via letter and in person.  He and I felt the same.

So how did it get this way and who’s to rescue poetry?  Homer, I conjure you.  Bring the mighty winds of climate change to our world, crimson sunsets to the West and forests uprooted as at Tunguska. The bony dead shall crawl from the ground, wander the streets, gibber and squeak in the forum   The skies to darken, the stars fall, and a snake-haired god will rise above the horizon while the time-servers run, speechless and horrified.  Then the words may begin to flow.  Vesuvius will bury the vacationers in hot ash while Gulliver Foyle, tattooed man of vengeance, lashes his chariot through the streets.  Then and only then will the Highwayman return, the aurora of Keats fill the northern skies and Annabel Lee lie consumptive at the edge of life/death.

May Southern Skies publish you, Siegfred Sassoon, when you return.  Wilfred Owen, sit down at my table for a night and discuss the horrors we have seen    Then wash your soul out and go out to party with Rumi.  Do call me in the morning.

God save Ireland, say we all.

“Wasn’t it the truth I told you   —                                     Lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake.”