Poeta Doctus

A poem from Ladonian Magnitudes, one of the favourites of its most inspired reviewer, Matthew J. Trafford.

I HATE POETRY

I hate poetry readings polite in bookstores or schools or café bar open mics

every year’s unreadable thousands of slim volumes of verse inane formulaic inoffensive backcover blurbs filed filling booksupermarket-bookshelf ghettoes

poetry journals quarterlies annuals reviews anthologies handymuseums artcrypts a magazine (sb. 5. b.) should be a magazine (sb. Mil.)

I hate Spoken Word Slam poetry uniform monotonous Pop music spectacle theatrics

old faux Boho poetry yeasty anecdotes Al Purdy dumping a mug of beer on Margaret Atwood’s head for being too academic

antiAcademic Poetry poet poetry professors

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets sniggering at mainstream poets other L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets over their own writing “innovative” as Industry dumping a number of a local periodical with a bad review in San Francisco Bay

I hate Work Street Regional Peoples New Formalist National Minority poetry

I hate creative writing program workshop voice polish

poetry in complete correctly grammatical punctuated sentences

lines and stanzas typographically regular miming lyric epic voice strophes

poetry preciously le mot juste metaphoric gridding universals of human experience

personae all the poet’s voice nothing anybody’d think or say

Hear a live performance:  from States of the Arts Conference, Saarbrücken, Germany, 23 October 2008.