It Turns Out Being A Poet Is A Terrible Thing
I did not know that the Poet Community was so dark, devious and dangerous! But here is a recollection by a former New York poet, in which it is revealed that being a poet is to enter a world of horror, ill behavior and general heinousness: "There was another night when I made out with a Boston Lyrical Poet and assistant to another Star Teacher, as rain fell on Lower Broadway. We stood there inside a doorstop of an abandoned building that is now a J. Crew. She later confessed to me that she was the Mistress of a Famous Dimple-Chinned Nonfiction Writer. She would arrange visits to artist colonies at the same time as him, meet on corners in Queens. For those few months we dated, I could claim the title of Other Man in an Affair with the Mistress of a Famous Dimple-Chinned Nonfiction Writer. This title and others delighted and wearied me as the years went by." And that is the nice part.
Oooh! Anonymous literary gossip. A Blind Assassin Item, if you will.
Here goes:
1)Carla from "Cheers"
2) Ghost of Carl Sagan
3)John Travolta
4)visits to artist colonies = attempts to hide baby bumps.
They're ALL Norman Mailer.
(One night toward the end, I studied the crowd and saw five Poets Whose Book I Had Lobbied for Publication …: He should have shouted out: "Hey, you five poets! I lobbied your book for publication." For a poet, this fellow doesn't fuss a lot about the way his sentences fit together. Maybe that's why other poets won't speak to him.
Seriously, this is about Poe Biz, not poetry. Does anybody but the inmate or former inmate of an MFA program care who wins this circle jerk?
No!
And it's even worse in Canada, where there isn't a single poet who makes a living off poetry and so the whole system survives on calling in favors and glad handing.
and about 45 readers of the New Yorker!
I'm partial to this essay by Michael Gottlieb: http://jacketmagazine.com/35/gottlieb-jobs.shtml
"If we are most alive when we are writing, if we can sit and say to ourselves, this is what we are here for, this is why we are, say, placed upon this earth, to do this work, when I am doing this I am making use of all of my faculties, all of my powers, I am on fire, I am finally alive, here doing what I was put on earth to do, in this room, in this apartment in this corner of Kings County, if this what I am meant to do then everything that I have done, read, trained myself toward has led me to this very moment."
and then i napped.
Jesus Christ, New York City poets.
They have to be poets here because it's the only way they or anybody else can tell they're poets.
I was making a joke with the tags, but yes.