The Poetry Section: 'The Last Critique,' by Josh Bell
An announcement! The Poetry Section will publish new work by poets twice a week. The section is edited by Mark Bibbins, who teaches in New York City at The New School and who also has a new book out, if you're so inclined. (It's good!) We're pleased to begin the series with a contribution by Josh Bell.
The Last Critique
We think Elizabeth's poems suck. We think Jason's poems suck. And we think Rachel's poems suck Elizabeth's poems. We didn't remember how or why the Stranger's poems sucked, but we thought Holly was good, so it scared us when the Stranger's poems refused to suck Holly's poems. A lot of people want to suck Fred's new poems, which suck, but they are too difficult for us to suck, and we'd rather suck his old ones, for though they are old, and suck, it is much easier to suck them. When she reads them out loud, Clarise's poems suck pretty good, but we are reserving our final judgment until we've seen them sucking on the page. We think Martha's poems suck. Sometimes when we think we're sucking on one of Theodore's poems, we're actually sucking on two. We think Ed's poems have that girl-scout look which make us want to start a family when we hear them through the keyhole, sucking. Philbert's poems suck like they've been sucking Annie's poems too much. Annie's poems sucked, but at least they brought something new to the act of sucking, we'd never seen a poem sucked like that before, and we thrilled to suck on them, as if sucking on household appliances. Many people enjoy the austere sucking of Terry's poems. Still, no one pays to suck Terry's poems like they pay to suck Anton's. We think Tom-Tom's poems suck so hard. We think Wendy's mature poems suck near the unassailable power of the Stranger's poems, and at first we are always frightened, as if forced to suck an entire opera, when Wendy gets that Viking look and makes us suck her poems. Maybe we could pay Terry's poems, Wendy will say, to suck the Stranger's poems, but the Stranger's poems are missing, and Terry is afraid, and we do not blame him, as some of us recall the first time we heard the Stranger's poems, which enter sucking bird and beast and flower, sucking Queen and beggar, Oldsmobile and go-cart, saying long-time-no-suck me, saying Terry, suck Wendy, suck Holly, saying suck the red wood forest, saying suck me lonely mannequin, saying suck the abundant splendored and thrice jismatic suck of holy mannequin, saying suck theology, missile launch, stirrups and ballet. Some of us choose to recall, instead, how the Stranger's poems seemed capable of sucking themselves, as if they no longer required us to suck them, and filled with terror we had to run next door to suck our neighbor's poems, real quick. But we all agree on the way, when the Stranger's poems end, they appear to suck the entire round planet, all at once, the planet which-in the Stranger's poem's unhinged jaws-comes dressed up like a Bride and then a Sailor, but all in the white of clouds and with a metallic S&M rig peeking through underneath, showing the chaste girdle of skyscrapers inside of which we suck and sleep and suck the poems we've written in fear of sucking the Stranger's poems, which go on sucking hard for us, through the disastered warp of Time, the Stranger's poems uncanonized, built to be sucked in a way we will never understand, as the Stranger's poems are a work of genius, and only our children's children will ever fully suck them.
Josh Bell's first book is No Planets Strike. He is a Lecturer in the Writing Program at Columbia University.
You can reach the editors at poems@theawl.com.
From that realm no thought escapes.
Hooorraaaayyyy!!!!!!!
I am glad there is now a poetry section.
I just want to suck myself
I just want to suck, myself
I myself, just want to suck
I, myself, just want to suck
Now you have to conjugate that poem in all persons and numbers!
HTML tip: <br /> for line breaks.
Tennis without the tennis.
Wow. I wouldn't have thought my estimation of the state of modern poetry could go any lower. Congrats Josh Bell, you've plumbed new depths. That was worse than random words pulled out of a hat.
Here, read this and stop whining.
http://tinyurl.com/yaoqc4v
You sound like someone who reads a lot of modern poetry.
Let me know if you need help with line breaks in HTML. (BTW, disappearing comments?)
reminds me a scosh of burroughs. only less funny.
and without turgid boy boners, also.
This is really exciting! But are comments necessary for this new section? It just feels wrong to see comments after a poem. (Yes: irony.)
Yeah, I'm thinking that Bucko has ruined it for the rest of us. I'm leaning towards "comments off." This is an experiment!
and experiments don't deserve commentary? you should have thought of that before posting poems. even among people of similar philosophies, i have encountered no topic or art form that elicits more strong reaction than poetry.
"We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? 'I like Byron, I give him a 42 but I can't dance to it!'"
I will confuse it with sponsored posts.
I know! I hate myself. I thought the line-break thing would be funny (duh, it's a prose poem).
Poems should have words like suck—and WTF, and autotune, and hyperlink. It's notable that this poem juxtaposes suck with so many words of a much more reserved kind of diction.
I vote in favor of comments. In this case, it seems especially appropriate, because this poem challenges the type of shallow critiques one is likely to find in blog comments ("It sucks!")—and which are in evidence here.
In the poem, "suck" points ambivalently toward literal and vernacular meanings. The verb is repeated until its meaning is neutralized or, alternatively, expanded beyond the dull pejorative critique.
Bell's poem doesn't moralize against the would-be critics; rather, it bleeds a favored linguistic weapon of its intended effect and, in the process, unfolds a prose poem of increasingly elaborate and vivid imagery.
Regarding the haters: If a person is writing a blog comment on this poem, and the best he can come up with is some variation on "it sucks," then he hasn't really grasped what the poem has to offer.
That sucked. But by "sucked" I mean "rocked."
You'd think that Josh Bell's touring and recording schedule would get in the way of his literary career, but apparently the guy can do everything.
Choire, is poetry supposed to be less robust than a bear video or a recipe pastiche, that it cannot stand up to comments, and will it wilt if somebody be's mean to it? If you protect it from comments, the dumbasses have won.