STOP PUBLISHING JOURNALS

It's good to see that Tarpaulin Sky continues to work toward the noble goal of turning as many off to poetry as possible. With their new issue 13, they give people all sorts of new reasons to dismiss poetry as inaccessible and boring.

Yawn.

Will anyone buy their print issue? Probably. People enjoy reading people they know and shaking their heads thinking, "wow! This is hella boring, dude!"

So dujour. So precious. So boring. :( $12.00. 162 pages. 160 pages of rubbish.

It is similar to TYPO lately. If you don't have anything good to publish, don't publish.

Try finishing this without yawning. I don't want to pick on whoever it is who wrote that tripe, and I don't care that she wrote tripe. Why is it getting published? Why is Noah Eli Gordon published again and again? I have never met a person who likes his work. NEVER! Sometimes there is a difference in taste, but who keeps publishing Lily Brown? Why do these names keep popping into my life when everyone wants them out?

They are ruining poetry. People think that all of poetry is boring because of them.

Editors, if you can't find good poetry, publish shorter journals. If you can't fill fewer pages, stop publishing journals. The journals are all bad right now. The one good thing about them is that when they actually publish something worth reading, it's such a big deal that everyone talks about it.

$12.00 for the names on the Tarpaulin Sky's new journals is a very funny joke.

Almost as funny as "The men are enjambed."

clowns like david larsen and david larsen likes clowns

I laugh. Poetry is funny. It is fucked up being back in California.

David Larsen, who is very funny, is a very funny poet. At Pegasus, he performed with Alli Warren and Dana Ward. Alli Warren, soooo experimentalllll, duuude. Alli Warren makes people laugh. Alli Warren was in Abraham Lincoln's first issue. Alli Warren makes me laugh.

"One was at the party... only no one was at the party." lol.

Dana Ward was also clowny. Clowns are funny. Dana Ward had them rotfl. Everyone thinks that Dana Ward is funny. I laugh at Dana Warren.

I laugh at David Larsen. David Larsen is funny. He likes to laugh and clown around. David Larsen is never serious. Every reading I go to having anything to do with David Larsen is big and jokey. Jokes make people laugh. I laugh because I am a person who can laugh at jokey things when they are jokey and the timing is right and other people are laughing telling me when to laugh.

I laugh at both jokes and clowns because they are funny.

I miss connecticut.

New Evidence

If you thought Jack Morgan couldn't get any more childish, look at his blog. Sending poems to PG and E people is stupid. The people who open those envelopes don't care about what is going on in your tiny child's mind about war or whatever that poem is supposed to be about.

If that isn't enough, he started a blog about his fucking retarded fish. His fish has been swimming upside down since I've known him. I told him he should put the fish out of his misery, but he has a weird thing with that fish. I don't know why. But why a blog about the fish? Are you serious?

He is what people hate about poetry.
His assumption that every person likes poetry deep down inside is ludicrous.
No one wants to read the stupid poems about about your fish, Jack. Don't embarrass yourself anymore.

I FUCKING HATE JACK MORGAN

Jack Morgan thinks it's funny that people hate him. He says he doesn't know why. But I think he does.
He told me once in an email, "You know why I won the Stronach Award and you won the Haas Scholars Award? Because I am a poet and you are a scholar. I can fake being a good scholar--anyone can, but everyone can smell a phony poet from a mile away."
A lot of people ask me why Jack and I aren't friends anymore. How could you be friends with a guy like that? He says that that email was a compliment.

And now this MURDERCYCLE shit. It's a poem about him driving around killing the people who hate him. He calls us all trash because he's talking about EVERYONE! On his blog. There's an entry on it where he calls us all cowards. I swear to God, this guy is going to get murdered one of these days.

That author photo? That's worse than Joshua Clover's. Those tattoos aren't even real. Who's phony, ass hole?

Now there is a group on facebook started by someone who hates him. HE JOINED THE GROUP. He was the first one to join! Then he invited me and all the other people he knows hate him probably.


Dear Jack Morgan,
It is you who are a coward, writing stupid little poems about your enemies. How childish! You are a child. The Trainwreck Union died because of you. You thought that you could do everything alone, so we changed the passwords. We wanted to do Switchyard. You might have started it, but now it's ours, so just shut the fuck up. You might have solicited all the poems, but now they're ours, so shut the fuck up. If I were you, I would stop writing poetry and drop out of college. You are neither scholar nor gentleman nor poet nor human for that matter. Maybe you should have delegated some of your responsibility. Maybe then we would not have buried our knives so deeply in your ribs. I thought you were a Shakespeare-freak, haven't you read Julius Caesar?

No one cares that you named the Switchyard or that the Trainwreck Union was your idea, so stop talking about it. Stop writing. Stop talking about us.

The only reason anyone goes to your readings, the only reason you get published, is because for some reason, Sara Mumolo is your friend. No one knows what she sees in you. Stop riding her coattails and see how quickly you fall into obscurity. You are a shitty poet.

Yours,
C.

Noah Eli Gordon

So I went to see Noah Eli Gordon and he read poems about televisions and microphones. He read very bad poems about televisions and microphones. If I ever write poems like that, I hope that someone will do something horrible to me so that I never do it again.

I didn't want to make fun of Noah Eli Gordon. It's really just too easy to make fun of artists who are normally the most abnormal of all of us, but I think he invites ridicule. He has sleeves of tattoos that look like they were bought as some kind of package deal with an identity. You know the kind of tattoos that put you in clique but mean absolutely nothing. Fashion tattoos.

His poetry is the kind of soulless poetry that makes me want to take a crap and leave poetry forever. It embarrasses me. His big long poem about microphones went something like this.

Crappy Crap Crapstar

This microphone looks like a big cock.
Crap crap crap
crap crap crap
crap crap crap

This microphone is made in China like everything else
crap crap crap
crap crap crap
crap crap

This microphone, if you haven't noticed, is black.
Crap crap
crappy crap
crapcrap

I am going to suck off this microphone while you all watch because that's what I do. I suck.
Crap.
I love you, microphone.
[wipes brow, spits]


Sorry for parody. I didn't want to do it, but I feel a lot better now. Thanks for reading.

William Alexander. The Emperor has no Clothes!

I used to like William Alexander. Now I hate him.
I hate him because of the play he wrote. But I hate him even more because of the way he milks his audience.

That play about the Catacombs was so bad that I had to get up and sit somewhere else until his shit was over and the cool stuff started. I was excited to see it, and his intro was great, and I thought, "this is going to rock." I was wrong. And if you clapped for that rubbish, how do you live with yourself? The girl in front of me was apologizing to her friends for making them come to a lame art thingie.

Shit like this ruins.
Just because people still clap for you, just because they buy bull shit, even seem to like it, does not mean you fork it into their open mouths for them.

James Wagner and Suzanne Stein

I don't know how Suzanne Stein is as a poet or as a reader, and I might never find out. She read at Pegasus last night, and was so rude to me that I will more than likely avoid her work like Danielle Steel's. She was not rude to me personally, but she was rude to the audience, I think.
She read that interview thing that Bill Berkson read with Lyn Hejinian at Moe's not so long ago. What is that? People yawn openly through the intro, and maybe it's because they already know what the deal is, but I am completely in the dark. If it is a real interview, I have to say that reading it to us sucks. Sucks with a capital "S." I would gladly read it, but why are you reading it to me? If it is entirely fictitious, it is kind of cool. . . a little cool. . . very little. But it's still boring. . . with a capital "B." There were some people in the audience who got little references and twittered when they recognized them––someone even called out that they knew a reference at one point––but I hate that kind of reading. . . like it's some kind of inside joke that I am not privy to. That is exactly what people hate about poetry that are not in the scene. It's what keeps people away from poetry. What the fuck is the point of that!?!
Another thing that keeps people away are people who read like robots. You know how the Macintosh computer speaks? That voice that is somewhere between Stephen Hawking's robot's and a real human's? That's what James Wagner sounded like. It would not have been so bad if he hadn't followed such a stinker, but man, it was intolerable. And I was in a seat that was so situated that I could not leave tactfully–––not that it is tactful to say all this in a blog, but it is a small thing to rant a bit after such a torturous experience. The young woman I brought with me, not a stranger to readings, destroyed her cuticles in one of those zone-outs that befalls those who suffer from extreme boredom. It was worse than one of those 8-hour/day courses your boss made you take on computer maintenance for your job.

Yeah, but are they good poets? I have no idea. Maybe they're people I should not bad-mouth. Maybe they would like to smash me to bits when they hear about this post. It's not like I hide my identity or anything. They might be great poets whom I am unjustly defaming. But the reading sucked. It was really bad. Next time I hear a real trash-talker, those people who take pot-shots at hot-shots like poetry snark, I am going to tell them about this reading.

Come to think of it, poetry snark is shit. I am taking them off my links.

Felix and Mickey

Have you ever noticed that Mickey and Felix look strikingly similar? There is an urban legend that centers around the idea that Felix was actually designed by Walt Disney &co and was promptly stolen by another animator when animation was the newest hottest thing. Disney was paranoid after that.
Everyone knows how protective Disney is regarding Mickey and his pals. Supposedly, this is due to the phenomenon of the burnt child effect. Once a child burns himself, he is likely to have a deep fear from whatever caused him such pain. Like a childhood trauma that leads to phobia, this child will tremble if he is near an active stove top. Maybe Disney once trusted in the intrinsic good nature of his fellow men and now, once that trust had been betrayed by the nefarious animator who allegedly pilfered Felix, the Disney Company will take whatever measures necessary to prevent such a theft from happening again.

Right, but what does this have to do with poetry? The art world is rife with such knavery. People steal and pass off what they have stolen as their own. My former best friend, a person I trusted, has done it to me after he ridiculed the very ideas he is now claiming are his. It's hard not to be paranoid when you are stolen from. Once your car has been broken into, you'll circle blocks as many times as it takes to find a "safe" parking spot.

Filthy people. They abound. There is no way to avoid them I suppose, except to develop thicker callouses. But I don't want callouses. Callouses are ugly.

New Rules

!. Never become romantically involved with poets, especially poets you respect and want to work with.
@. Don't clap when a poem/poet is not good. Do not allow the audience oppress you. You are the best judge in the room.
#. Trust a man who cheats on his woman more than you trust one who pursues "taken" women; the first might fill you with dismay, but the latter is certain to betray you.
$. Poetry is much too important to take seriously.
%. Neither cheat on your partner nor pursue people who are spoken for.
^. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right. If you're not having fun, it's not worth doing.
&. If you break rule !, don't let anyone know that your heart was broken.
*. Drink, but not to forget.