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THE EXCITABLE
The excitable by nature will err— so poetry is either correct or off: offensive, dull, long-winded, short, hasty, —the world’s too big!— sentimental, never revolutionary, loving but hampered by a...
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THE UGLY
Dear hearts! Let me tell you what is wrong! It isn’t the beautiful (they say the devil is beautiful but I know for a fact they are wrong). It isn’t the ugly who are weak (pity them!) Fear the ugly who...
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POETIC DICTION AND 14 INTERNATIONAL YOUNGER POETS, AGAIN
Shruti Krishna Sareen. Did she “win” Nikolayev’s anthology? As editor and chief writer of Scarriet (a daily, original, literary culture magazine 2009 to the present) I often feel the burden of knowing...
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I WAS HOT
I was hot because I was cold. I loved you when my love was old. I ran passionately to you being indifferent, too. I had you like one has a cigarette Craving a pleasure I couldn’t have yet and could...
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CLOUDY IN THE CITY AND EVERYTHING IN APRIL IS COLD AND GREY
You are superior to me because you are obscure. No one quite knows what your poetry means and this gains you sophisticated followers, nonetheless shy when questioned. Rattling the New York Times in...
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EXPERIENCE
What is the most important experience to have that we never have? Sleep. Did that make you laugh? Apply it to life. There. Now you can weep. If I were impolite, you’d always see me crying. Sleep and...
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NOW I UNDERSTAND
Every library, church, and university, the truths which call to me silently as I drift through a museum, all my friends’ conversations, the movement of animals looking for food: all told me what I...
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GET OUT
Successful love is a good, long conversation and because love seldom works out there are stories, poems, and plays— the poet talking to those he doesn’t know— because love between him and another...
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IN EXACTLY TWELVE SECONDS I’LL BE SAD
In exactly twelve seconds I’ll be sad— and then in twelve seconds I’ll be happy. You think I’m joking? When I’m in love I switch between happy and sad every five seconds—this excites but exhausts me,...
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FAME AND LITERATURE
Emily Dickinson—hidden away as fame; childless, but mother of us all. Most poets have—even published ones—very few readers. Even the supposedly famous poets these days have no public, really. The...
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THE FAKERY THERE IS THE FAKERY HERE
I once fell madly in love with a face but faces look strange now. Why did I care so much for a face? I’m interested in the ad which shows two people hugging and that person smiling. Now it is clear....
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A MILD REJOINDER FROM WILLIAM LOGAN
Ben Mazer in Romania, taken by Tom Graves Scarriet supplies, deliciously, delightfully, a necessary alternative to the banner raising that often passes now for criticism. Still, Tom was wrong to state...
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NINE POEMS AND THREE EPIGRAMS OF THE NEW ROMANTICISM
John Milton is John Keats. Samuel Johnson is T.S. Eliot. Literature repeats, just as happy thoughts commonly intrude upon sad ones. Vermilion beauty is reached, but the sun brings a new day. New...
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TWO TYPES OF BAD POEMS GOOD POETS WRITE.
Anthologies are my favorite way of reading poetry. Authorial vanity cries out “Read my book! Get to know me! Immerse yourself in my book’s theme!” I reply, “Have you written Paradise Lost? If not, let...
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RESTRAINT
The restraint it takes to be silent when insane, gaslighting, villains provoke you is the most glorious virtue in the world. Pity the insane, but don’t be passive. Be restrained. Do something stupid...
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POETRY WITHOUT CLOUT, OR, TYPES OF BAD POETRY, PART TWO
Robert Lowell ruled mid-20th century poetry. Privileged, no fiction, crazy, avoided rhyme. Perfect. What’s poetry? Names of race horses. The necessarily accidental is important to poetry, just as it...
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“SNL ACTORS SAY GOODBYE”
Not interested happens a trillion times an hour; it is what save us from ourselves and others; you cannot be interested in every flower— that’s why he have the word, “flower;” Words let us pretend...
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OLD ROMANTICISM
Genius once visited the young before life was saturated and sung. The best poems, by any measure, poets wrote at twenty-two, immersed in the chores of plain life. Factories today make the so-called...
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ON THE BLUE LINE, BOSTON
Nothing is made for close inspection. The small lawns are neat. The street goes in the right direction. The train, despite the bad news, takes you home. A passenger’s perfume reaches you from far...
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THE STRATEGY OF WE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE
The strategy of we who are going to die partakes of immortality or sleep. When confronted with the worst horror, we kill—or kiss—the creep. Creation is a going from here to there— “there” has a...
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