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GREAT POEMS SCARRIET FOUND ON FACEBOOK NO. 3
Stephen Cole is a prolific poet, always on my Facebook feed. On Facebook, we appear to like one another, so Stephen Cole is a show I always watch. How many years now? I can’t remember. I want to grasp...
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THE SCARRIET READING LIST
There is absolutely a curriculum I carry around in my head. There is a method. There are lists I love. A society needs to be “on the same page” to some extent. “Selecting” the “best literature” and...
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THE OLD SONGS
The old songs dreamed of love but now we’re much too smart. We analyze the speeches and tear the songs apart. Toss sentimentality away: we’ve been cheated. We take new paths. We attempt to prove we...
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LITERARY INDIGNATIONS AND ACCUSATIONS
Henry James, Pound’s Modernist ally Henry James—like venerable Ralph Waldo Emerson, TS Eliot, and Ezra Pound—was too important to review works of fiction. James, Emerson, Eliot, and Pound dropped...
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MORE LITERARY INDIGNATIONS
Malcolm Cowley: romanticized the anti-Romantic Moderns A highly well-placed literary friend asked me, after reading my now-famous condemnation of the Modernists: but surely this group was as important...
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INDIGNATIONS, PART THREE. MODERNISM: NO COUNTRY FOR YOUNG POETS?
George Santayana’s student and a famous poet. Pound and Santayana, as war raged in 1940, had an Axis address. Give a name to something. Add epigrams. Talk goes viral. Books, aspiring PhD students...
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GREAT POEMS SCARRIET FOUND ON FACEBOOK NO.4
What has happened to us? Where is sophisticated love poetry? Spiritual longing and hurt with natural references is all very good, and eroticism is certainly not in short supply, though poetry isn’t...
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EZRA
My dog breathes five times faster than I do. He will live one-fifth as long. Time is different everywhere— the train vibrates madly as I attempt to edit these words. How can there be one Time? My dog...
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I WANT TO DO THAT BUT DON’T ASK ME
Woman: I want to do that but don’t ask me. I love you, poet, but not your poetry. I love you, but the world loves me, as well. I love you more than the world but exactly how I’ll never tell. Man: I...
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THE GOVERNMENT HAS OUTLAWED ANGER
We are safe at last! The government has outlawed anger. Hasn’t this been the problem all along? Anger? Now it’s against the law! Let’s celebrate! Anger! Who knows where it will lead? The government...
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GREAT POEMS SCARRIET FOUND ON FACEBOOK NO. 5
George Bilgere writes uncannily good poems. A respectable modern, he does not stoop to verse. He belongs to the Billy Collins school. Lines of verse exist because of rhythm. Lines of prose poetry are...
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WHERE IS POETRY?
Where is poetry? It is nowhere but in words. It has less relevance to us than the sound of hidden birds. This is the real earth. We are about to kiss. What does metaphor and bird calls have to do with...
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I WILL BE WISE WHEN I TALK ABOUT THIS, WHICH I MERELY LOVE
I will be wise when I talk about this, which I merely love. As long as I’ve lived, the need for wisdom has tortured me, who only loved. What to say about this, now, when wisdom for me finally combines...
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JENNIFER C. EMBARRASSMENT
Miss Embarrassment decided to give her love to me. Miss Embarrassment! Don’t give your love to me, Miss Embarrassment spoke right out in the crowd. I was embarrassed. She was loud. Miss Embarrassment,...
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STAYING IS HOW THINGS GO AWAY
Believe it or not, it’s my birthday today. His dead mother is all dad talks about. Staying is how things go away. Nothing should last. But every thought has lasted. The famous, who never cared for us,...
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NOT THAT, NOT THAT, THAT
As I dug in my bag for my vitamins, I came upon the honey and the vinegar first. A small, friendly, cloudy, light went on. Work, which we all do, which the animals do, all that science, philosophy and...
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MUTE
I sang, I screamed, I laughed: She’s cute! Now at the end of my life, I’m mute. How strange the transformation from love to not—a shock. I had to walk around the block. It is almost stranger than love...
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THE WEAKNESS OF THE HIGHEST ART
The weakness of the highest art slaughters yours and my heart— musically savaged; we are wailng away on the stretched, popular songs today, the president in them dutifully accused in the insinuating...
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THEY TAKE OVER
They take over the whole world, they do. But you cannot believe it’s true: “The Roman never conquered the Hindoo and my mind is my own— I wake with myself; my yawn, my groan.” But like a child who...
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SHE, THE PURE
She, the pure, was the victim of sadean desire. She, the type of good which makes evil aspire to burn more good, so more evil yearning could at last be still—that’s why there is so much burning. Evil,...
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