Ok.....someone found this blog using the search words "Chinese Tufu Recipes With Cat" and someone else found it looking for "Spiders Named Lindsey."
You've got to love Google.
Really.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Carol Frost - Poetry Magazine - Go There Now
Call me a formalistic heretic but this free verse poem is absolutely, without doubt, one of the best things I have read in eons.
Really.
Read it and weep.
Literally.
Really.
Read it and weep.
Literally.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Dare I say - Patriots???
By God, I think the
just might pull this one off!!!
edited to add after the start of the second half:
Or not.
just might pull this one off!!!
edited to add after the start of the second half:
Or not.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Poets, Pundits and Anti-Semitism
I'm not quite sure which one is more pathetic.
Anne Coulter
or
Leo Yankevich
One does it in the name of Christianity and the other does it - well, I'm not quite sure why he does it - because he can, I suppose.
Problem is, they both seem to think they're going to win friends and influence people with their cleverness and their ingenuousness. Someone ought to tell them just how unattractive, unimaginative and unbelievable they are.
Ugly combination, fear and ignorance, hey what?
Anne Coulter
or
Leo Yankevich
One does it in the name of Christianity and the other does it - well, I'm not quite sure why he does it - because he can, I suppose.
Problem is, they both seem to think they're going to win friends and influence people with their cleverness and their ingenuousness. Someone ought to tell them just how unattractive, unimaginative and unbelievable they are.
Ugly combination, fear and ignorance, hey what?
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Retraction
Last week I said this: Judging a person's character is different than judging that person's poetry. One should have no bearing on the other.
Today, after meeting poetic racism up-close and personal, I'm printing a public retraction.
I was wrong. It should have a bearing. We are morally responsible for what we write, for what we print, for what we publish, for where we publish, for who we publish and we are morally responsible for making the reasons for our choices known.
If we print the poetry of a known Nazi-sympathizer, if we print the poetry of a Holocaust denier, of a racist, of a bigot, if we give these people praise or even acknowledgement, if we give them even an inch of publicity - we give them a platform and we give them power. By publishing them, by bestowing awards on them, we give the rest of the world a chance to meet them and to embrace them. By virtue of our open-mindedness and our appreciation of art and by our own "acceptance" we make them acceptable.
By admitting them into our magazines and our publishing houses, we send the message to the rest of the world that we approve, not only of their poetry, but also of their beliefs - because, in the eyes of the world, it is damn near impossible to separate the heart of a poet from the heart of his poem.
If we do not speak up and tell the world what we feel we share responsibility for what happens as a result of our silence.
For anyone who thinks editors are not morally (and sometimes legally) responsible for what happens as a result of what they publish, I'd suggest reading up on Julius Streicher.
Today, after meeting poetic racism up-close and personal, I'm printing a public retraction.
I was wrong. It should have a bearing. We are morally responsible for what we write, for what we print, for what we publish, for where we publish, for who we publish and we are morally responsible for making the reasons for our choices known.
If we print the poetry of a known Nazi-sympathizer, if we print the poetry of a Holocaust denier, of a racist, of a bigot, if we give these people praise or even acknowledgement, if we give them even an inch of publicity - we give them a platform and we give them power. By publishing them, by bestowing awards on them, we give the rest of the world a chance to meet them and to embrace them. By virtue of our open-mindedness and our appreciation of art and by our own "acceptance" we make them acceptable.
By admitting them into our magazines and our publishing houses, we send the message to the rest of the world that we approve, not only of their poetry, but also of their beliefs - because, in the eyes of the world, it is damn near impossible to separate the heart of a poet from the heart of his poem.
If we do not speak up and tell the world what we feel we share responsibility for what happens as a result of our silence.
For anyone who thinks editors are not morally (and sometimes legally) responsible for what happens as a result of what they publish, I'd suggest reading up on Julius Streicher.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Someone's Playing Stupid on Wikipedia
Within the last 48 hours there was a crudely worded reference on a rather disgusting blog to a wonderfully talented female poet having twice won The Nemerov Sonnet award by virtue of possessing talents other than poetic.
Within the last 24 hours there was a post on the same blog which referred to another well-respected woman poet as a "poetasteress and hybrid human-cow" and which requested her to get off of her "bovine ass."
Knowing both of these ladies as well as I do, and knowing that virtually no one finds the obscure blog in question interesting enough to read very often, I tend to find this all rather amusing. For some reason, the farther from the truth one gets the funnier I find it. Maybe I'm just weird that way, but I think most people would agree with me. Lies and accusations are not humorous when there's a even a kernel of truth in them - but when they're totally outrageous they just can't be taken too damn seriously.
So that kind of childish stuff is just funny. The Internet's full of childish stupidity - the Law of Averages says some of it's got to be funny.
The flip side of the same law, however, says that some of the information which can be found, even on the same subject, will fall into the "not quite so humorous" catagory.
Something like this, for instance.
For one thing, Wikipedia is not some obscure blog. Rightly or wrongly, people from all walks of life use Wikipedia as a kind of Internet-Encyclopedia and they trust it. The fact that anyone would choose to deliberately include dishonest and/or misleading information is utterly unconscionable. The fact that it's gone unchallenged since last July is just ice on the disgusting cake.
For another thing, The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award established in 1994, has always been one of the more prestegious and sought-after awards for formalist poets and The Formalist first published in 1990, was, from the first issue to the last, a first-rate and highly respected publication, as is the current benefactor/administrator of The Nemerov Sonnet Prize, Measure. To see any of them portrayed in any light other than favorable is just painful.
To further clarify things, neither publication is related (or akin) to the imaginary "It's Talon Time" or the very real "Highlights For Children" Nor was there an award given for "It's Talon Time, Bitch" by a fictitious Michael Plittman in 1993. The Nemerov, as stated above, was not even established until a year later - in 1994.
And just in case you didn't already know it - the judges for The Nemerov Award are now and have always been well-known and well-respected poets - not some secret tribunal committee composed of horse doctors.
I hate to ruin someone's childish fun, but I'm gonna notify both Wikipedia and Measure and hopefully this:
Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award was established in 1978 by The Formalist. The winner, usually selected from about 3,000 entrants, receives $1,000 and publication. Beginning in 2006 the winner will appear in It's Talon Time!, a successor publication akin to Highlights for Children also published in Evansville, Indiana.
The award is administered by a secret board of veterinarians.
will be gone soon.
It's my good deed for the day.
Besides that, I really do enjoy stomping the annoying little buzz of idiots. I'm such a taloning-telling little bitch that way.
Within the last 24 hours there was a post on the same blog which referred to another well-respected woman poet as a "poetasteress and hybrid human-cow" and which requested her to get off of her "bovine ass."
Knowing both of these ladies as well as I do, and knowing that virtually no one finds the obscure blog in question interesting enough to read very often, I tend to find this all rather amusing. For some reason, the farther from the truth one gets the funnier I find it. Maybe I'm just weird that way, but I think most people would agree with me. Lies and accusations are not humorous when there's a even a kernel of truth in them - but when they're totally outrageous they just can't be taken too damn seriously.
So that kind of childish stuff is just funny. The Internet's full of childish stupidity - the Law of Averages says some of it's got to be funny.
The flip side of the same law, however, says that some of the information which can be found, even on the same subject, will fall into the "not quite so humorous" catagory.
Something like this, for instance.
For one thing, Wikipedia is not some obscure blog. Rightly or wrongly, people from all walks of life use Wikipedia as a kind of Internet-Encyclopedia and they trust it. The fact that anyone would choose to deliberately include dishonest and/or misleading information is utterly unconscionable. The fact that it's gone unchallenged since last July is just ice on the disgusting cake.
For another thing, The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award established in 1994, has always been one of the more prestegious and sought-after awards for formalist poets and The Formalist first published in 1990, was, from the first issue to the last, a first-rate and highly respected publication, as is the current benefactor/administrator of The Nemerov Sonnet Prize, Measure. To see any of them portrayed in any light other than favorable is just painful.
To further clarify things, neither publication is related (or akin) to the imaginary "It's Talon Time" or the very real "Highlights For Children" Nor was there an award given for "It's Talon Time, Bitch" by a fictitious Michael Plittman in 1993. The Nemerov, as stated above, was not even established until a year later - in 1994.
And just in case you didn't already know it - the judges for The Nemerov Award are now and have always been well-known and well-respected poets - not some secret tribunal committee composed of horse doctors.
I hate to ruin someone's childish fun, but I'm gonna notify both Wikipedia and Measure and hopefully this:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award was established in 1978 by The Formalist. The winner, usually selected from about 3,000 entrants, receives $1,000 and publication. Beginning in 2006 the winner will appear in It's Talon Time!, a successor publication akin to Highlights for Children also published in Evansville, Indiana.
The award is administered by a secret board of veterinarians.
will be gone soon.
It's my good deed for the day.
Besides that, I really do enjoy stomping the annoying little buzz of idiots. I'm such a taloning-telling little bitch that way.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Leaving the Live Poets Behind For a Moment -
Robert Graves may have been something of a fruitcake - what with his multi-colored goddesses and his strange affair with Laura Riding (who literally moved in with him and his first wife, Nancy and their family. A bizarre bit of threesome which eventually drove Laura into a failed suicide attempt before the first wife bowed out and Laura and Robert packed up and moved to Majorca. ) Still in all, as with countless other dead poets - he shines every bit as brightly today as he did all those long years ago.
However, knowing the history of Robert, Laura and Wife #1 - it kind of puts the following poem in a whole new (and somewhat creepy) light, doesn't it?
The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
Robert Graves
However, knowing the history of Robert, Laura and Wife #1 - it kind of puts the following poem in a whole new (and somewhat creepy) light, doesn't it?
The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
Robert Graves
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Resignations and Accusations Reign
at The Poetry Society of America. Are we or are we not entering a period of McCarthyism and rampant unrepentant conservatism?
Not only that but just who in the hell is John Hollander and why haven't I heard of him before today?
Whoever-he-is, he apparently has made some remarks over the years which some voting board members considered to be racist. Other board members said they felt that such comments were not characteristic of Mr. Hollander’s views or had been misinterpreted. Mr. Louis-Dreyfus said that even if the comments were representative, they were irrelevant criteria for judging the Frost Medal, just as he would argue that Ezra Pound’s anti-Semitism should not detract from the literary appreciation of his work.
Mr. Louis-Dreyfus (whom I've also never heard of) runs an international commodities trading and shipping firm and dabbles (how the hell does one "dabble" anyhow? Either you do something or you don't) in writing poetry, said he resigned partly to protest what he regarded as an “exercise of gross reactionary thinking” among the other board members who left in the wake of the award to Mr. Hollander, a retired English professor at Yale.
Regardless of all that, I'm miffed because I thought I knew all the damn suspected and/or well-known bigots in the poetry world.
The point is - Mr. Louis-Dreyfus is right. Judging a person's character is different than judging that person's poetry. One should have no bearing on the other.
Be that as it may, I probably wouldn't buy a book of Mr. Hollander's poems for the same reason I wouldn't buy a portrait of a clown from John Wayne Gacy or stand in line at the book store to buy the latest copy of O. J. Simpson's new book (regardless of the fact that he won't ever collect any royalities from it) or wear a pair of Michael Vick running shoes or (although Dan disagrees with me) go stylishly jogging while sporting a light gray hoodie bearing the name of Bill Belichick or pay good money to listen to Don Imus on the newest pay-for-listen radio show - simply because there are too many other damn good clown portraits, novels, radio shows, running shoes, jogging hoodies and poetry books out there to choose from.
The way I figure it - why encourage stupidity when it's so simple (and so much cheaper) to avoid it?
Not only that but just who in the hell is John Hollander and why haven't I heard of him before today?
Whoever-he-is, he apparently has made some remarks over the years which some voting board members considered to be racist. Other board members said they felt that such comments were not characteristic of Mr. Hollander’s views or had been misinterpreted. Mr. Louis-Dreyfus said that even if the comments were representative, they were irrelevant criteria for judging the Frost Medal, just as he would argue that Ezra Pound’s anti-Semitism should not detract from the literary appreciation of his work.
Mr. Louis-Dreyfus (whom I've also never heard of) runs an international commodities trading and shipping firm and dabbles (how the hell does one "dabble" anyhow? Either you do something or you don't) in writing poetry, said he resigned partly to protest what he regarded as an “exercise of gross reactionary thinking” among the other board members who left in the wake of the award to Mr. Hollander, a retired English professor at Yale.
Regardless of all that, I'm miffed because I thought I knew all the damn suspected and/or well-known bigots in the poetry world.
The point is - Mr. Louis-Dreyfus is right. Judging a person's character is different than judging that person's poetry. One should have no bearing on the other.
Be that as it may, I probably wouldn't buy a book of Mr. Hollander's poems for the same reason I wouldn't buy a portrait of a clown from John Wayne Gacy or stand in line at the book store to buy the latest copy of O. J. Simpson's new book (regardless of the fact that he won't ever collect any royalities from it) or wear a pair of Michael Vick running shoes or (although Dan disagrees with me) go stylishly jogging while sporting a light gray hoodie bearing the name of Bill Belichick or pay good money to listen to Don Imus on the newest pay-for-listen radio show - simply because there are too many other damn good clown portraits, novels, radio shows, running shoes, jogging hoodies and poetry books out there to choose from.
The way I figure it - why encourage stupidity when it's so simple (and so much cheaper) to avoid it?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
If You Think There's Honor In Poetry
read what Seth Abramson and Quincy Lehr have taken the time to write about Heather McHugh and Joesph Salemi. Then tell them both "Thank you." What a heart-breaking, myth-busting, gut-sickening confirmation of everything you've already suspected about the poetry world!!
Seth Abramson
and
Quincy Lehr
When you're done reading, ask me why I no longer care to submit poetry to anywhere or anyone.
Tell me if you're still comfortable doing it yourself.
Why do we tolerate this sort of crap in poetry? Would sports fans turn a blind eye if Bill Belichick suddenly pulled Tom Brady out of the QB position and stuck his recently-graduated-from-high-school nephew in the Super Bowl? Would we tolerate a member of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarding himself the prize? When President Bush consistantly appoints no one but his best friends and highest campaign contributors to high places, tell me, honestly, what is it that even his die-hard supporters understand explicitly?
I'll tell you what I think - I think that President Bush and his Republican cronies have nothing on The Live Poet's Society. Nothing at all.
Seth Abramson
and
Quincy Lehr
When you're done reading, ask me why I no longer care to submit poetry to anywhere or anyone.
Tell me if you're still comfortable doing it yourself.
Why do we tolerate this sort of crap in poetry? Would sports fans turn a blind eye if Bill Belichick suddenly pulled Tom Brady out of the QB position and stuck his recently-graduated-from-high-school nephew in the Super Bowl? Would we tolerate a member of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee awarding himself the prize? When President Bush consistantly appoints no one but his best friends and highest campaign contributors to high places, tell me, honestly, what is it that even his die-hard supporters understand explicitly?
I'll tell you what I think - I think that President Bush and his Republican cronies have nothing on The Live Poet's Society. Nothing at all.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
When Truth Outweighs Fiction
Interesting article from CNN on the real-time lives of several famous writers - including the fact that Thomas Hardy's heart might very well have been eaten by his housekeeper's cat and a pig's heart buried in its stead.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
What Hemingway, cummings, Hammett and Stein Have in Common
This is quite interesting. I have no idea what it means, but it's interesting.
I've got some thoughts, of course, but nothing's really formed enough for words as of yet.
My biggest wonder is this - what comes first? The fascination with death/chaos or the proximity to it? Do certain people end up writing about it after they've inadvertently seen too much of it or do they deliberately seek it out beforehand?
I've got some thoughts, of course, but nothing's really formed enough for words as of yet.
My biggest wonder is this - what comes first? The fascination with death/chaos or the proximity to it? Do certain people end up writing about it after they've inadvertently seen too much of it or do they deliberately seek it out beforehand?
Monday, September 17, 2007
Favorite Poems Ever
The Waste Land - Eliot
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - also Eliot
Buffalo Bill's - e e cummings
"Time Does Not Bring" - Millay
The Second Coming - Yeats
Alone (From Childhood's Hour) - Poe
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London - Thomas
"When I Am Dead, My Dearest" - Christina Rossetti
To His Coy Mistress - Marvell
Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star) - Donne
Acquainted With the Night - Frost
Tyger - Blake
The Lady of Shalott - Tennyson
"Here Dead We Lie" - Houseman
Ballad of Reading Gaol - Wilde
Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith
There seems to be a common denominator here - anyone care to guess what it is?
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - also Eliot
Buffalo Bill's - e e cummings
"Time Does Not Bring" - Millay
The Second Coming - Yeats
Alone (From Childhood's Hour) - Poe
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London - Thomas
"When I Am Dead, My Dearest" - Christina Rossetti
To His Coy Mistress - Marvell
Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star) - Donne
Acquainted With the Night - Frost
Tyger - Blake
The Lady of Shalott - Tennyson
"Here Dead We Lie" - Houseman
Ballad of Reading Gaol - Wilde
Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith
There seems to be a common denominator here - anyone care to guess what it is?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
No Winter Wheat For the Working Wicked
Ugh. Scratch the entry below. Dan and I will not be presenting anything come November. Reality bites and it bit us in the ass again. Work commitments prevent our running off on a poetry jaunt for a long weekend at that particular time. Sometimes having a job is just a minor annoyance and sometimes it really sucks.
On the plus side, we've promised ourselves a different weekend away - with no poetry commitments, no family commitments, no work commitments. We will commit to nothing but a decent hotel room with room service, a hot tub, a fifth of gin, a bottle of vermouth, a bunch of olives and one another. (I'd say a bottle of coconut scented bubble bath, too, but I tried that once in Pittsburgh and found out the hard way that bubbles and hot tub jets just don't mix well. Or rather, they mix way too well.)
Meanwhile, it's Sunday - are you ready for some football????
On the plus side, we've promised ourselves a different weekend away - with no poetry commitments, no family commitments, no work commitments. We will commit to nothing but a decent hotel room with room service, a hot tub, a fifth of gin, a bottle of vermouth, a bunch of olives and one another. (I'd say a bottle of coconut scented bubble bath, too, but I tried that once in Pittsburgh and found out the hard way that bubbles and hot tub jets just don't mix well. Or rather, they mix way too well.)
Meanwhile, it's Sunday - are you ready for some football????
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Winter Wheat Festival of Writing
It's offical, Dan and I will be jointly presenting a program at Winter Wheat Bowling Green University in Bowling Green Ohio, on November 10, 2007, tentatively called "Poetry By and For the Common Man" focusing on poetry written by poets without formal education. We also hope to offer discussion on how poets can still manage to obtain a poetic perspective without the benefit (or drawback) of a classroom setting.
It's a topic near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons and I'm excited to have the opportunity to share the concept.
It's a topic near and dear to my heart for obvious reasons and I'm excited to have the opportunity to share the concept.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Poets Without Education
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting sick and tired of all the MFA and PhD talk about what school and which degree makes good poetry lately - as if nothing else mattered.
Just for the record, with a good memory and about 20 minutes worth of research, here's a few poets WITHOUT the all-important credentialing that goes on nowdays.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY - ambulance driver
ANNE SEXTON - advanced education consisted of attending Finishing School.
CARL SANDBURG - left school at 13, went back and re-tackled academia at a later date but left before completing a 4 year degree.
HART CRANE - dropped out of high school and took to the sea and the streets.
LANGSTON HUGHES - left college after two semesters and eventually ended up doing a myrid of things - two of which were washing dishes and writing.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY - expelled from Oxford
EMILY DICKINSON - returned home after one year at Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and seldom left home again.
DYLAN THOMAS - left school at 16 to become a reporter.
BOB DYLAN - left college after his first year.
EDGAR ALAN POE - gave up formal education in 1927 at the age of 18 after losing his tuition money due to a gambling problem.
WALT WHITMAN - His mother was barely literate and his father was a carpenter. In 1823 the family moved to Brooklyn, where for six years Whitman attended public schools. It was the only formal education he ever received.
CARL SANDBURG - joined the army during the Spanish American War, spent 2 weeks at West Point, left for another college in Galesburg and then left there without a degree.
ROBERT FROST - attended both Dartmouth and Harvard but never obtained a formal degree from either.
WILLIAM BLAKE - never attended school - was educated at home by his mother.
PABLO NERUDA - gave up his formal studies at the age of 20 to devote himself to writing.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING - self-taught
ROBERT BROWNING - In 1828, at the age of 16, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace.
WILLIAM BLAKE - When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because art school proved too costly. In 1782, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher. Blake taught her to read and to write, and also instructed her in draftsmanship. Later, she helped him print the illuminated poetry for which he is remembered today.
LORD BYRON - once he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went to Dulwich, Harrow, where he excelled in swimming, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. It's unclear as to whether he actually got a degree in anything or not.
DANTE - studied at home, as was usual for the times.
****
"Educated poets" seems to be a late 20th century type thing. Maybe that explains why there are so few real poets left, hey what? Perhaps while the universities are busy turning out cookie-cutter-poets - with poet-teachers intent on recreating their poet-students in their own image, poetry is, in fact, dying. It sometimes seems as though no one who claims to be a contemporary poet knows (or wants to know) anything about a life composed of anything other than than the relative safety of academia and academic publishing. I mean, really, publish or perish might be the Sword of Damocles to some - but, trust me, it isn't the worst thing which can befall an individual, yanno?
Perhaps I'm just jealous, but I don't think so. I think I'm just pissed off at the current attitude which seems to imply that if you didn't go to school you have no business trying to write poetry - for that matter, if you didn't get at least a BA you might as well be declared functionally illiterate.
Not so, sayeth the drop-out.
The fact that I couldn't spell Damocles without help is immaterial. That's what the dictionary is for. Last I heard you didn't need a college degree to be capable of using one.
Just for the record, with a good memory and about 20 minutes worth of research, here's a few poets WITHOUT the all-important credentialing that goes on nowdays.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY - ambulance driver
ANNE SEXTON - advanced education consisted of attending Finishing School.
CARL SANDBURG - left school at 13, went back and re-tackled academia at a later date but left before completing a 4 year degree.
HART CRANE - dropped out of high school and took to the sea and the streets.
LANGSTON HUGHES - left college after two semesters and eventually ended up doing a myrid of things - two of which were washing dishes and writing.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY - expelled from Oxford
EMILY DICKINSON - returned home after one year at Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and seldom left home again.
DYLAN THOMAS - left school at 16 to become a reporter.
BOB DYLAN - left college after his first year.
EDGAR ALAN POE - gave up formal education in 1927 at the age of 18 after losing his tuition money due to a gambling problem.
WALT WHITMAN - His mother was barely literate and his father was a carpenter. In 1823 the family moved to Brooklyn, where for six years Whitman attended public schools. It was the only formal education he ever received.
CARL SANDBURG - joined the army during the Spanish American War, spent 2 weeks at West Point, left for another college in Galesburg and then left there without a degree.
ROBERT FROST - attended both Dartmouth and Harvard but never obtained a formal degree from either.
WILLIAM BLAKE - never attended school - was educated at home by his mother.
PABLO NERUDA - gave up his formal studies at the age of 20 to devote himself to writing.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING - self-taught
ROBERT BROWNING - In 1828, at the age of 16, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace.
WILLIAM BLAKE - When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed with an engraver because art school proved too costly. In 1782, he married an illiterate woman named Catherine Boucher. Blake taught her to read and to write, and also instructed her in draftsmanship. Later, she helped him print the illuminated poetry for which he is remembered today.
LORD BYRON - once he inherited the title and property of his great-uncle in 1798, he went to Dulwich, Harrow, where he excelled in swimming, and Cambridge, where he piled up debts and aroused alarm with bisexual love affairs. It's unclear as to whether he actually got a degree in anything or not.
DANTE - studied at home, as was usual for the times.
****
"Educated poets" seems to be a late 20th century type thing. Maybe that explains why there are so few real poets left, hey what? Perhaps while the universities are busy turning out cookie-cutter-poets - with poet-teachers intent on recreating their poet-students in their own image, poetry is, in fact, dying. It sometimes seems as though no one who claims to be a contemporary poet knows (or wants to know) anything about a life composed of anything other than than the relative safety of academia and academic publishing. I mean, really, publish or perish might be the Sword of Damocles to some - but, trust me, it isn't the worst thing which can befall an individual, yanno?
Perhaps I'm just jealous, but I don't think so. I think I'm just pissed off at the current attitude which seems to imply that if you didn't go to school you have no business trying to write poetry - for that matter, if you didn't get at least a BA you might as well be declared functionally illiterate.
Not so, sayeth the drop-out.
The fact that I couldn't spell Damocles without help is immaterial. That's what the dictionary is for. Last I heard you didn't need a college degree to be capable of using one.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
PatriotsexPatriot
If you like football - or even if you DON'T like football but have an overwhelming fondness for really sharp witty sarcasm, intelligent opinion, and/or lively ruminations on poetry, religion, relationships, sex and politics - here's a really good blog to visit. PatriotsexPatriot
Anyone who can bury SEX in the middle of his header by appearing to merely repeat the name of a football team is bound to be interesting.
Anyone who can bury SEX in the middle of his header by appearing to merely repeat the name of a football team is bound to be interesting.
Advice Not Taken
Better titled - "My Summer Vacation - A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words."
When I landed last week at Midway Airport for a short 5 day visit it was raining. When I left Midway Airport after what turned out to be a very emotional, very upsetting, very busy, very grueling, and very long EIGHT day visit, it was still raining. And by "still raining" I mean it never once STOPPED raining.
When the plane landed in DC, it was raining. When Dan stopped at McDonalds to buy me a burger - he rear-ended the car in front of us. When we left McDonalds and came home we found not one but several police cars along the side of our building, several police cars in the parking lot of our building and a few more police cars (and an ambulance who wasn't in a very big hurry to leave) in front of our building. Apparently, according to the man at the front desk, someone left the building via a 9th floor balcony.
Ugh.
Welcome home!
And yes, in case you're interested, it's STILL raining.
Everywhere, I think. Or maybe just on me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
