"A Jew Speaks of Joan Rivers"

Noah hates poets.  For seven reasons.  Once I styled myself a poet.  At the time I only read comic books so my poems had an uncanny amount of spandex in them.  But I matured.  In the year of nineteen-hundred and ninety-five I wrote "A Jew Speaks of Joan Rivers."  I consider it my best work.  Be kind.*

I’ve known Joan Rivers:
I’ve known Rivers, ancient as the world and older than the flow of
    human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown shallow like Joan Rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when Melissa was young.
I built my house near Hollywood Hills and Joan bored me to death.
I looked upon Joan and raised Melissa above her.
I heard the squawking of the Rivers when Gwyneth Paltrow went down
    to accept her Emmy, and so I’ve seen her death-pale bosom heave in
    that ill-fitting dress.

I’ve known the Rivers.
The ancient, chalky Rivers.

My soul has grown shallow like the Rivers.

*By which I mean flatter me now for my stupidity then.  Because I did write that in 1995.  I've resisted the urge to "improve" it.  I teach journalism after all.  I fight for the interests of accuracy.  Scratch that.  I teach literary journalism and value accuracy.  Much better.

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

Scott, now wait a minute. I've exposed you to my poetry on multiple occasions, and what have you said? "As for your poem, it's not the sort that's made me turn my back on contemporary poetry." You have to admit, that's the funniest non-comment ever. Adam at least told me why one of my poems was a failure. Hell, even J to the B wrote more when he was hilariously looking through my stuff trying to find things to tear down. And now you want me to comment on your, what, comic parody poem that was probably written when you were 15? No. Not even to say something like due to the ego of poets, any mention of celebrities is absolutely disallowed in poetry unless they are also poets. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Rich, I'm asking you to laugh at me, not with me. You insist that I have pride or something approximating shame. I don't. I can laugh at myself with the best of them. All I ask is that you and your finger point alongside me. No serious intellectual activity required. That poem is an unabashed travesty. It is to poetry what this is to scholarship.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Oh, I understand, but I'm not going to indulge you. You think that you can pull something out of your memory drawer, and just like that *have people laugh at your poetry*? No, you need to work up to that.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Actually, I'll expand on this, since you clearly don't know the rules for the stages of amateur poetry reception. Since Noah gave a list of seven, I will too. Each succeeding encounter with poetry somehow communicated to the same person moves you up a stage.

1. Absolute silence. You do not exist.

2. Subject quickly changed.

3. "You wrote that, huh?" Subject quickly changed to either gardening or car repair.

4. Uncomfortable, accusatory look, as if you've just shared Too Much Information, even though your poem wasn't even personal. Person walks away without a word.

5. "Uh, that's interesting. Do you have a copy?" (If you do, it will be heedlessly or nervously crumpled up during the ensuing conversation-change, clearly on its way to the trash bin unread.)

6. Depending on how well the person knows you, either "Um, your poem really isn't that good" or "Dude, your poem sucks! I thought it was really funny how you even could have written that." Nirvana! Someone has actually listened to your poem and said something vaguely apposite about it! And you want to jump right to this exalted level? For shame.

7. "Wow, that really reminds me of some poetry that I wrote once. I think I was about 15..."

[Adam Roberts]

I think we can short-circuit this lengthy process:

1.
2. So ... I understand you came across some people having sex in your office, Scott?
3. You wrote that, huh? Did I ever tell you about my garden?
4. o o
5. That is indeed interesting. Do you have a copy?
6. There's a chance ... just a chance, mind you ... that your poem overplays the 'rivers' conceit just a little...
7. Wow that really reminds me of a short novel I published once, a sort of inverted Pale Fire with a chunk of SF-y prose followed by selections from a fictional poet's oevure. Or 'oovr' as my wife puts it.
Man ... those poems sucked ...
6.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Excellent, Adam. I had just been about to comment about how obviously everyone was following the stages and preserving absolute silence. And if anyone asked why *I* hadn't remained silent, I'd point out that I'd already been exposed to Scott's "Oddman Extraordinaire" ode, so I could quickly jump in and change the subject as my stage 2 response.

The only problem with your summary response is that you imply that we should go back to stage 6 at the end. If only, Adam. No, no one ever goes back to stage 6. From there on, each new poem results in yet another stage 7 reminder of the responder's own poem or story or shopping list. The only brief moment at which anyone will even laugh at or mock your poetry has come and gone.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Rich, you know I don't read poetry. I only write it. Also didn't realize how much work being mocked is. Thought standing there with your ass in your hands sufficed. Have the terrorists already won?

I thought that six on the end there a typo, but I like the idea of it as an invitation to infinte critique. So it stays. (I'd put the matter to a vote, but I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression this is a democracy.)

[Adam Roberts]

The ultimate 6 is clearly an emoticon. Squinny up your eyes and you'll see a middle-aged white man going 'oo bugger, I pressed post instead of preview ...'

But the Scottster says it stays; and so infinite critique it must be.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Scott, if all you had to do to have your poetry mocked was to post a mock-worthy poem, people would spend most of their time doing nothing else. Just imagine looking at one of the many sites like this.

The picture does change if you become in some way a "professional" or "working" poet. This can involve anything from being a professor to once having received a $100 city council arts grant to being a circulating spoken word type who lives out of their car and has sold at least 10 $5 chapbooks.

In this case, no more ad hoc readings for you. If you are a poet who likes to write things down, you will read your work from behind a lectern, at a library, to a crowd of mostly over-50s people. In this case your response will invariably be polite applause, and you will never hear your mockery, which will happen as soon as the vicous, giggling fellow poets in the audience (i.e. the audience) get out of earshot from you. If you are the kind of poet who likes to speak while gesticulating excitedly in front of a mike (or "mic", as you must always say within your head), you will chant your work from a low stage, at a coffee bar, to a crowd of mostly under-30s people. In this case your response will invariably be polite applause, followed by vicious, laid-back mockery from the fellow poets in the audience (i.e. the audience) as soon as they have gotten out of cloud of smoke near the door.

In order to solve the problem of this critical mockery shortage, the young rebels in the second group above instituted the poetry slam. Unfortunately this failed, because the only people who read at them are so extraverted that they are incapable of understanding that they are being mocked.

[Adam Roberts]

That site you link to Rich is presently (15th Dec, 11.10am GMT) leading with 'How Doth The Little Crocodile' by Lewis Carroll. I plan to fly to the US now to buy one of Carroll's $5 chapbooks from the boot of his car and see how he copes with a mike. Or Mic.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Adam, I didn't even notice that the site had poems by more or less well-known poets. I took one look at the "new poems" box to the right and shut down my browser very quickly.

Funny, though -- I intended the seven stages and following etc. as a long jape on Scott's enduring desire to be mocked (what's up with that? in the next thread, you're like "Feel free to point and laugh when I fail"), but now that I've gotten this far, I realize how true the whole thing is. I should write it up as "Poetic Reception in America: 2000-2005" and publish it. In a sociology journal, with survey results and little graphs. (But that would require pointing out that once you get to the level of, say, someone like Galway Kinnell or Harryette Mullen, the whole thing changes again. But earnest adulation isn't as amusing as mockery.)

Anyways, since Adam has run us all the way up to stage 7, I can say that the urge to write off of Langston Hughes is universal. Doing a purely parodic version of one of his poems as a teen (I'm guessing that 10 years ago Scott was a teen, though I could be wrong) is actually pretty good -- I've seen a lot of teen poetry. See, Scott, you just can't win.