An introduction to the 21st Century’s most controversial poetry movements.

BY KENNETH GOLDSMITH

Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned. But not in ways you would imagine. This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve . . . yet no one means a word of it. Come to think of it, no one’s really written a word of it. It’s been grabbed, cut, pasted, processed, machined, honed, flattened, repurposed, regurgitated, and reframed from the great mass of free-floating language out there just begging to be turned into poetry. Why atomize, shatter, and splay language into nonsensical shards when you can hoard, store, mold, squeeze, shovel, soil, scrub, package, and cram the stuff into towers of words and castles of language with a stroke of the keyboard? And what fun to wreck it: knock it down, hit delete, and start all over again. There’s a sense of gluttony, of joy, and of fun. Like kids at a touch table, we’re delighted to feel language again, to roll in it, to get our hands dirty. With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more? Instead, let’s just process what exists. Language as matter; language as material. How much did you say that paragraph weighed?

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Condomania lives.
Couples pack their separate cars.
Mobile Manor is the next trailer park casualty.

Sonny James, I wish it hadn’t happened.

Remember the man caught in a vacuum
sex act that got him 90 days in prison?
Maybe he came back under a different name.
Blessed are those who go in circles.
I’m tired of my room smelling like Bengay.
I’m tired of watching nipples that aren’t mine.

I am the great broken pecker.
I used to believe
in an omnipresent Trotsky force,
and laugh at internet dating, flyfishing,
Woody Allen’s failed romantic comedies.
I used to hum along to
Sinatra covers in our elevators,
and watch sportspub brawls.

Last week the Knicks proved
there is no such thing as a rebuilding year.

Maybe I’ll turn Bedouin,
travel to the outskirts of the Haraldskær marsh,
watch the sky for comet Lulin,
and the mystery of a shrinking violet zodiac.

-Chad in Virginia Beach (search phrase “i wish i hadn’t”)

         The last time the cat meowed, he meowed so much that my husband passed away! My companion, my 16 year old cat, meowed at dawn for MONTHS afterwards. In the last few months though, he has begun howling like a banshee instead. He hasn’t done it all the time, as it started last year after he had to go to the vet for some issues. Since then, he has meowed a little for no reason. Now, since the weather is nice, he jumps from our fence and creeps into the woods. “Maybe you shouldn’t come around here anymore!” he meows sternly to the other cats that come around. He repeats his meow, each time putting extra feeling into it. “The funniest thing happened last night.” My neighbor told me yesterday. “I found out there is no way to stop a cat from meowing.”

-Abby in Florida (search phrase “the last time the cat meowed”)

Rare cirrostratus galactic molecular clouds known
as Altocumulus Castellanus with trailing Virga
have caused a sensation after being spotted

for the first time in a decade.
The sea and the sky are now complete.
I’m seeing the bottom part of a low cloud

interacting with a very different air layer just
below it. The sky has been ugly all day, plagued
with abnormal shaped jellyfish clouds floating around.

This place has been here for years, I remember
some time ago…

[photographed on Wednesday evening 20 May 2009]

Apparently these are not unique.
Stunned weather-watchers flash, nude.
We are in the middle of the strait separating

the islands of Flores and Knox County, Ohio.
It finally moved towards the bank of clouds
above Onezskoe Lake, burned a red hole

in the shining jellyfish west of Petrosavodsk.
There is land above the wing now.
And though we chased the sun at 516 mph,

It got to the horizon first.

-Michael J. Alfaro is publisher and editor of Silenced Press.  (search phrase “jellyfish clouds”)

I still don’t have a bloody clue
How us lefties know and use
The seven dirty words-
Better than the wing nuts-
For his lovely eulogy.
So much of it seemed so right,
Felt so comfortable.

A good day for writing;
There is no electricity.
I don’t know what she
Could ever do to top
That one; she’d
Probably have to behead
A row of puppies with a
Single swipe of her
Extra-long pinky nail.

Wound up with a charming
Leftist- Be honest, Be
Pragmatic, But show
Courage and Confidence!
(A little warm-
Can you cool down?)
Adored and refined- danger
of putting too positive
A spin on politics.

Allow me to honestly tell you
That facts are facts;
Don’t sugarcoat it, because
You’ll eat that too.
Make it seem undesirable,
Or like a punishment-
Give it to me fresh.
Poor antifascist doesn’t know
what a fascist is!

How did you really feel?
He hit the ceiling hard,
And I don’t think he wants
Any of that ever again-
Another weird author
At breaking point.
Enough; don’t try.
This is called making
Your point loud
And clear.

-Janet in Richmond (search phrase “don’t sugar coat it”)

More

With White House Poetry Jam, a new era

“We’re here to celebrate the power of words,” President Obama said. Words “help us appreciate beauty and also understand pain. They inspire us to action.” He introduced the first lady as his poet.

Preorders up for Ryan Adams’ new book of poems (we’re not fans of his poetry, but love his music)

Kepler probe begins search for Earth-like worlds

If poets are but liars then I must be one of the best
This is, of course, a mild confession
For poets, tho’ liars by profession,
Endeavor to give an air of truth to their fictions
The poet lies for the improvement of reality
Though reviewers seem not to have noticed this

I don’t know that poets necessarily tell the truth about themselves
But great poets are liars with such impeccable gifts you think you’re hearing the truth
Believe in poets, and they are no longer liars
Though beware: he would be a liar who just spoke the truth
For it is the poets you do follow who go astray!

-Margaret in Richmond (search phrase: “poets are liars”)