Who Reads About Poetry?

     We all know that no one reads contemporary poetry other than those who write it and, perhaps, their friends and relatives.  Indeed, we calculate that the author of most poems today will read it more times than everyone else combined.  Who reads about such poetry, though? 

     When you arrive at a website your browser presents a "certificate" stating where your computer is located, what operating system and web surfer you are using.  This data, collected by the software that drives sites like this one, allows webmasters and bloggers to create a rough demographic picture of your viewership.  For example, this is a snapshot of traffic here in the last little while, starting with country of origin:

United States 146

Ireland        24

India          24

United Kingdom 22

Philippines    21

Ukraine        20

Brazil         15

Netherlands    15

Canada         12

China          10

      Among the English speaking nations, the disparity between the United Kingdom and the United States reflects our Amerocentric spelling and points of reference.  The stereotype of the Irish being a poetic nation finds some evidence here.  Bearing in mind that we're talking about English language discourse and verse, the interest from the Ukraine, Philippines, Brazil, Netherlands and China reminds us how much healthier the art form is outside anglophone countries.  The percentage of visitors from India, which has more English speaking people than any other nation and retains a keen interest in the subject, is quite low in this particular survey.

      Here are the operating systems used by our visitors:

Windows  231 (58%)

iPhone    58 (14%)

Android   45 (11%)

Macintosh 28 (7%)

Linux     18 (4%)

iPad      13 (3%)

Unix       3 (less than 1%)

      The tendencies may be too weak to draw conclusions, but the data sample suggests a demographic that is working/middle class and more savvy than the average computer user.  This is supported by the low number (1%, listed below) of Windows users who cling to Internet Explorer.  7% are likely using mainframes at work and 25% come to us via small-s smart phones, which suggests a somewhat keen interest. 

Chrome           213 (53%)

Firefox           84 (20%)

Safari            73 (18%)

Internet Explorer  8 (1%)

Opera              6 (1%)

UCBrowser          6 (1%)

GSA                5 (1%)

Mobile Safari      5 (1%)

CriOS              1 (less than 1%)

     The list of preferred articles underscores how people might want to influence, be or learn to become poets, but not to read actual poems:

10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The List       - 146

Scansion for Beginners                            - 9

10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - Versers          - 7

The Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Today   - 7

     To be fair, our "Great Poems of our Time" series was 10th overall in readership.  As always, we're gratified to see the interest in verse-writing.

     What caught our eye were the traffic sources or referrals.  That is, what brings people here?

Google             118

Android Quicksearch  2

Mirrors              8

ECabotage           20

     Of 148 visitors, 8 were from forwarding mirrors (e.g. if you type "commercialpoetry.blogspot.co.uk" or "commercialpoetry.blogspot.fr" you are redirected from the facsimile site in the UK or France to here).  120 were from search engines, who are presumed to be newcomers because regulars would normally bookmark your site.  118 of these got there via Google, which speaks to the utter dominance of that particular choice over, say, "Bing".  It also says something about interconnectivity within the poetry world:  There is none.  There are eddies but no river.  That is, with all of the other blogrolls and hypertext out there, few or, in our case, none of the visitors follow links from other poetry web sites.  From talking with other webmasters, we can confirm that the current crop of poetry onliners are among the least curious people on the Internet.  They almost never click on the unknown.  As we've said before, "They are the most cliquish and least clickish."  For what it's worth, this is a complete turnabout from 20 years ago, when rec.arts.poems Usenetters were among the most outgoing or welcoming (though not always welcome or well-mannered) among Internauts.

     When we are posting more regularly we see a number of Facebook and, far less often, Twitter referrals.  This is the audience everyone wants, but far more common are the web searchers.  It is gratifying when Googlers have a native curiosity about the subject at hand but most are students wanting to copy and paste their homework assignment.  The comments section is often flooded with questions like "Can you cite three instances of irony in 'Hamlet'?" or "What is 'The Red Wheelbarrow' about?"

ECabotage

     The most rewarding number is always ECabotage (or "e-cabotage, rhyming with "we sabotage").  As you know, cabotage refers to transportation within a nation, not to be confused with the international voyage that brought these passengers or goods into the country in the first place.  ECabotage involves those who come to your site and, having sampled one of its wares, decides to examine other posts there.  This is a credit to the web editors and to the authors of the material.  For a typical poetry collection, it involves someone coming to read a poem written by themself, a friend or relative and sticking around to examine the works of a stranger. 

      Levels vary from genre to genre.  Sites detailing popular pursuits will have a lot of ECabotage;  a person who goes to NFL.com to read about Tom Brady might well stick around to read the latest on fellow SuperBowl-winning Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.  Given the high percentage of Looky Lus and the low level of poetry consumption in general, 2% ECabotage is encouraging.  That is, if one in fifty arrivals is from another page on the same site, the staff and contributors are doing well.  One in twenty is exceptional and one in ten would be phenomenal.  We here at Commercial Poetry are delighted with our one in six rate, and would be even more so if this were a typical compendium of poems.  In any case, we are grateful to those who take the time to ponder our offerings, all the more so if they sample more than one.

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$200,000,000

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #189

      Suppose you were given $200,000,000 and tasked with improving poetry's profile.  What would you do?

     Where would your focus be?  On writing?  Performing?  Education?  Edutainment?

     What sources of revenue would you design to sustain your efforts?

     How would you define success?

Dana Gioia, California's Poet Laureate

     Dana Gioia has been appointed the California Poet Laureate.  If you recall, Dana wrote poetry's Goldstein Diary, "Can Poetry Matter?", in May of 1991.  This tongue-in-cheek satire featured the most hilarious statement in the history of literature:

     "Never has it been so easy to earn a living as a poet."

      Each "argument" for this conclusion is funnier than the last:

1.  "There have never before been so many new books of poetry published..."

     ...none of which have sold.

2.  "There are now several thousand college-level jobs in teaching..."

     ...but none in poetry, which involves writing and performing.  Not teaching, per se.  

3.  "Congress has even instituted the position of poet laureate, as have twenty-five states..."

     ...not that any of these people "earn a living" for their efforts.

4.  "There has also never before been so much published criticism about contemporary poetry..."

     ...almost none of which would be recognized as "criticism" when poetry was alive.

5.  "...it fills dozens of literary newsletters and scholarly journals," having disappeared from more successful media.

6.  "No one knows how many poetry readings take place each year" because no one attends them.

7.  "With an average of ten poetry students in each graduate section, these programs alone will produce about 20,000 accredited professional poets over the next decade" whose failure proves that "professional poets" is an oxymoron.

8.  "Not long ago, 'only poets read poetry' was meant as damning criticism. Now it is a proven marketing strategy."  One assumes he means "proven failure as a marketing strategy."  Were he serious, we wouldn't wonder why he is no longer working in the private sector.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #123

9.  "Or it might never be reviewed at all."  Reviewed for whom?  An imaginary readership?  Can you say "cart before horse"?

10. "Usually the less a critic knows about verse the more readily he or she dismisses it..." or write endless blather about its content.  Obviously, this article predated Facebook poetry groups.

      When he speaks in earnest Gioia makes a number of points we echo here at Commercial Poetry.  He writes this of the Watermelon Problem:  "The heart sinks to see so many poems crammed so tightly together, like downcast immigrants in steerage. One can easily miss a radiant poem amid the many lackluster ones. It takes tremendous effort to read these small magazines with openness and attention. Few people bother, generally not even the magazines' contributors."

      Of poetry's solipsism he comments:  "Forty years ago, when Dylan Thomas read, he spent half the program reciting other poets' work. Hardly a self-effacing man, he was nevertheless humble before his art. Today most readings are celebrations less of poetry than of the author's ego. No wonder the audience for such events usually consists entirely of poets, would-be poets, and friends of the author."

      While we may quibble, his "six modest proposals" held promise:

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #67

1. When poets give public readings, they should spend part of every program reciting other people's work--preferably poems they admire by writers they do not know personally.

     Agreed.  We have reservations about the next three words:  "Readings should be..."  Perhaps they shouldn't exist.  Perhaps they should be replaced by poetry performances.  Why promote what even the author cannot remember?

2. When arts administrators plan public readings, they should avoid the standard subculture format of poetry only.

     Ayup.  As Shakespeare did.  As bards and raconteurs did.  As Leonard Cohen does.

3. Poets need to write prose about poetry more often, more candidly, and more effectively.

     Heaven forfend!

     Let audiences speak.  Even their silence, owing to their non-existence, says infinitely more than the usual self-promoting spam from poets.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #166

4. Poets who compile anthologies--or even reading lists--should be scrupulously honest in including only poems they genuinely admire.

     This is the problem, not the solution.  Again, anthologists should present poems audiences¹ genuinely admire.

5. Poetry teachers especially at the high school and undergraduate levels, should spend less time on analysis and more on performance. Poetry needs to be liberated from literary criticism. Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry's future.

      We agree wholeheartedly on the value of performance, though obviously not on the definition and import of analysis.

6. Finally poets and arts administrators should use radio to expand the art's audience. Poetry is an aural medium, and thus ideally suited to radio.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #175

      This treatise was written in 1991, just before the world wide web relegated radio--other than NPR--to breaking news, talk shows and programmed music.  More to the point, poetry was never an aural medium;  it is and always was an audiovisual one.  This is one reason why, almost a century ago, poetry was replaced by music (which is an aural medium) on the radio.

      Will Dana Gioia be a good poet laureate for California?

      In his capacity as National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia brought "The Big Read" initiative to the U.S. from Britain in 2004.  Two years later he instituted "Poetry Out Loud".  Thus, Dana has already done more for poetry than all previous laureates--state or federal--combined.

      We have observed an inverse relationship between one's value as a poet versus laureate.  Even if this doesn't remain true, Dana Gioia rates to be the greatest poet laureate ever.

      Watch this space.

---

Footnotes:

¹ - Or would admire, if such audiences existed.

---

   Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below.  Failing that, please mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---

Love is a Weakness - Chapter II - Mother

Love is a Weakness - Chapter I - Meetings

Love is a Weakness - Chapter II - Mother

Chapter II - Mother

     Even though most of us were alive at the time, few can believe what life was like in the decades before Kemla stepped onto that stage.  Who can accept that in the first two decades of the 21st century fewer than 2% of anglophones could recite a single line of contemporary poetry, or that most new "poetry" books didn't include a single verse?  Who can accept that the average English graduate didn't understand how meter worked?  Who can accept that poetry magazines never discussed technique?  Who can accept that for more than a century it was illegal to perform poetry without the author's explicit consent?  Or that poetry didn't produce a single successful writer or performer for more than a generation?  Who could expect those defending the abandonment of centuries of experience and science to be taken seriously after decades of total failure?

     Who could imagine poetry dead?

     Such was the status quo as Kemla finished reading that first stanza.  It would remain so for sixteen more seconds.


Grasshopper from Earl Gray on Vimeo.


     We have the exact timeline from the four cameras trained on the stage.  The Closed Circuit Television one saw the action from behind the podium, looking out into the audience.  It allowed us to count and identify the 43 people present.  Maude's event camera recorded all the performances head-on from across the room.  (With the artist's consent, these videos would be posted online.)  Auden's auction camera caught Kemla from the left at a seventy one degree angle. 

     At the two second mark Rick entered the room from the kitchen and saw Auden filming the performance.  Thinking this unusual, the waiter turned on his cellphone and waited for it to power up.  Standing at 23 degrees to the speaker's left, Rick took a few still photos before switching over to video. 

     At the four second mark Kemla, still looking down, folded the placemat containing the poem she was reading and set it aside.  (A month later this scrap paper would be auctioned off online for $155,000.  It was resold the next day for twice that.)

     At the seven second mark, still without looking up, Kemla switched off the microphone.  The click resounded about the room.  Later, the world.

     At the eleven second mark Rick's phone-cam became fully operational.  He pointed it onstage just in time to snap the most famous photograph in human history.  (It would adorn bedroom walls, posters and memes, in addition to serving as the default wallpaper for 73% of the computers and 62% of the smart phones sold over the next twenty years.)

     At the twelve second mark Kemla did the unthinkable.  She looked into the crowd.  Not at her text, as all readers must.  Not above the attendees' heads.  Not blankly into the space between them.  She peered into their eyes, one by one.  It was not searching.  It was neither defiance nor boldness.  It was not timid.  It was the intimacy of a friend sharing sorrow.  It was the plea of a child being abandoned. 

     The flash from Rick's camera phone caused many to flinch as if tased.  A lady in the front row gasped.

     Four seconds later Kemla spoke with them.  Not over them.  Not down to them.  Not at them.  Not in the monotone of the soporific academic or the Screaming Me-Me.  Each listener became the departed heroine.  With rising urgency and pace, Kemla's tone moved from scolding to exalting, from interrogating to witnessing, from reporting to begging for one more audience.

     "When you died and the bees did not mourn, did the crickets...hesitate? Did they draw long blue chords on each thigh?  Did they speak? Did they say 'She is gone. Face that fact.'?"

      In the space of mere moments her angry tone became one of resignation, then inspiration:

     "It's the truth but, in every other sense, it's a lie!"

      Her volume rose, as if she were speaking to the deaf.  Or the dead.

     "You remain, sui generis, one light that beams as the guide of my passing..."

      Only now did Kemla release the crowd from the grip of her gaze, turning it upwards and into the distance.

     "...and mother to my dreams."

---

Love is a Weakness - Chapter I - Meetings

Love is a Weakness - Chapter II - Mother

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below.  Failing that, please mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---

Is Bad Poetry Good For Poetry?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #187

     We know what poetry is:  speech worth retaining (even in preliterate societies).  Prose is everything else.  What, then, is "bad poetry"?  An oxymoron?  After all, why would anyone commit poor writing to memory?

     By definition, doggerel is bad verse, the classic example¹ being William McGonagall's "The Tay Bridge Disaster".  Obviously, people might learn and repeat it for the same reason most bad verse is preserved:  as song or, in this case, humor.  It won't have the value of a Shakespearean comedy or an opera but it is no less useful than a television sitcom or catchy pop tune.

     Free verse is too scarce to be consequential.  Almost all prose poetry is the former, not the latter.  Again, regardless of whether it is rhythmic or not, speech that no one, including the author, cares to memorize and perform isn't poetry of any sort, good or bad.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #18

     All of this you already knew.  Now things get interesting.

     Bad verse is fun because it is immediately and universally apparent as such.  It encourages both the consumption (e.g. top 40 charts, parodies) and production ("Hell, even I can do that!") of verse.  "Bad free verse"--prose posing as poetry--has the opposite effect.  Those who try reading it wonder why anyone is writing it.  Those who try listening to it feel like they're being machine-gunned with tranquilizer darts.  Rather than attract entertainment audiences and serious practitioners, it drives them away.

     This leads us inexorably to a question that defies theory, let alone answer:  After three generations of abject failure, why do universities and foundations ignore rhythm² and performance in order to concentrate on p[r]ose "poetry"?

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Footnotes:

¹ = In truth, "The Tay Bridge Disaster" is not the worst verse ever written.  Hell, it isn't even the worst William McGonagall's poem about that area!  This dubious distinction belongs to "The Famous Tay Whale".  No, really.

² = "Rhythm" refers to meter and that rarest of birds:  free verse.

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Context

     "The first time Sir Winston Churchill said 'Never before...has so much been owed by so many to so few' he was talking about London bookies."

       - Comedian James Lamb

---

      As with humor, poetry can often benefit from contexts...and the more the merrier.  Let me cite an example of dual contexts provided by the author.
 
      If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this video from the novid "Love is a Weakness", where open mic poetess Kemla says goodbye to her lover and friends:



     Once you've experienced it as a goodbye, consider its genesis.

      Kemla originally wrote this as her wedding vow.

      Try re-reading it now.

      Oh, and did you recognize it as a sonnet?

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Love is a Weakness

You showed me how to wait in Capistrano.
You showed me love is a weakness stronger than power. 
You showed me grace is the present tense of sorrow
but what time can take from us was never ours.

---------------------------------------------------------------

You showed me home is a person not a place.
I watch the time collapsing in your wake.
My hands retrace your touch across my face,
along my breast, toward the next mistake.

---------------------------------------------------------------

You said there cannot be a little candor;
the truth, once trimmed, can never last.
You swore you'd never flatter, never pander.
I promised you an unregretted past.
If chance is kind you'll understand this vow,
this wish, a thousand happy nights from now.

---

Critique - Twins and Triplets

Amber Rambharose

     Tim Green of Rattle magazine critiques submissions from his subscribers as part of a popular feature.  This is helpful to potential contributors since it shows precisely defines the editor's aesthetics and prosodic interest (if any).  This, the first in a series, examines "Portrait of the Second Wife as Understudy" from Rattle #47, Spring 2015, written by Amber Rambharose.  Please take a moment to read it now.

      What we have here is an excellent story with a fine, crisp ending. 

      Is it a poem, though?

      You tell me.  As you read it can you imagine yourself "owning" it?  Memorizing, performing or quoting it, as you might "High Flight" or a passage from "Hamlet"?  Can you imagine anyone else wanting to?  More to the point, is it written in a manner that would facilitate this?  How does it compare to others of its ilk?  As an attempt at a climactic poem, it aims to start slowly and gain in momentum, pace, intensity, sound and rhythm as it goes along.  How does it compare to the modern archetype, "Studying Savonarola" by Margaret A. Griffiths?  What is missing?  What could be trimmed?      

Stages

     Every poet we know keeps a notebook or file containing random thoughts gathered over the course of time.  For "avante garde" types the next step is to assign a meaningless fake generic (e.g. "conceptualization", "ideational", etc.) name to the inchoate scratches and find someone naive enough to publish them.  (The latter task is alarmingly easy these days.)  By contrast, an experienced poet will often record these musings in rhythmic strings.  This is a function of habit, permeating everything the educated verser writes.  We'd wager that there are fewer rhythms and sound repetitions in most "poems" today than in Derek Walcott's shopping lists.  Or this blog, for that matter.  Such raw material is often overwrought, as these throwaway lines attest:

...retrace the echo of your fingers.  Let us be
a bright mandala in the waves.

...as hunger is the opposite of death.    

...as if you print your words on apple blossoms.

     The second stage is to cull many of these lines thematically into one piece, and then into individual paragraphs or strophes to form an outline.  Then the work of adding the actual poetry begins, culminating in a first draft.  After considerable fine tuning we have something worth showing an editor.

     Notes -> Outline -> Draft -> Revisions => Submission + Audience = Poem

     "Portrait of the Second Wife as Understudy" is a draft, one that exhibits two serious problems and two blinding flashes of genius.

 Sonics

     Compare:

    "If even, I'm leavin'"

     ...to...

     "Veni.  Vidi.  Vici." ("I came. I saw. I conquered.")

     The first is a boast by NFL Wide Receivers to CornerBacks trying to cover them.  It means that, while the CB thinks he has the WR in check, the fact is that the latter is about to use his superior speed to get clear and catch a pass.  It is a contrast between belief and reality.

     The Latin phrase, on the other hand, is a process:  three things Julius Caesar did in the order that he did them.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #173

     When repetitions are not for dramatic effect, as in "Oh, please. Please," they follow this same Rule of 2 and 3.  If the same word recurs in pairs, like "I sighed my sigh" and "believes what it wants to believe", the mind expects a comparison, especially given that poetry is an acerbic form and "I sighed" or "believes what it wants to" (especially after "believable" much earlier) would have sufficed.

     This applies to repetitions of phonemes, too.  Throughout the poem Ms. Rambharose uses proximate, conspicuous assonance and alliteration isolated in pairs far more often then in triplets (e.g. "for months, fine-tuning the flutter") or multitudes¹.
    
the way the script dictated. I threw my pupils
up as wide as windows. The orchestra swelled

     The long "u" sounds in "threw" and "pupils" stand out as the only occurences in the strophe.  By contrast, the "w" from "wide as windows" is nicely presaged in "way" and later confirmed in "swell".  The rest of the poem exhibits far more pop-up pairs ("tell by scent", "sock slide down around", "her heart") than integrated iterations.  All of this said, it is far more encouraging to see slightly off-kilter sonics than the typical prose with linebreaks. 

 Concision

     When poems have two major deficiencies the first is usually sonics and the second is rhythms.  Not so here.  This piece has long strings of binaries, starting with the iambic first sentence and ending (with little tweaking) at the appropriately imperative trochaic coda:

Tell the stage director to place a pair
of Prada espadrilles [beside] the front door.
Size eight. Dark blue. Exactly²
where she left them.

  The trinaries need considerable work, as do the transitions, but these touches of mastery can wait.  For now, the piece's obesity requires attention.  It's more than removing the rhythm-killing pronoun, "my", in line 2.  Redundancies range from (S3-L4) "brought to me" to (S2-L4) "at precisely the right moment" (do orchestras normally swell at the wrong moment?).  There is a flabbiness in the manipulative first and third entreaties here:

Tell me I am better
than she was. Tell me my breasts are higher.
Tell me I am everything
you ever wanted.

     These would benefit from being more concrete and, perhaps, sensual.  Think Michael Ondaatje's "Cinnamon Peeler" here. 

     Strategic decisions need to be made in order to pare this down to size.  As it is, I'm guessing that many who started this offering didn't read the whole thing.  (Did you?)

     Amber Rambharose is something rare among poets, young or old:  she gives a damn about her audience, not just her readers.  She studies the craft and will be worth watching sooner rather than later.

Coming Soon:  "Love is a Weakness", Chapter 1

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Footnotes:

¹ - e.g. the scintillating "n", "d" and "a" sounds of:

     "into the dance she had abandoned. If I...",

     ...culminating in all three together for the third time in this single phrase:

     "hadn’t".

     This comes right after the word "changed", no less!

² - Ignore the faintly enunciated "E" in "Exactly".  Treat it as anacrusis.

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Vertical Language

     We should not be surprised that other languages lack a future (Japanese) or past perfect (spoken French) tense.  It could be argued that, in addition to needing participles to form the past imperfect ("I have seen...") and future ("I will see...") tenses, English lacks a present one! 

     Consider these uses of the "present" tense of the verb "to see":

1a.  "I am seeing the doctor."

     Surely the present progressive must represent what is progressing presently, right?

1b.  "I am seeing the doctor on Friday."

     Apparently not!  Worse yet, it might not refer to any singular, non-recurring event:

1c.  "I am seeing the doctor on Fridays."

     Assuming today is not Friday, the above refers to the past and the future--everything but the present!

1d.  "You can see the doctor now."

     The word "now" guarantees the medical professional's current visibility, right?  Actually, this is something a clinic receptionist might say while motioning you toward the physician's office.  Thus, it implies the healer is not in sight yet--the exact opposite of what the words mean literally.


2.  "It happened about five years ago.  I get up one morning, go to the clinic and see the doctor."

3.  "...was blind, but now I see."

     This implies a permanent change in status, "now" meaning "now and/or in the future", the paradox being it could be said or sung with one's eyes closed.

     This confusion comes before we contemplate the hundreds of irregular verbs, of which see/seen/saw is one of the least confounding.

     The five C's for communication are:

1.  Comprehensibility

    Whole web sites are devoted to expressions absent from English.

2.  Comprehension/Clarity

    I'm told this actually makes sense:  "The man the professor the student has studies Rome."

3.  Cohesion

    Much of our humor stems from absurdities in our grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

4.  Concision

     "All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life."

5.  Consistency

    Exceptions to "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'":  beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify, deity, deign, dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty, foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige, greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist, leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient, rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik, society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight, weir, weird, etc.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #1

     How many of these does English do and do well?  Let me try the math:  um...3...multiplied by...plus...uh...carry the one...subtracting...yeah...

     None of them.  Seriously.  Not even close.

     Nevertheless, thanks to commerce and the Internet, in a few generations every educated individual on the planet will speak English.  At that point language will have nowhere left to expand on earth.  We and it will start thinking and growing vertically.  Even St. Augustine would begin to dream of the stars. 

     Consider how ill-prepared English is for interplanetary exploration.  For example, we know our universe is expanding but what do we call what it's spreading into?  We can't call it "space" because that is the stuff of our universe--the thing doing the expanding.  How do we identify the area beyond?

     That's just vocabulary.  We need modes of conceptualization, a language not for our tongues but our imaginations.  We need nouns and modifiers that have states (i.e. solid, liquid, gaseous, like ice, water and steam) of being.  We need temporary, permanent and, in speaking of Schrödinger's Cat, indefinite verbs. 

     It's a long shopping list.

1. Vertical Language

2. Horizontal Language

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Addendum:

English Is CUH-RAY-ZEE  - Words by Josh White, Jr. and Pete Seeger. Sung by Pete Seeger 

English is the most widely spoken language in the history of the planet.
One out of every seven human beings can speak or read it.
Half the world's books, 3/4 of the international mail are in English.
It has the largest vocabulary, perhaps two million words,
And a noble body of literature. But face it:
English is cuh-ray-zee!

Just a few examples: There's no egg in eggplant, no pine or apple in pineapple.
Quicksand works slowly; boxing rings are square.
A writer writes, but do fingers fing?
Hammers don't ham, grocers don't groce. Haberdashers don't haberdash.
English is cuh-ray-zee!

If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth?
It's one goose, two geese. Why not one moose, two meese?
If it's one index, two indices; why not one Kleenex, two Kleenices?
English is cuh-ray-zee!

You can comb through the annals of history, but not just one annal.
You can make amends, but not just one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one, is it an odd or an end?
If the teacher taught, why isn't it true that a preacher praught?
If you wrote a letter, did you also bote your tongue?
And if a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
English is cuh-ray-zee!

Why is it that night falls but never breaks and day breaks but never falls?
In what other language do people drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?
Ship by truck but send cargo by ship? Recite at a play but play at a recital?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?
English is cuh-ray-zee!

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same
When a wise man and a wise guy are very different?
To overlook something and to oversee something are very different,
But quite a lot and quite a few are the same.
How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the next?
English is cuh-ray-zee!

You have to marvel at the lunacy of a language in which your house can burn down
While it is burning up. You fill out a form by filling it in.
In which your alarm clock goes off by going on.
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?

Well, English was invented by people, not computers
And reflects the creativity of the human race.
So that's why when the stars are out, they're visible,
But when the lights are out, they're invisible.
When I wind up my watch I start it, but when I wind up this rap,
I end it. English is cuh-ray-zee!

---

Whoda thunk?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #64

     Nanette Asimov, niece of Isaac, reports of "Shakespeare getting little love from American colleges."  Apparently, only 4 of 52 major U.S. universities require even one course on the Bard for its English majors. 

     It's almost like there is a prejudice against things we don't use or don't think we use anymore.  Why, next we'll hear that our children are not learning Latin and handwriting!
    
     Gee, who could have predicted that contemporary poetry being dead for more than half a century would begin to adversely affect interest in the classics?

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---

State of the Union - 2015

     As you know, there are three essentials in poetry:

1.  Audience;

     We are witnessing the sad demise of the last generation to be alive while poetry was.  It is grim accounting but we could, I suppose, take some tiny, cold comfort in knowing that the decline in poetry's audience is bottoming out.  Is there reason to hope it might begin to rise soon?

Margaret Ann Griffiths

2.  Writing;

     The caliber of composition has obviously declined, slowly but steadily, since "Prufrock".  Poetry fundamentals disappearing from our education system in the middle of the 20th century accelerated this process.  Nevertheless, thanks in large part to the Internet, it can be argued that poetry struck its nadir in the 1980s and is beginning to turn around.  Yes, I might be guilty of some generational narcissism but I'd have no reservations about pitting today's best versers¹ against anyone after Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) and Robert Frost (1874-1963).    

3.  Presentation.

     No matter how we feel about the quality of text and the quantity of listeners (tanl), we can only be optimistic about the platforms for poetry:  stage, video, multimedia, e-book, et cetera.  In terms of performance, I believe that we are seeing less "Poet Voice" in readings.  It seems academics are being shamed into learning the rudiments of delivery.  [Shrug]

     You know that parable about the frog on the hotplate that keeps adjusting to the rising temperature until it boils to death?  You know how you're unaware that your house smells until you return from vacation?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #10

     Recently, I took an eighteen month hiatus from live poetry.  When I returned to slam I assumed, based on how little had changed in the previous two decades, that I would be subjected to the usual diary entries and diatribes delivered with an auctioneer's pace and jet engine's volume.  The focus was still bellybuttons and politics but the tone had morphed from strident to coaxing. 

     This was too good to be true so I discounted it as an aberration.  Days later, though, I attended a youth slam where, much to my surprise, I encountered the same sea change² in approach.  Slammers were talking like intimates, not whingers or demagogues, to audience members, not at them.

     I reported this to some of my online buddies and was convinced that this phenomenon may not be as localized as I thought.  Have you experienced a similar shift from screaming to speaking or are your open mics and slams the same as always?

     Is emo dead?

---

Footnotes:

¹ - ...including that rarest of animals, the actual free verser.  I'm not so sanguine about our current crop of prose poets, though.

² - I also noticed a profound demographic switch that we'll discuss in my next post.  Stay tuned!

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---

10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The Geeks

      We'd like to thank those who responded to our previous post, "10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The List".  As our regular readers know, it was a break from our tradition of talking about poetry and poems rather than poets but, as one commenter with a brilliant sense of irony said, it worked as "clickbait".  (We have never opted for advertisements here and won't guess what people must think of other publications, most of which concentrate exclusively on poets and author-centric writing.)

      If you want to make a point about people treating poetry as a professional or social enterprise rather than as a craft, though, check out this spike in our readership when we discussed poets instead: 

      Reaction was largely positive, with strangers thanking us for presenting an objective view of the great poets of the century.  Most understood, at least instinctively, the authority's role in bird-dogging¹ great contemporary verse.  There were a few who, not comprehending anything about geekdom, confused it with its antipodal opposite, the PoBiz, in suggesting that friendship played a role in the decisions.  (Seriously?  Geeks?  Having friends?)  

      To accommodate those who showed such interest in the judges, we thought we would take a moment to define those who participate here regularly or as "Gray for a Day" or judges.  With a hat tip to Jeff Foxworthy...



     ...let us examine the unbearable lightness of being a geek.

1.  If your friends and relatives know that only you will give them an informed and honest evaluation of their writing, you may be a geek.  Or obsessive.  Or both.

2.  If you think "PoBiz" is slang for [enabling] "the Dunning-Kruger² effect" you may be a geek.

3.  If you know whether "Prufrock" and "The Red Wheel Barrow" are free verse or metrical you may be a geek.

4.  Hell, if you care whether "Prufrock" and "The Red Wheel Barrow" are free verse or metrical you may be a geek.

Paul Stevens "discovered" both top poets.

5.  If you can evaluate work without giving a shart about the author's age, size, shape, nationality, bank account, history, sex, politics or religion you may be a geek.

6.  If you view Earl's Laws of Poetry as a Ferenghi regards the Rules of Acquisition you may be a geek.

7.  If you know that the difference between free verse and prose poetry has nothing to do with linebreaks you may be a geek.

8.  If you have referred anyone to rulez 4 aspiring ~poets~ or turned from a pouting workshopper, saying "Dennis, the rules, please", you may be a geek.

9.  If you have ever quoted Debi Zathan's famous anti-whinger rant in whole or in part you may be a geek.

   "But what really pisses me off when you get right down to it, is the unmitigated gall of so many who post here...who have the patronizing, self-absorbed opinion that the person who critiques their poetry has not a clue, has never loved, has never grieved, has never existed in all of the frames they write so badly about. THAT (at the moment) is what really pisses me off."

10.  If you have ever quoted Gustave Flaubert's famous anti-corazoner rant in whole or in part you may be a geek.

    "I should rather be skinned alive than exploit my feelings in writing. I refuse to consider Art a drain-pipe for passion, a kind of chamberpot, a slightly more elegant substitute for gossip. No, no! Genuine poetry is not the scum of the heart."

11.  If you have had to restrain yourself, lest you quote Rob Evans in whole or in part,  you may be a geek.

    "Of all the branches of the arts, poetry continues to be treated with the most indifference by the general public.  Why?  Because practitioners like you continue to demand so little of yourself and others."

Usenetter Aidan Tynan

12.  If you have had to restrain yourself, lest you quote Aidan Tynan in whole or in part, you may be a geek.

    "Please give me one reason why the aforesaid could be classified as anything other than badly written, unimaginative and cliché-festooned. This poem, for lack of a more appropriate term, seems to represent, to me, everything poetry is not about, that is: vague references to vaguely traumatic personal events renumerated listlessly as a piece of abstract journalistic schlock (with random line breaks to disguise it as poetry) superimposed on a bland moral-aesthetic grid. Superficial in every way, and lacking any sort [of] effect."

    "Sadly, bad poems are not invisible."

    "Yes, how selfish of someone to spend time giving an informed critique of another's work."

13.  If you understand the difference between annotation and criticism you may be a geek.

Peter John Ross, father of modern critique.

14. If you can say crap like "Poetry is lateral thinking stacked sonically" without people knowing that you're joking you may be a geek.

15. If that line from "There are Sunflowers in Italy" stopped you in your tracks you may be a geek.

16. If you know or care who wrote "...the waiting moment, buckling into circumstance..." you may be a geek.

17. If you cannot read Ferlinghetti without quoting Manny Delsanto (i.e. "Please tell me there were no dice involved in choosing your words") you may be a geek.

18. If you cannot read Billy Collins without quoting Gerard Ian Lewis (i.e. "You use words like a magpie uses wedding rings") you may be a geek.

19. If you cannot read "The Paris Review" without thinking of Richard Epstein (i.e. "Many poems would benefit by having no text") you may be a geek.

20.  If you cannot read Rumi without muttering "Shouldn't platitudes this trite rhyme or something?" you may be a geek.

21. If you know that Spondee Denial, Content Regency, and Convenient Poetics are bullshit you may be a geek.

San Francisco 49er coach Bill Walsh (1931-2007)

22. If you accept that the final word on individuality and creativity came from a football coach you may be a geek.

23. If you understand that those telling you poetry is alive are trying to sell you something (i.e. bad poetry) you may be a geek.

24. If George Bernard Shaw wrote your life motto, "The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who don't have it", you may be a geek.

25. If you can keep your head when all about you are quoting Timothy Steele you may be a geek.

---

Footnotes:

¹ - A typical scenario is a depressed editor needing a jewel to caketop an otherwise mediocre publication.  The conversation goes:

Editor:  "Say, I'm in a bind.  Do you have anything for me?"

Geek:  "Utter contempt?"

Editor:  "Very funny.  Seriously, though, can you help me out?"

Geek pulls a frayed piece of paper from his or her back pocket (hence the expression "pulling [stuff] out of my ass"), shows it to the editor and another brilliant edition goes to print.


² - Indeed, antipathy toward the list and its progenitors rose and fell in lockstep with the level of the respondent's overconfidence.  Who could have predicted that?

---

Index:

1. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - Preamble

2. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - Versers

3. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The List

4. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The Geeks

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---

10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The List

10.  Jennifer Reeser     Eratosphere

     As a bayou metrist with a special interest in Russian literature, Jennifer is often compared with Georgian poet A.E. Stallings.  This is like Derek Edwards being the second most famous person from Timmins.  Without question, Ms. Reeser is the more accessible.

     Her lesser works may suffer from clanging rhymes and incongruous voices but pieces like "Compass Rose" transcend what most are able to do in verse.

     She has a bright future in front of her.

9. Marc Kelly Smith      Slam

     While "lightning stitching the sky" is remarkable, the text of Marc's poems will not win him any awards.  Nevertheless, M.K. Smith (1949-Present) invented the slam and remains one of its best least awful performers.  As such, one could argue that, so far, at least, he has had a far more visible impact on the world than all living print and pixel poets combined.  True, given the choice between monotonous readings and 3-minute scream fests the public will still go with TV sitcoms, but at least Marc has given us that second option.

     This recital with hand gestures and without eye contact may be about as close to narrative or lyric poetry performance as we've seen lately:



8. Catherine Ann Rogers   Poets.org

    Geeks aren't swayed much by awards, but do give credence to contests, especially if they are judged blindly by authorities.  An English professor at Savannah State University, Catherine Rogers wrote the Interboard Poetry Community's "Poem of the Year" twice, in  2006, judged by Mark Doty, and 2005, from Judy Kronenfeld.

     In "Refusals" we see three things demonstrated:

1. why Ms. Rogers is on this list (and why many fine non-versers aren't); and,


2. why "Autumn Sky Poetry" is considered one of the two most astounding sources of poetry on earth; and,


3. the difference between free verse and non-rhythmic writing.  After a mixture of iambic and anapestic strings we see the first section end with these anapests:
   
   Each night | I unrav|el your choice.
   Each morn|ing I wake | to your death.

7. Julie Carter           Usenet

      "Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards...and in high heels!" -- Bob Thaves (1982)

      Without question, Julie Carter is one of the best sonneteers to never win (or be entered to win?) a Nemerov.  As you can see from the .pdf version of "pseudophakia" (2006), Julie's command of phrasing and imagery matches that of anyone short of Karen Solie and Dorianne Laux in the Print World...and Julie does it in verse.  Her down-to-earth style stresses rhythm over sound.

      Our spies tell us Ms. Carter is preparing another collection.  If past experience is any guide, it rates to be the most tragically overlooked book of 2015.  You read it here first!

6. Rose Kelleher          Eratosphere

     The fact that Rose Kelleher is a programmer and technical writer may have helped her cause among our resident geeks.  The mix of humor and elegance in her work reminded many of the poet who tops this list--as does the pacing in "Neanderthal Bone Flute".

     Seventh was the lowest vote that Ms. Kelleher received in the initial voting.  Over time, though, a strange prejudice against consistency seeped in.  Rose's ability to do everything well, and do it in almost every piece, made her a Ted Williams among those wanting a Babe Ruth.  I suppose that home runs give judges something to cite, even if it means burying the fact that Ruth led the league in strikeouts, too.

5. Rhina Polonia Espaillat Eratosphere

    Born in the Dominican Republic in 1932, Rhina Espaillat is often mentioned as one of the top Spanish-language poets of our time.  This raises an interesting question:  "Is being, say, 15th in a culture where poetry is very much alive more impressive than being 5th where poetry is dead?"

    As the finale in "Changleling" demonstates, Rhina's mastery of sound is exceeded by only one other living poet.

This stranger
is you, is all the you there is, my mother,
whose gentler face is gone beyond recall,
and I must love you so, or not at all.

     It isn't hard to see how she won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award twice.  It's equally difficult to find fault with the author of these lines from "Find Work":

she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time

4. Derek Walcott                                    Print

     That Derek Walcott (1930-01-23 to 2017-03-17) may be the most decorated poet on the planet meant nothing to the geeks.  His medium made things difficult;  some of this books were out of print, making them hard to find in stores or libraries.  Once sufficient copies were located, Walcott's magnus opus, "Omerus", impressed everyone but that was 1990.  "The Prodigal" (2004) and "White Egrets" (2010) drew considerable praise but what convinced skeptics was a technical article from a now-defunct online forum that someone had saved on their hard drive.

     George Elliott Clarke didn't quite make the list.  No other page poet came close.

3. Alicia Elsbeth Stallings  Eratosphere

    While she lacks the common touch we see in the top two, Alicia remains the class of the crossovers.  "Antiblurb" is a masterpiece but what is more stunning is that it is representive of her work is a whole.  If you want to make the argument that knowledge of fundamentals adds charm and consistency to an artist's work Ms. Stallings is your model.

    At the beginning of her career Alicia had to use initials to resubmit poems that were rejected by editors who knew from her first name that she was female.  As you can see, the online community in general and geeks in particular have no time for such discrimination.

2. D.P. Kristalo          Poets.org, Gazebo

    The fact that DPK wrote the most remarkable metrical poem of the last half century wasn't enough.  Granted, the contention that "Joie de Mourir" was in the same class met with guffaws.  (N.B.:  Our voters are not drug tested.)  Nevertheless, her elegy for Maz ended any discussion of her as a fluke.

    When one's worst poem begins with "Let us speak of rumors first;  the pallid truth can wait till later" and ends with "...it will rain champagne before I tell you that I loved her" the judges' job becomes a nobrainer.  One of the best reasons for studying the elements of the craft is to appreciate everything DPK has been able to do with them.

1. Margaret Ann Griffiths Gazebo, Eratosphere, PFFA

    Imagine if the most knowledgeable critics on earth voted T.S. Eliot the poet they'd most want to see in an anthology five months before he wrote his signature poem.  Now suppose "Prufrock" was not a collaboration with the finest prosodist of the era but a solo, unedited first draft.  Would anyone argue about who was the finest poet of the 20th century?

    The moment Margaret (aka "Maz" or "Grasshopper") Ann Griffiths (1947-05-23 to 2009-07-13) entered a contest--slogan, jingle or poetry--the fight for second place began.  If you ask poetry fans who the greatest poet of all time is you will get a variety of answers until someone mentions Shakespeare, whereupon everyone squawks "We assume you meant other than him!"  When you ask who the best poet of the 21st century is you must explicitly add "...including Maz."     

     Needless to say, the vote for Grasshopper as this century's #1 poet was quick and unanimous.

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Index:

1. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - Preamble

2. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - Versers

3. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The List

4. 10 Greatest 21st Century Poets - The Geeks

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to follow us, contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please befriend us, "Earl Gray", on Facebook.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel

---