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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #72 |
1. Grammar
a. a set of forms all of which contain a particular element, especially the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.
b. a display in fixed arrangement of such a set, as boy, boy's, boys, boys'.
2. an example serving as a model; pattern. Synonyms: mold, standard; ideal, paragon, touchstone.
3.a. a framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community.
b. such a cognitive framework shared by members of any discipline or group: the company’s business paradigm.
In "'Kill List': A Bad Poem as Provocation" on the Bark blog, Brett Ortler wrote:
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #74 |
A brief example:
Lanny Jordan Jackson is comfortable.
Jewel is a rich poet.
Josef Kaplan is comfortable.
Justin Katko is a rich poet.
This continues for 58 pages.
The first question: Is it a poem?
Is this a question?
Answer: Sure.
Say what?!?
While much conceptual...
As you know, "ideational" and "conceptual" are fashionable buzzwords among Content Regents.
...poetry wouldn’t be considered poetry by previous generations of poets...
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #69 |
...(could you see Goethe reading a translated version of Josef Kaplan’s "Kill List" and considering it a poem?), this doesn’t mean that "Kill List" isn’t poetry.
Actually, it sort of does. The only audience poetry has ever had has always rejected dull prose with linebreaks posing as poetry. This constant has been more reliable than the speed of light.
A wide swathe of poetry (free verse, prose poems) wouldn’t have been considered poetry, but so what?
My sentiments exactly.
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25 |
"Paradigms!?" Mind-numbingly dull 58 page directories have paradigms?
Notions of what is and is not art change, and I’ve got no problem with that.
Nor do I, unless these changes occur only in the minds of failed artists.
Next question: Is it any good?
Oh, this should be fun.
It’s terrible.
Yes, but terrible what? I would say humor but the closest thing to a punch line is the copyright notice. (Are they really worried about being plagiarized?)
Seriously, I challenge anyone to read this drivel without asking: "Can you imagine not knowing the difference between this and poetry?"
While "Kill List" is getting some attention, I’d argue that it’s only because of its provocative title and the fact that it is essentially a long exercise in name-dropping.
Let me get this straight. An artless, enervating "long exercise in name-dropping" is accepted as poetry (of all things!) but deemed "terrible" because it's "a long exercise in name-dropping"? That makes less sense than saying rhyming verse is poetry but that "The Tay Bridge Disaster" is terrible because it's rhyming verse.
In that respect, the poem seems to be as much a marketing ploy as it [is] a poem.
Yes, much as Chernobyl was a marketing ploy for nuclear energy.
