Rule #1

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #1

      Normally, when Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" are compared it is because of their meters¹, which some seem to find challenging.  As illustrated in "Scansion for Intermediates", "Prufrock" is a nobrainer:  perfect iambic trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter and heptameter after some extra syllables ("anacrusis") at the beginning of some lines.  "Musée des Beaux Arts" is the mirror opposite;  its curginated accentual meter (think "Beowulf" or "The Red Wheelbarrow" here) is far less clear and attempts to scan it as accentual-syllabic meter result in a lot of extra syllables at ("hypercatalexis") or near (late anapestic substitutions) the ends of the lines.

      Instead, let's examine the voices through the prism of Rule #1:  "Never say anything in a poem that you wouldn't say in a bar."

      The issue is how relaxed or tipsy we would have to be to use that language at that pace to focus on that subject among friends in a lounge.

     We aren't talking about the dreaded "verse voice":  headbanging cadences, often with unusual "promotions" and long endstops, committed by performance newcomers whenever they discern meter.  We aren't talking about niche verse written strictly for those with a narrow interest (e.g. football fans, interpreters, other poets, et cetera).  Nor are we referring to the outliers:  soporific poetry readings¹ that sound like a pot party in an opium den; or, frenetic slams that seem like an Ecstacy bash at a meth lab.

Musée des Beaux Arts

      The moderate tempo and plain language in "Beaux Arts" (Appendix A, below) implies recent arrival at the bar.  Aside from some overmodification by later modernistic standards, the only phrase that raises eyebrows is the initial inversion:

About suffering they were never wrong,

      We bear in mind that a poem may be a part of a conversation at that bar.  Imagine if a friend were to say something like "What did those old masters know about suffering?"  Now imagine a speaker who raises and wags a correcting finger before saying "Suffering?  About suffering they were never wrong."

      The rest of the poem is merely one person trying to make a an impression on a bunch of friends.  As such, we'd consider "Musée des Beaux Arts" a one beer poem, reflecting comradeship² more than inebriation.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

      T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"  is the prototypical hypermodern poem.  "Beaux Arts" (Appendix B, below) could be seen as the best of many attempts to recapture T.S. Eliot's success but the two works are antipodal opposites in speed and egocentricity, if not diction.

      The language is slightly more elevated in "Prufrock", the overmodification not quite so salient.  The main differences, though, are continuity and focus;  "Prufrock" comes in fits and starts of utter self-absorption.  That level of self-centeredness, so common among today's aspirants, suggests the speaker has been at that watering hole for longer than booze has been distilled.

      Unlike any successful poem since, "Prufrock" is a 12-pack poem in the United States, a 6-packer anywhere else.  Were it less coherent, as so much of today's cryptocrap is, the bartender would cut the speaker off and signal for the designated driver.

Conclusion

      Together, these two pieces define the endpoints for successful verse.  Between them, the Suds Spectrum concerns itself with issues of language, tension and focus.  Among the the great poems of our time, verbage ranges from the plainspoken DPK's "Beans" to E.A. Stallings' luscious "Antiblurb".  Tension builds in Maz's "Studying Savonarola", appears suddenly in "Beans", and is released in "Antiblurb".  Not surprisingly, all of the triumphs [before and] after Prufrock have been fancentric.  Millions have tried, but it took the greatest poet of the 20th century to raise navel-gazing to the level of art, shattering the previous 5 Beer Barrier in the process.

     Speaking of the Suds Spectrum and the best poetry of our time:

1. "Beans" by D. P. Kristalo needs its context, perhaps requiring a viewing of the Film "No" beforehand.  Its narrative tone caused one contest judge³ to miss the fact that it was an acrostic in iambic pentameter.  The sudden rise in passion in the second half may require some alertness (read:  sobriety) on the part of a listener.

      In any case, this is a straightforward single steiner.

2. "Studying Savonarola" by Margaret A. Griffiths does not require, nor does it necessarily benefit from, understanding its context.  Some may not know what the term "fasces" means but the vocabulary elsewhere is simple enough.  The use of the second person singular draws the listener in as a participant.  The rising level of excitement and emotion may be enhanced by having a slight buzz on, though.  It's an engaging two beer effort.

3. "Du" by Janet Kenny uses some startling modifiers but what will require at least three mugs of spiritual fortification is its ghost story spookiness.  Oh, sure, you could listen to it sober, as you could eat hot dogs without condiments, but why would you want to?  Some may say a poem like this is too "deep" for a bar but they miss the point:  those nagging questions that survive the hangover may be the whole purpose of the exercise.

4. "Hookers" by Marco Morales employs simple vocabulary and constructs.  Its emotion is not explicit.  The issue is its subject matter.  No one needs to connect the dots between drinking and seeking companionship, including prostitution.  Still, a few stiff drinks may help reduce inhibitions when talking about the oldest profession.

5. "Antiblurb" by Alicia E. Stallings uses slightly more formal language and involves more philosophy than reporting.  More "tell", less "show" than our audience may be used to.  As such, we'd likely save this one for later in the evening, after we've had about five drinks under our belts.  Indeed, this may be about as far as the envelope can be pushed before we encounter resistance from latecomers who are a few drinks behind us.

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Footnotes:

¹ - Given that poetry predated literacy by millennia and is designed to be memorized and performed, "poetry reading" is an oxymoron.

² - This was not meant as a reference to Auden's politics but the philosophical differences between the two poems and their creators may be interesting to some.

³ - Whom we with discuss in a forthcoming entry.

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Appendix A

Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden


About suffering they were never wrong, |
The Old Masters; how well they understood |
Its human position; how it takes place |
While someone else is eating or opening | a window or just walking dully along; |
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting |
For the miraculous birth, there always must be |
Children who did not specially want it to happen, | skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood: |
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must | run its course.
Anyhow in a corner, | some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their | doggy life and the torturer's horse |
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. |
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns | away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may |
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, |
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone |
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green |
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that | must have seen
Something amazing, | a boy falling out of the sky, |
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


Appendix B

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

    S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
    A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
    Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
    Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
    Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
    Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

 Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                    
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

  In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                     
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;                    
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

  And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--                      
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                  
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?              
  And how should I presume?

  And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets         
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?            
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,                                         
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
  That is not it, at all."

  And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,                                         
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  "That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all."                                     

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

  I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                           
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think they will sing to me.

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown             
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

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EtSLoP: Earl the Squirrel's Laws of Poetry

Please do not confuse this list with unofficial versions by Dennis Hammes or Peter John Ross.


Earl Gray's Rules Of Poetry from Earl Gray on Vimeo.

      The other videos are:  Part I, Part II and Part III.  Here is the complete text listing for #1 to 181:

Rule #1	Never say anything in a poem that you wouldn't say in a bar.
Rule #2	If you can't be profound be vague.
Rule #3	There's a difference between poetry and hebephrenia.
Rule #4	McNeilley Dictum #4: Cut off the last line! This will make your poem better! (If this doesn't work, keep cutting off the last line.)
Rule #5	Never discuss bad poetry with anyone who hasn't read Ferlinghetti.
Rule #6	Poetry lies between synonyms.
Rule #7	The difference between self-expression and communication is poetry.
Rule #8	If you can't spell a word don't use it.
Rule #9	The fact that it's bad writing doesn't make it good poetry.
Rule #10	Don't emote. Evoke.
Rule #11	Linebreaks don't make poetry any more than stuttering does.
Rule #12	Try to be understood too quickly.
Rule #13	If it doesn't sound like poetry to a Lower Slobovian it probably isn't.
Rule #14	Every modern poem must contain at least one em dash abuse.
Rule #15	Audiences don't come to use their imaginations. They come to use yours.
Rule #16	To each their own taste, even those with none.
Rule #17	Don't use clichés. Create them.
Rule #18	The Egoless Motto: "If you don't think your poetry is competing against the works of others you're probably right."
Rule #19	Don't worry about your voice until someone is listening.
Rule #20	Writing is to poetry as paper is to stone.
Rule #21	Poetry isn't about the writer or the reader. It's about everything in between.
Rule #22	You aren't a poet until the janitor says you are.
Rule #23	The Gerard Ian Lewis Rule: Triteness is a minor flaw, easily remedied (should nothing else occur to you) by adding a mysterious reference to a goat in the last line.
Rule #24	The Elizabeth Alexander Rule: Poetry's only selling point is that it is cheaper than tear gas.
Rule #25	The fact that it's boring doesn't mean it's poetry.
Rule #26	We aren't stoned enough for this.
Rule #27	The Pistols at Dawn Rule: Never compare a poet's work to Ferlinghetti's unless you're a better shot than target.
Rule #28	The Joan Houlihan Rule: Any poetry reading longer than 20 minutes is a hostage situation.
Rule #29	The merit of your words should exceed the considerable value of silence.
Rule #30	Poetry cannot be paraphrased.
Rule #31	If you cannot scan verse you cannot imagine free verse.
Rule #32	Poetry is a competition with judges and coaches but no performers or fans.
Rule #33	Poetry needs to get over itself.
Rule #34	Tripe details the unspeakably obvious. Poetry details the unspeakable obvious.
Rule #35	People don't read poetry for the same reason you don't read film scripts.
Rule #36	Memory is the difference between storing and misplacing. Intelligence is the difference between planting and burying.
Rule #37	Free versers don't count.
Rule #38	There is always a deadline.
Rule #39	The Rule of Two and Three: Two is a contrast. Three is a trend.
Rule #40	Bad poetry haunts the author. Good poetry haunts the reader.
Rule #41	Journalism is about what you say. Poetry is about how you say it. Diplomacy is about how you avoid saying it.
Rule #42	Prose is message. Poetry is words.
Rule #43	All those who distinguish between art and audience understand neither.
Rule #44	"I want your honest opinion" is never entirely true.
Rule #45	Poetry is cheaper and safer than other general anaesthetics.
Rule #46	If you ain't getting better you're getting worse.
Rule #47	The funny thing about arrogance is where you find it.
Rule #48	Writers shouldn't write better than readers can read.
Rule #49	It's not too clever to appear so.
Rule #50	The 50-50 Rule: Fewer than 1 in 50 can recite a poem written in the last 50 years.
Rule #51	Denial is not a cure.
Rule #52	Poetry used to have fans. Now it has constituencies.
Rule #53	Defining poetry by content is like trying to grab a drowning donkey by its bubbles.
Rule #54	A picture contains a thousand words. A poem contains a thousand pictures.
Rule #55	Prosodists aren't shamans or mystics. They are coroners and accountants.
Rule #56	Fewer people know the fundamentals of poetry than the rudiments of Klingon.
Rule #57	"It's more fun if you take it seriously." (Pearl's Paradox)
Rule #58	No meritocracy ever survived a vote.
Rule #59	Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Rule #60	We hold these truths to be, like, duh.
Rule #61	Your ear is brighter than your brain.
Rule #62	Poetry bears repeating.
Rule #63	Poetry used to be a challenge to write and easy to read. Now it's the opposite.
Rule #64	As goes contemporary, so goes classical.
Rule #65	Imagine how dull the world would be if you or I were the most interesting thing in it.
Rule #66	Bad actors pause for breath. Good actors pause for thought.
Rule #67	"Forgettable poetry" is an oxymoron.
Rule #68	Few who teach Shakespeare have learned anything from him.
Rule #69	Poetry is an act of consumption, not production.
Rule #70	There has never been a better time to be a bad poet, never a worse time to be a good one.
Rule #71	Poetry is about poems, not poets.
Rule #72	Introducing your work as "poetry" is like a hunter firing off a warning shot.
Rule #73	Those who believe in criticism without criticism usually believe in poetry without poetry.
Rule #74	Would you buy a car from someone whose sales pitch amounted to an argument that the thing in front of you is, in fact, a car?
Rule #75	Science is where superstitions go to die.
Rule #76	Good poetry is memorable. Great poetry is unforgettable.
Rule #77	If you have to ask its meaning a poem has already failed.
Rule #78	If you have to tell me it's a poem it isn't.
Rule #79	Novice poets don't have a style. Experienced poets don't want one.
Rule #80	You will learn more from the critique that you give than the critique you receive.
Rule #81	Inspiration has a date of expiration.
Rule #82	What trips off the tongue lands in our memory.
Rule #83	One who compromises on wit becomes a half.
Rule #84	Rehearse until it seems unrehearsed.
Rule #85	Today, the poet with five readers can envy the exclusivity of the one with three.
Rule #86	Bad poets may argue that words have no meaning. Theirs certainly don't.
Rule #87	People reread stories because they forgot the words. People reread poetry because they remember them.
Rule #88	If no one is in for a penny then no one is in for a pound.
Rule #89	If you can't be famous be infamous.
Rule #90	Education empowers creativity.
Rule #91	We can sell crap to a lazy ignoramus. We can't sell crap by a lazy ignoramus.
Rule #92	What can mean anything means nothing.
Rule #93	Try not to blur the distinction between aesthetics and anaesthetics.
Rule #94	Chris Richardson's American Ido effect: "Being bad includes not knowing you're bad."
Rule #95	"Now that phone booths are gone will poets stop trying to fill them?"
Rule #96	"Avant garde" is beyond pretentious. It is pretension itself.
Rule #97	Don't ask what it means. Ask if and why it will be remembered.
Rule #98	Authorial intent is to poetry what creationism is to science.
Rule #99	The Bachmann Question: "How can we tell where the disingenuity ends and the stupidity begins?"
Rule #100	We can work with the clueless. We can't work with the clueproof. (Be teachable.)
Rule #101	Those who can't do...preach.
Rule #102	What is fashionable can never be original.
Rule #103	Poets not jealous of Maz have the most reason to be.
Rule #104	Ignorance isn't the sin that laziness is.
Rule #105	On Originality: The question isn't: "Have I seen this before?" The question is: "Do I want to see this again?"
Rule #106	Shakespeare's Law: "If you don't know how poetry is performed you don't know how it is written."
Rule #107	There are no rules, only tools and fools.
Rule #108	People avoid today's poetry for the same reason psychotherapists charge money.
Rule #109	I'm a big fan of my work. Sadly, others have better taste.
Rule #110	If poetry wants more fans it will need more heir conditioning.
Rule #111	Do not confuse wilful ignorance and opinion.
Rule #112	Anyone can be awful but if you want to be shockingly so you need to go first.
Rule #113	Did you know that poetry is a spectator sport?
Rule #114	Nobody Reads Poetry
Rule #115	There is no more certain proof that poetry is dead than the need to deny it.
Rule #116	While alive, poetry was art. Now it is religion.
Rule #117	People don't call what they read "prose" and they don't read what we call "poetry".
Rule #118	History is politics.
Rule #119	[When writing...] Show, don't tell. [When performing...] Tell, don't show.
Rule #120	Write for audiences, not readers.
Rule #121	Common sense is not an open-book test.
Rule #122	Poetry isn't what you write. It's what others remember hearing.
Rule #123	Trying to sell poetry today is like trying to sell scripts in a civilization without theaters. (Pssst! You have to build the theaters first.)
Rule #124	What are you afraid of learning?
Rule #125	Vicious cycle warning! Learning breeds curiosity. And vice versa.
Rule #126	Poetry is an effect, not a cause, not an affect.
Rule #127	A poem is rarely about its topic.
Rule #128	Honesty is just a lack of imagination.
Rule #129	Lies tell us twice as much as the truth.
Rule #130	The wise learn more from fiction than fools from fact.
Rule #131	Poetry isn't about saying something original. It's about saying something originally.
Rule #132	You don't have to be clever, just slightly less stupid than everyone else.
Rule #133	Nothing good ever followed the words "Hold my beer and watch this!"
Rule #134	News is what doesn't happen.
Rule #135	If everything is art then nothing is art.
Rule #136	How to read poetry: Rule #1: Don't. (Instead, listen to it.)
Rule #137	"Poetry readings" is an oxymoron.
Rule #138	The one lesson that can be learned only by reading poetry is that we should be listening to poetry.
Rule #139	Mixing politics and art yields neither.
Rule #140	Too much clarity has the same effect on pseudointellectuals as too much sunlight has on vampires.
Rule #141	Poetry is its own ambassador.
Rule #142	Tell me the fable, not the moral.
Rule #143	Common sense isn't just a myth. It's an oxymoron.
Rule #144	Truth is the most effective lie.
Rule #145	The story is the story.
Rule #146	The teller is the story.
Rule #147	You can't invent what you can't imagine.
Rule #148	Quality is not a genre.
Rule #149a	When arts die they turn into hobbies. - Michael Lind
Rule #149b	When arts die they turn into lobbies. - Pearl Gray
Rule #150	"Poetry is the original digital art; its audience tends to be in the digits." - Michael Lind
Rule #151	Poetry ≠ Email From Rehab
Rule #152	Why do you think teleprompters were invented?
Rule #153	Prose is timely. Poetry is timeless.
Rule #154	From childhood, humans are conditioned to fall asleep when you read to them.
Rule #155	Poetry. It isn't just prose you agree with.
Rule #156	Never accuse anyone of being a poet. They might know a lawyer.
Rule #157	There is no such thing as a little candor.
Rule #158	The Tsendoku Law: The number of poetry publications read is lower than the number sold.
Rule #159	"Maybe it was a slow news day. Poetry has a lot of those."
Rule #160	You can't sell books shorter than 25 words.
Rule #161	"All a real editor needs is clean copy, dirty graphics, a nearby printing press and a corrupt janitor."
Rule #162	Satire should be funny, not just silly.
Rule #163	Poetry isn't homework.
Rule #164	"To be useful in classrooms poetry must be accessible without being accessible."
Rule #165	Your greatest ability is your available.
Rule #166	If the audience is not your first concern then you will be their last.
Rule #167	Whether or not critique is constructive depends on how the author uses it, not on the manner in which it's phrased." - John Boddie (on Gazebo)
Rule #168	Postmodernism is incoherent solipsism.
Rule #169	Poetry can be about anything. Poetry is about everything.
Rule #170	Better is different enough.
Rule #171	The only thought more frightening than poetry being dead is the notion that this is poetry being alive.
Rule #172	Most poetry isn't.
Rule #173	Get better. Not bitter.
Rule #174	Good causes. Bad verses.
Rule #175	Poetry's status quo: Those who perform cannot write; those who write cannot perform; those who learn cannot teach; and, those who teach cannot learn.
Rule #176	Piracy is advertising.
Rule #177	Poetry is the mathematics of language.
Rule #178	If you can tell it's poetry it's not. - Pearl's Paradox #2
Rule #179	The lack of an aesthetic is, itself, an aesthetic. - Pearl's Paradox #3
Rule #180	People who finish every project don't conceive many.
Rule #181	Shakespeare's Question: "'Pandering'? WTF do you think I was doing?"
Rule #182	"Poetry is a well-planned accident." - Pearl's Paradox #4

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Earl the Squirrel's Rule #0

Click here for the pictorial slide show version of Earl Gray's Rules of poetry.

     These rules have been provided here as a public service with apologies for stating the obvious.

     No need to thank me.


Signed,

Earl Gray, Esquirrel