for permanence," she said.
I said that in most current usage
the simile, end-rhyme and metrically exact verse,
were hackneyed, if not archaic.
She harrumphed,
"you will be laughed out of academia."
I told her I had ditched academics
when I dropped out of high school;
then quoted Henry Miller:
"everything taught is a lie."
She started loudly,
"you'd better be careful
not to make the mistake
self-educated writers make,
with their eccentric
literary theories.
Even the neo-formalists aren't formal enough,
they don't know an anapest from Budapest."
She was annoying me
and knew it, so continued,
"you need to go back to school
and get a Master's
or you will never be taken seriously
no matter how good your poems are.
Why do you think I got mine?
Besides, I can teach."
I smiled. She went on,
"and poetry must never be used
to attack people-
that's hatefulness, not art."
Her poems were never
as lively as her tirades-
now I knew why.
4 comments:
Hell yeah, brilliant. Can't tell you how much I love this. I loathe those academic types so much and they really are the most souless dull writers.
You're spot on!
you can't replace truth and passion with technique. good write Joe ;]
Nikki says,
Graduate school is an apprenticeship in other people's ideas. That's why you can easily forget the poet in yourself when you achieve the degree. You can easily forget a lot of things, including why you wanted the goddam degree in the first place. I'm sending this to a friend of mine.
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