From: eric@npri6.npri.com (Eric Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: What Poets Do
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:21:42 GMT
Organization: NPRI, Alexandria VA


	What Poets Do
	-------------

		"In cio peccasti, O Fiorentin poeta..."

	There are summer poets,
	And winter poets,
	An annual frosting of autumn poets,
	But rarely the find of that vernal knave
	Whose irregular typesheet you wish to save,
	To crease, to tuck under your frilly hem,
	To extract like a dagger, present it to *them*:
	To lawyers, to lifemates, to flames and swains,
	Illegitimate artists, cheapside souverains,
	As the answer to any conundrum they pose.
	Pop it into their palms--watch as it grows
	And begins its unfolding, a papered dawn,
	Like a crinkled, crisp origami swan.

	Is that you, trusted poet? Are your words doused in spring?
	Who with juvenile zest and cantabile zing
	Lures language to languorous Languedoc
	Lets it languish on a languedocian walk;
	Who through shunting switchyards of English grammar
	Hitches nouns together with a clatter and stammer?
	If so, let us sit on bales under full moons,
	Sail with dragonflies over marsh-meadows and dunes,
	Or in urban scenes hang from the bumpers of cars,
	Chase sirens down sidestreets, pirouette into bars.

	As if any crush of words were delightful,
	Sloppy writers stamp POEM on every trifle.  
	Classical quotes and quotidians seize them, 
	Wink at them, twitter and gnomishly tease them.
	Soon enough, one appears at the top of the page,
	In mid-verse, within footnotes, in italicized rage.
	A spot is a spot, but to some it's a gem 
	Though what glints is a dab of cab-driver phlegm.

	Our Sunday tea-clique with full bottles converges 
	On mossy decks swarming with self-centered urges.
	We cuss and discuss and fuss through the day 
	'Til we part with a toast and a stewed getaway.
	How cordial, how shrewd, how honest and cheery
	To trade testy praises and long, heartfelt, beery
	Eructations of bookbound commonweal
	As we strip off a pal's blemished poem-fruit peel.

	It is all false: any arrival in writing
	Of incidents true or invented, like kiting
	The benefit of an ancient text or thought,
	Cashing it in even though it did not
	Arise from our logic--just something to say,
	Something to mute one's own din and decay.

	_No use gettin' flushed over most men o' letters--
	_Line 'em up Jenks and I'll count the bed-wetters.

	Monotonous Stevens I saw between
	Indemnitor's tears and yew--
	And that caged white male, old line
	Turned turpentine
	Turned turbid wine
	And that officed male, dull scene
	Turned heavily, heavily gabardine.

	A Negro is not poetry.
	one point two and two points to one
	Hark! I hear them scartch scartch scartch
	How needful are our stools today?
	I am the shantih and the ghee-man too!
	Our gleety sailors salute you, Pound,
	And pound away on Eliot.
	Whose words these are, I think I know:
	Moo moo wa dadik aw wa sey.

	We've all made terrific, tremendous mistakes
	In solitude or at communal clambakes.
	History frames us, hectored and sad,
	Hypocritical muddle with the Upanishad,
	Recorded by time, no rewind button,
	Only more time to hope that all is forgotten.
	What poets do best, they do as the rest,
	The more human they are, the more I'm impressed.

-------- eric@npri.com ---------- or ---------- ...uunet!uupsi!npri6!eric -----
                  "I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull."                  
Eric C. Williams/ NPRI/ Alexandria, VA/ USA/ (703) 683-9090/ Usual disclaimers.