Monday, March 1, 2010

Pretentious Poetry

I am fucking sick of pretentious poetry.  Long strings of rare adjectives and vague metaphors do not impress me.  For the writers of these pretentious poems, I have attached the following humble and delightful piece by Billy Collins.

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Indeed. And don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of expression through verse, just not when some 17-year-old emo starts spouting shit like:

    "Stripped nude, the grapevine
    of her budding loins anticipates
    the Rasta disguise of the kaleidoscopical Mephistopheles,
    who falsely pontificates."

    Hmmm. Deep.

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  3. I personally hate false pontification. Just for your guyses info. And shit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. pontification. Now there's a word with a thousand excellent meanings.
    especially on urbandictionay.com. It can do no wrong!

    ReplyDelete

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