By convention, the poets in each volume are invited to comment on their chosen poem. A surprising number assert the poem’s events are factual, true. Some claim the poem is self-explanatory; others explain rather overabundantly. Some abstain entirely, or use the space to deflect. See Charles Bukowski, best in 1993: “The more said about a poem, the less it becomes.” Depends on the poem. Rae Armantrout’s “Soft Money,” best in 2011, is very funny: 'They’re sexy because they pretend/not to need you,/but they’re lying,/which degrades them./They’re beneath you/and it’s hot.' It’s made even funnier by her note that reveals she was mocking Duran Duran."
४ ऑक्टोबर, २०२५
No comment.
I'm reading "What Was Best About the ‘Best American Poetry’? After four decades, the annual book series is drawing to a close. Our columnist looks at what it all meant" (NYT).
पोस्ट्स
३३ टिप्पण्या:
Of course none of these pretentious wankers recognized the true poetry of Duran Duran. “Why don’t you use it/Try not to bruise it.” That’s Shakespeare, that is. CC, JSM
At the time I thought Duran Duran was better than INXS. Now, I know I was wrong.
In college, a friend got a special senior year fellowship in poetry. He took only 1 actual class per term, but had to produce a volume of poems by the end of the year and meet with his "advisor" occasionally throughout the year. He did the whole thing in a week before it was due.
Why is it surprising that the subjects of a poem would be true? Every poem I've ever written (and Lord, there have been a lot - but no one in my family likes poetry so I spare them) has been about something that really happened. If you can't use poetry to uncover something about real life, what's it good for?
Bukowski is s just copying Neil Young.
I looked up the "Soft Money" poem. The 'humor' is way to subtle for me.
That song did not age well. that said - I disliked it back then.
A friend's daughter was a big fan of Bukowski when she was a preteen. Just obsessed with him. Strangest thing for a 13 year old girl.
There are a lot of those books -- Best Short Stories, Best Essays, Best Political Writing, Best Sports Writing, Best Travel Writing, etc. They are today's equivalent of the "literary almanacs" of the 18th and 19th century. With outlets for short story publication diminishing, appearance in a bedside book like this might be the only way stories reach a wider audience.
Or... It wasn't funny, then it got even less funny upon explanation. "If ya gotta explain the joke..."
"Soft Money" sounds like a 13-year-old girl's journal musing, not like "Best of" poetry to me.
Rae Armantrout’s is a 'language poet." Who knew there was any other kind? Even so, that is a cool poem she wrote.
"The name comes from the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews."
OK, tell me again how AI sucks.
Ezra Pound's Cantos need comment. Charles Bukowski don't.
Strangest thing for a 13 year old girl.
Maybe she was an alcoholic 13 year old.
Lem Vibe Bandit said...
“At the time I thought Duran Duran was better than INXS. Now, I know I was wrong.”
Respectfully, I say to Lem: you were right the first time.
Against the drum-machine tik-tok of the early 80s, the live rhythm section of Duran was phenomenal, with no apologies necessary. Hell, Niles Rodgers of the seminal groove band Chic worked with them back then, and still works (and occasionally plays) with them now: Game respects Game. (And Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson of Chic worked with the Duran offshoot ‘The Power Station’).
What else did Niles do in the early 80s? He produced David Bowie’s biggest album “Let’s Dance”. Which I will forcefully argue was Bowie trying to make a big popular Duran Duran album of his own — and he and Rodgers accomplished it. Because, instrumentally, the song “Let’s Dance” is a f_cking 1980s Duran Duran song in its very DNA.
It was obvious that Duran was heavily influenced by Bowie: also, Roxy Music, among others. But Bowie’s doorway into the second-half of his career was his responding to how the new bands had responded to him — and Duran led that pack.
Singer Simon LeBon had a great facility for catchy melodies that could stick in your head for days — something that far outstripped most of the band’s peers; I see no shame in that being part of a good pop song.
Now, I think INXS had a few nice melodies, too, played against competent well-produced pub-rock; I think there were three of them, maybe. That they then used in slight variations, over and over and over again. But — if you removed Michael Hutchence’s lightweight Loreal Jim Morrison pretensions and arch over-emoting — INXS would be less of a musical afterthought than they already currently are.
I was there during the era: Duran got no credibility because the teen-aged girls loved them. But sometimes the teen-aged girls are right. And sometimes the Kool Kids wouldn’t recognize a good time if it bit them in the proverbial ass (which is why the Kool Kids came up with the concept of the ‘Guilty Pleasure’: so they could enjoy enjoyable things while still pretending to somehow be above them, and not getting shame from the Robespierres of their peer group).
Now, the white elephant in the room: Duran’s lyrics WERE generally a dodgy mess. And I can easily live with that: I’m listening to a pop song, not a poetry recital. And occasionally you could get lines like this:
“I sold the Renoir and the TV set / Don’t want to be around when this gets out.”
I will never NOT absolutely love that lyric.
Meanwhile, in his critically-acclaimed album “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”, Bowie sang:
"I got eyes in my backside / That see electric tomatoes"
So, in pop music, lyrical mileage inevitably varies.
To wrap it up, I’m gonna push even harder on this:
If I was having a get-together of 20+ people of various ages, and I wanted people to have a general good vibe behind the chatter and drinks and laughs and snacks, I would put on the Duran Duran Greatest Hits in the background, not David Bowie’s. Or INXS.
I am Laslo.
Lem, as a teenage/early 20s fan of both bands, Duran Duran stood well above INXS in my not so humble opinion.
as a yoot I didn't understand some of the visual reference, apparently they were to william burroughs work, some references were plain as day,
Charles Bukowski On why most writers are boring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo9CQT3hXu8
Shows why he's a poet and non a long-form novelist.
What was best about Best American Poetry died decades ago.
You know Orlando has a poet laureate, because they have all their other issues resolved,
Woman...
Woe-man...
Whoooa-man!
She was a thief
You gotta belief
She stole my heart and my cat.
Betty,
Judy,
Josie and those hot Pussycats...
They make me horny,
Saturday morny...
Girls of cartoo-ins...
Won't leave me in ruins...
I want to to be Betty's Barney.
Hey Jane...
Get me off this crazy thing...
Called love.
“Duran Duran stood well above INXS in my not so humble opinion.”
NNOOOoooo! Not even close.
Laslo - writing praise for Power Station - makes NO mention of Vocalist Robert Palmer?!?!?!
Gimme a fecking break.
There was a fecund time in American poetry when people were trained in traditional form poetry, I mean really trained, like representational painters, and only then did they begin also writing free verse. Ginsberg is a good example. His juvenalia is beautiful. After they were trained and actually educated, these poets combined form and free verse, often to great effect. A decade later, MFA teachers were drinking themselves to death, showing up at poetry workshops where they couldn't be bothered with the rigors of putting their students through two or four years of traditional form to really teach them how poetic tropes and measures work. Then political correctness and hip-hop burned the ashes.
Everything has been shit ever since. And I own about two dozen Best American Poetry books.
Laslo: centuries from now, Nile Rodgers will be remembered by scholars as the beating heart of pop music while all those others are relegated to footnotes. Kind of like Vermeer. CC, JSM
"There was a fecund time in American poetry when people were trained in traditional form poetry, I mean really trained, like representational painters, and only then did they begin also writing free verse."
Agree. Picasso, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, could all do good representational paintings but they went in another direction. After them, you had people who did abstract art, because they couldn't do anything else.
Bukowski despite being a " drunk" and a "rebel" did poetry that is understandable and good. His prose is good too, it kept it short and snappy. "Post office" is good as is "Ham and Rye"
Rcocean: I agree Bukoski was a genius. Astonishing. Who knows how he did what he did. He was very close to his words.
I also think, painful as it is, that he had to suffer. It was his truth. There are some people who have to die to express themselves.
Post Office is in my top ten books.
John Donne, The Flea. Robert Herrick's Cherry in a Glass. Horrifyingly, I can't find the latter after an hour on the web. One of the most famous poems in all of history. What is happening? It isn't bawdy nor political.
We'll always have Toni Morrison.
Iman said...
"Laslo - writing praise for Power Station - makes NO mention of Vocalist Robert Palmer?!?!?!"
I certainly thought about it. But was figuring I was already testing patience as it was, without another digression.
I am Laslo.
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