what's wrong with American poetry right now?
wrong = song
What’s wrong with American poetry right now is nobody’s having fun.
That’s all.
I should probably pin the corners of this idea down to the ground with quotations from a liberal (but not in that way!) range of sources which will, in ghostly fashion, outline the drone cloud of my thoughts for you, and make you think that I’m a cool person, someone who listens to the right amount of pop music and knows the theorists who are dry as a brick, in the right way.
The range of signals, the number of things about us which can be made into signals, the codification of these signals as 1/0 entities in an algorithm, has made an enforceable politics which will, if you follow it to the burnt-out bellybutton where it started, make you want to fucking kill yourself.
There’s no point in having a rhetorical rond de jamb about whether to kill yourself.
Attention pays whatever you put it on—that’s why there’s no point.
The overwhelming sentiment of poetry for the last 10 or so years has been: “How dare the rose bloom while suffering exists?”
And the answer is: I don’t know, but it does.
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Beauty is harsh because it doesn’t stop existing. Joy is harsh. It is powerful when it hasn’t been made captive in a slogan, and is actually happening.
One thing about a body is that there is a current of pleasure inside it at all times. Meaning, there is nothing to mean. There is no reward in meaning. It is happening already. And everything is a kind of pleasure.
The production of knowledge is a real gas if you have been wounded into thinking your brain is the most special part of your body. If you have been chased out of every other corner of your body. If you’re afraid to go back there.
American poetry is sad and boring because it is full of cowards. Cowards because they reach for a defensible moment (critique) instead of something impossible to defend (the rose blooming while suffering exists).
Please, get it wrong.
Throw up in a convenience store, please.
Please thrill on cue to topaz streetlights even though it’s late America and the DOJ is doing its thing.
Are you Woodward? No, you’re a bag of chemicals. Put on some blue eyeshadow.
Are you a news anchor? No. There are 100 people on the internet who listen to you. But they mainly like it when you take pictures of blossoms that have fallen onto the sidewalk.
Are you going to critique your cat for sleeping in the sun when she should probably be doing something about capitalism? No? Then why you?
Magic is not something you learn. Your ancestors might only want for you to enjoy looking at colors (the feast the dead miss the most). I don’t know.
Fun is a risk. There will always be a serious person to come along and accuse you of having unhumanitarian antisocial fun. This is the absolute last person in the world you should base your decisions upon, however.
Get it wrong. Wrong is a portal that goes places. Right is a solid gold telephone that doesn’t work. When something is solid, it can’t sing. Meaning can be massaged anyway. It’s the wrong medium for something that is a song.