Stone Cold Poetry Bitches Do AWP

Stone Cold Poetry Bitches Do AWP

Stone Cold Poetry Bitches Do AWP

Stone Cold Poetry Bitches Do AWP

Talking Points

* I guess blogger got mad about my Abu Ghraib photos: find me over at thejimside.blog-city.com.

* I guess it's too soon. All my Barbara Guest jokes are falling flat.

*I don't understand why all these great women poets have had strokes, leaving us with plenty of insufferable, older loudmouth no-talent male poets. If it were up to me? Like if I were passing out The Strokes? That wouldn't happen. I'll take one if you spare a great female poet. You can hold me to that.

* Matt Miller has completely unraveled. The anonymous losers are tough when they are anonymous losers. Shine the light on them and they become weepy bitches . Do not follow that link unless you like catfucking jokes a lot. Donald Revell is a man of god, dude. He'll probably forgive you. I however will eat your soul.

"Do You Wanna Read First or Second?"

Is there anything more boring than the petty political struggles that poets pull on each other before poetry readings to see which one of the readers will read first and which one will read second? Who decided that reading second was somehow a greater honor in the first place? I'd rather have an unmolested audience. I mean, who knows what the joker before you is gonna do?

Is it such a great honor to read after one reader (25-40 minutes) and a break (15-30 minutes) when all anybody wants to do is leave? So how's about we decide together, as colleagues, that it really doesn't matter when you read, first or second. OK? OK. I vow to only read ever first. First is better. Show up on time audience members. Or show up late and purposely miss me. I won't mind. I love doing that myself. Kind of like the feeling when you skip class. If I was playing by the rules I'd have to hear blah doing blah blah but instead I am having a slice of delicious cake.

I don't know, say you're Mei Mei Berssenbrugge and Leslie Scalapino, just off the top of my head. Does it really make any damned difference who reads first or second in that scenario? Why would anyone take offense at having to read before one of those two? I mean, whose name didn't rhyme with Smashberry? If you reach the point of being, for arguments sake, Mei Mei Berssenbrugge or Leslie Scalapino, shouldn't you really be beyond the need to read first or second over the other one? But this happens at every reading, all the time, for no goddamned reason. One book nobodies insisting to read over people with no books. People with two books demanding to read after people with one book. Well I have three books! And one's a novel! Shouldn't I read after the chick with the memoir and the book of sestinas?

Here's an easy way to avoid being one of those "I Have to Read Second" Idiots. Use these simple hints as you go about your reading days whenever they might come.

1. You show up at reading and the curator's like, "Hey, great! Thanks for being here! Do you have any preference about reading first or second?" And you say: "I would like to read first." Graceful, elegant and simple, this route clarifies all situations. If there is some kind of heirarchical significance to reading 2nd, your 2nd reader will be touched and moved by the gesture. You will be the first poet to be heard by a very fresh and excited audience. Way to go.

2. You show up at reading and the curator's like "Hey, great! Thanks for being here! Do you have any preference about reading first or second?" And you look them in the eye and tell them honestly "Can I be honest? It doesn't matter to me *whatsoever*." And the curator says, "Oh, OK. Maybe you will read second..." The people who try to pull the jedi mind trick of "It really doesn't matter to me even though my entire body is telling you that if I don't read second that I will literally burst into tears" are hilarious. We curators are looking at you and we know when you're having a hissy. We keep track in our portable curator devices the people who were freaky and misbehaved reading days. And the next time those people will be forced to read only after Behrle does his whole papsmere strip tease fellatio a unicorn's horn thing onstage, when the audience has literally dissolved into a seething liquid of surrender.

Curators: having trouble deciding who should read first or second at your next reading? Get in touch with me and I'll make the call. There is no one in this country not named Ashbury who should somehow be harmed out of reading first. If you are then you are a *ridiculous person*.

Also hypothetically, should anyone apologize from the microphone for reading poems that they recently read AT THE GUGGENHEIM? Like, should that ever happen? You might have heard these poems the last time I was on Letterman, sorry to read them again here. They're just superfantastic. I thought the point of being a famous, respected poet was that you got to act like a famous, respected poet. Hunh.

PS: Because O'Hara read before Lowell. If O'Hara read before Lowell, *you* can read before *anybody*. In general you can think to yourself "What would Frank O'Hara do?" and then do it with the confidence that it was the correct and most graceful way to handle yourself. Until like, I think I'll go up to the dark, poorly-lit beach and wander around. But that's the exception that proves the rule.

Dear Sam Hamill

I'm a very prominent poet and I'd either like to have the poem I submitted back in 2003 moved to the chapbook section of the website or removed. I also am disturbed that the name of the site has changed from Poets Against THE War to Poets Against War. I don't know if I'm against all wars, I kind of take them as they come. Some wars may be necessary. A war to stop a genocide. Or a war against invading armies of space aliens who try to suck out our organs and fill us with Twinkeegoo. That would be a war I could totally get behind: I don't want to be filled with Twinkeegoo. I am very serious about this.

I am certainly more famous than Primus St. John or William O'Daly. Those guys aren't prominent at all. And why isn't Kent Johnson's poem in that chapbook. He is way more famous than those guys too.

xxxjimmy

unicornsandbunnies.blogspot.com

Talking Points

* Bookscan Poetry Bestsellers week ending 2/12 from here.

1. THE PROPHET Kahlil Gibran

2. TWENTY LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR Pablo Neruda

3 TEARS FOR WATER Alicia Keys

* Here's a copy of Poetry Snark Matt Miller's Magnum Opus on Utah's Donald Revell, which went mysteriously missing from the poetry snark website around the time Matt was outed (he tried to blame Agent Trochee even though it's clearly written by him ("Posted by Snark"). Don't believe me? Read the version in google cache. If you really want to be a stinker, tell Donald Revell all about it with a little note. Or contact me through the Drop a Dime site to give me anonymous tips about other poets who are acting like douchebags (I might have stolen the whole douchebag thing from Andy Mister a while ago, I can't remember. Love ya Andy Mister!)!

* Know your new Bond Girl (tm): Eva Green.

Half Pipe

Rum, Sodomy & The Lash

Glug Glug Glug

I Dream of Roberta Flack

Racist Bunnies

Talking Points

* Is it lamer to just be the proprieter of Poetry Snark or to then, on top of it, when outed, first deny it's you and then send mousy backchannel messages around about how you're not Agent Trochee and you really like Sarah Manguso and blah blah. I think it is cool that he once dated someone in my book who is one of the most beautiful people in all the land. And I dig his mullet. The rest of the feedback is that Matt Miller is a straight-up careerist asshole who lacks the talent to back it up. Good luck, Chuckles.

* Pitchers and Catchers and Opening Day should be National Holidays. Are there any Presidents worth celebrating on Presidents Day? No. Shouldn't Veterans and Memorial Day be the same day? There you go. One February holiday and one April. Much better.

* The funniest thing about Iowa is that they create both poetry's imagined ruling class and its toxic waste. Will everyone that doesn't end up a Department Chair become a Neurotic Superfund Site? That's an anthology I want to read: HAWKEYED HACKS: The Most Bitter and Least Talented of the Writers' Workshop.

Everything is Great & No One Is To Blame

Racist Bunnies

Half Pipe

Horatio the Unicorn