Policy Clarifications
See this.
And can you imagine if this kid played "Grand Theft Auto." Freud's head would have fallen out and a bunch of glass would have poured out of it.
* No publications: I might send a poem someplace if somebody asks me, but probably won't, I'll make up some excuse. I just don't wanna be in your magazine. I submitted poems under a pseudonym someplace as a joke, knowing they would be rejected. I can't think of any magazines I want to be in. Why are magazines important? Who really reads them (other than Jordan?) And like, what are magazines rejecting? I'd probably like that stuff better.
* No readings: I read at the Project last June, and then at Pete's in August. I have been saying no to readings. I can't think of too many places I want to read. I like the Burning Chair ones and maybe the Zinc again sometime, 40 years from now. SF to mark the 10 year anniversary of the "Fuck Your Heroes" speech and my rock bottom and beginning of sobriety (7 more years from now this week). I think people read too often and think the accumulation of readings (and *stuff*) is the point of being a poet. There must be another way.
* No anthologies. I was in an anthology already and you can buy it. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would agree to be in another one. I'd rather my work be left out and somebody less boisterous and narcissitic could find their way in in my place. Don't fence me in. My poems gotta move and get claustrophobic. All attempts to say: I like these poems, these are the best poems of __________ is wrongheaded. All attempts. I can't participate in them. Even the Holy Donald Allen anthology, how many people were wrongly excluded from *that*? We should stop making the marketing mistakes we've been taught to make. If you had a book called CELLAR DOOR with just 20 poets you thought were sexy, well, that could be an OK project. I still wouldn't want to be in it, though.
But also for example I can't think of anyone I'd really want to sleep with (or sleep with and then have to deal with the consequences of sleeping with). But I may be depressed right now--I'm sure I'll snap to soon and be really really eager to rejoin the bullshit agenda already in progress.
I think the role of being a poet is surely more than getting in things, getting asked to be part of things. I'm pretty overexposed, you know, turn your lidless eye elsewhere. This is not an attempt to bring myself more attention. There must be other ways to be in this art than simply to accumulate a list of publications, readings and anthology credits.
I want to create new systems to distribute poems and I want to participate in those systems. I don't need anymore attention than we already get (I'd like less--a lot less--but my ego and desire to go apeshit keeps pulling me back into your consciousness). I am not trying to manipulate you (some Bostonians had taken it that in not wanting to come back and read with Fanny Howe that I'd lost it. I have lost it, but not for those reasons.) And I'm not trying to be a dick (although if that's a side effect I'm OK with it). I don't give a shit about creating more demand for my poems or for me (I swear Axe Body Spray, people are already irresistably drawn to me in ways I don't understand and can't handle).
All aspects of the poetic life must be challenged. What you think it means to be a poet is probably hollow.
What can you do now to make it *easier* for someone else to write poems? I want to know.
And can you imagine if this kid played "Grand Theft Auto." Freud's head would have fallen out and a bunch of glass would have poured out of it.
* No publications: I might send a poem someplace if somebody asks me, but probably won't, I'll make up some excuse. I just don't wanna be in your magazine. I submitted poems under a pseudonym someplace as a joke, knowing they would be rejected. I can't think of any magazines I want to be in. Why are magazines important? Who really reads them (other than Jordan?) And like, what are magazines rejecting? I'd probably like that stuff better.
* No readings: I read at the Project last June, and then at Pete's in August. I have been saying no to readings. I can't think of too many places I want to read. I like the Burning Chair ones and maybe the Zinc again sometime, 40 years from now. SF to mark the 10 year anniversary of the "Fuck Your Heroes" speech and my rock bottom and beginning of sobriety (7 more years from now this week). I think people read too often and think the accumulation of readings (and *stuff*) is the point of being a poet. There must be another way.
* No anthologies. I was in an anthology already and you can buy it. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would agree to be in another one. I'd rather my work be left out and somebody less boisterous and narcissitic could find their way in in my place. Don't fence me in. My poems gotta move and get claustrophobic. All attempts to say: I like these poems, these are the best poems of __________ is wrongheaded. All attempts. I can't participate in them. Even the Holy Donald Allen anthology, how many people were wrongly excluded from *that*? We should stop making the marketing mistakes we've been taught to make. If you had a book called CELLAR DOOR with just 20 poets you thought were sexy, well, that could be an OK project. I still wouldn't want to be in it, though.
But also for example I can't think of anyone I'd really want to sleep with (or sleep with and then have to deal with the consequences of sleeping with). But I may be depressed right now--I'm sure I'll snap to soon and be really really eager to rejoin the bullshit agenda already in progress.
I think the role of being a poet is surely more than getting in things, getting asked to be part of things. I'm pretty overexposed, you know, turn your lidless eye elsewhere. This is not an attempt to bring myself more attention. There must be other ways to be in this art than simply to accumulate a list of publications, readings and anthology credits.
I want to create new systems to distribute poems and I want to participate in those systems. I don't need anymore attention than we already get (I'd like less--a lot less--but my ego and desire to go apeshit keeps pulling me back into your consciousness). I am not trying to manipulate you (some Bostonians had taken it that in not wanting to come back and read with Fanny Howe that I'd lost it. I have lost it, but not for those reasons.) And I'm not trying to be a dick (although if that's a side effect I'm OK with it). I don't give a shit about creating more demand for my poems or for me (I swear Axe Body Spray, people are already irresistably drawn to me in ways I don't understand and can't handle).
All aspects of the poetic life must be challenged. What you think it means to be a poet is probably hollow.
What can you do now to make it *easier* for someone else to write poems? I want to know.
posted by Jim Behrle at 17:44
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