Pimp Your Poem! (tm): Joan Houlihan's "Let"

Joan Houlihan's comedic takes on non-academic verse over the last few years have delighted most of us. Her dense reads on issues of Fence were adorable in their puppydog-naive yap and her recent re-ordering of lines by poems by Eric Baus and Rebecca Wolff made all the blog-nobodies that frequent Ron Silliman's comments fields go a-twitter. It seems to me that for someone who talks a lot of shit she's bringing exactly diddly-squat to the poetic table. I thought I'd take a fresh look at one of her poems, from Verse Daily. It is an obvious and dull remix of like Jane Kenyon's "Let Evening Come"--in itself an obvious and dull poem. We all die. The mere fact that death has come for us adds nothing to our poems (please take note Graywolf Press). Houlihan's "Let" is available here for anyone terribly interested in her take. It is the typical dog-licking-its-own-balls Deep Voice Poem (tm) that drives the short story with linebreaks crowd wild. We are to glean that the true universe of the poem can be drank with lemonade and easily crocheted into a pillow. The universe is so happy this poem exists, makes so much sense, has a sunrise and a sunset, etc. It's the kind of poem that's especially delicious to those who hate poetry--Houlihan's true audience. Does she think Sylvia Plath would approve? Or Robert Lowell? Robert Lowell would dry heave on this poem, Joan. But, OK, let's move it around and see what we can come up with:

Let

August brought the slow flies, tropical
soft, between finger and thumb—
to strive. Instead, I take the morning,
Then the lilies multiplied.

Their way is mine. I have no wish
inside, to finally pull off in one shrivel,
out of the sun. Sky release its blue crush.
Rain click its needles of uselessness.

The way they grew rife, each owning evening thoughts.
A stick-figure insect, rigid on the walk.
Lightning sew the piece. Let the rest rinse grass.
Make myself a standing place, deliberately.

This took exactly 20 seconds. It is infinitely more interesting a poem: gone are the predictable "Let / let / lets"--as if that things happen and we just yawn and watch them is *poetic* in any interesting way. I didn't even change that much, like which words were capitalized. "Let the rest rinse grass" is still a ridiculous and bullshit line. Rinse grass like a dog taking a nice long leak? Probably. Still over a million times better! Less predictable. Ready to be published in some crappy mag like The Chicago Review. I would change the title into something like "Let This Not Suck" but I've already spent more time on this poem than Joan did or should have.

Thanks for playing our game.