On Writing Bad Poetry (And Publishing It)

So the poems on this blog (I speak here only of my own poems, not the poems of others I sometimes, perhaps rarely, analyze for their triumphs and imperfections) are at their best the first draft of poetry. I write them as they come to me, indeed almost always at a single sitting. I rarely revise, at least after the lines have come to me; on occasion a rhyme or a meter will prove more difficult than I thought, or a thought itself harder to squeeze into form, and so I will rubbish a line or an ending or even a quatrain, but it is rare. If there is a spectrum from Ben Jonson's praise/dispraise of Shakespeare that he never blotted a line but "would that he had blotted out a thousand," I, while no Shakespeare by even anyone's most fevered dreamed imagining, am rather towards his end than Jonson's own. I write what comes and publish it, and not never but infrequently look back.

This is a longwinded way of saying what longtime readers and even shorttime readers have no doubt noticed: I write a lot of bad poems here.

And I think that's a good thing.

Admittedly, I do believe based on my acquaintance and reading that most if not all poets and indeed writers are better at and more comfortable with revision than I am. If so, in their cases, there may be virtue inherent in holding on to poems and tinkering, improving, and developing them. In my case, though, editing prose is something I can do; editing poetry (well) is a gift so far beyond my sphere.

As such, I am fundamentally faced with the question not of publishing a good poem or a bad, but of whether to publish or abandon work; whether to write or simply not; whether to put out into the world a poem that may be (or indeed, is) bad or no poem at all. And there are those, I do not doubt, to whom the latter answer is obviously preferable, especially given the frequency of late with which I have produced no poetry of either stripe. Why not simply expand that gap one further day? Why put poetry out that is not good?

My simplest answer to this assertion is that the good poetry relies on the bad. If I did not write the bad poems I would not write the good. I would not write any. And I much prefer a world in which I do write poems to one where I do not. And thus I write bad poems.

I have more to say on this topic, relating to how the bad poems produce the good, and why I publish it anyway in more detail, but for now I shall leave it there. Bad poetry is necessary as a means to good poetry; and publishing it is simply an acknowledgement of that.

Copeland

I do not now nor ever shall pretend

To know the mind of God past revelation;

The limits of my present inculcation

Lie well before the knowledge might transcend

My merely mortal being. They descend

From (I may say) a proper education

Stewed in the heat of ratiocination

But have no inspiration to extend

Past mere analysis. I cannot claim

Divine insight beyond the eye of man

Or prophecy pursued past point of sense

I cannot read the vowels in the Name

(Nor do I much believe that any can)

But as I am, I am, with no pretence.

Historical Fiction

How beautiful it is to be

The Earth's eternal greatest nation

The apex of democracy

The pinnacle of exaltation

How grand to be the highest peak

Of all men can or ever will

Beyond all peers, ideal, unique

A shining city on a hill

How wise of to know we are

And ever after shall remain

Freedom's perfect avatar

Beyond this merely mortal plane.

So who would dare this betray

Acknowledging our feet of clay?

Developmental Stages

The child smacks her lips and blueberries

The latter of which spiral on the floor

Because she is so young her movement carries

So much excitement. She's demanding more

And I obey, because this time is fleeting:

Soon she will learn the ever present no

And will apply it to the foods she's eating

Even the ones that now are good to go.

With her delight I too am suckered in

And as she yells and flaps her arms I shout

Together we produce a frightful din

And during dinner fling ourselves about.

It pleases her to share her time with me

And I will seize the opportunity.

Distanced

We don't get out much anymore

Not even into our backyard

Instead we're always on our guard

Except we don't know what's in store.

We're always unprepared; therefore

We compensate by trying hard

To find out what we can discard

From life and not destroy its core.

Can we not see our family? Friends?

Not walk around our neighborhood?

Drive nowhere and remain inside?

The isolation of it tends

To make us mad; and so it should.

Yet still we feel we have to hide.

Declarations

Imagine if we acted our ideals:

If what we said we thought were followed through.

Now, when we speak, we say what most appeals

Without consideration of what's true

Within our hearts. We do not have to do

The hard but worthy deeds we wish to claim;

And so we say whatever we want to

Taking advantage of the good we name

Trusting that others, too, will do the same

Thus understanding that we all are playing

A hypocritical but common game

Where no one stands behind what they are saying.

But if the words we spoke remade the facts

Perhaps we'd value words as much as acts.

Eulogy

Barack Obama is an angry man

Fina-fucking-lly. I cannot wait

To see what he becomes now he's irate.

A calm Obama always had a plan

And I'll admit I always was a fan

But now that he's unleashed his anger: great!

His righteous anger now should not abate

Until he's resurrected Yes We Can

And made us recognize it does not mean

That what we want will magically appear

Or that he will take charge and make it so

But that when, like John Lewis as a teen,

We make good trouble and refuse to fear

We overcome even the fascists' No.

Q2

The economy has suffered a contraction

Which, though announced, was hardly a surprise.

It's rooted in our government's inaction

Also expected, but not nearly wise. 

The graphs of it look forged, or like an error,

A misbegotten failure of our state

I look at them with existential terror

And wonder when we're going to be made great.

I know that blaming the administration

Is oversimplifying at its best

But since it is unique to our poor nation

Some blame at least is theirs. They failed the test.

And worst of all, we cannot help but notice

We have no hope until the change of POTUS.

Tweetstorm

The Constitution gives us a solution

For Presidents who violate their oaths;

It's sitting right there in the Constitution

Within a clause our current leader loathes.

He swore before us to preserve, protect,

And to defend the Constitution--then.

But now he's worried that we won't elect

Him and his false administrative team again.

So he proposes (as we knew he would)

That our elections should now be delayed;

Of course, he didn't think delay was good

A month ago, before support decayed.

This is the final straw. This overreach

Is but another reason to impeach.

Iowa Summer

The sunlight dapples through my windowpane

To where the dog, anticipating, lies

Sprawled out upon a cushion twice her size

Tongue lolling. I hear a distant train

And, closer, neighbor children, whose campaign

To lure my dog outside meets its demise

With sunny weather, but who advertise

Their presence anyway. I can't complain.

The summer is an idyll in the year

When everyone is happy to be out

And laziness is just normality.

So, like my dog, I'm happy to be here

Listening to children play and shout

While lounging in my immobility.