I think this op-ed is worth its own thread. Bizarro world of poetry, I’ve seen this phenomenon mainly with sycophants of Bukowski and Tupac Shakur, where they can‘t brook a single criticism of their favorite poet warrior. The Tupac aficionados mystify me the most since Tupac nary wrote a single word of poetry. His only book of poetry was compiled posthumously by his mother and consists entirely of juvenilia she found in his old room when he was a child and a teen. When I ask the Tupac aficionados what is their favorite poem by Tupac, they all invariably mention one of his songs, California Love or To Live and Die in LA, and although the lyrics rhyme and are pretty good as far as song lyrics go, they still have a ways to go before becoming elevated to the point of poetry. I always challenge them to find one Tupac poem worthy of being anthologized. The Buk imitators seem to have developed an unhealthy ownership of Buk’s life and poetry. Their own identities as poets seem wrapped up in Bukowski worship and imitation. They take things personally if anybody posits that Bukowski was a sub-par poet. They react as if the person said their own poetry was no good. To me, these Bukowski adulators seem stuck in first gear. I think deep inside they know that Buk is easy to imitate and they fear trying to expand beyond somebody who is easy to imitate. They fear shifting into second. The same is true to a varying degree of people who love The Beat poets or poets such as Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. To say you don’t like Angelou or Giovanni is akin to claiming you are racist. This is particularly true if you claim to dislike “Spoken Word” or “Def Poetry Jam.” Any criticism leveled at “Def Poetry Jam,” poetry which I disliked more than I liked, instantly drew a rebuke of “you’re racist.” Once, a person got really mad at me and de-friended me on FB because I took a picture of Bukowski’s grave with the little fighting man and I said that “don’t try” was probably the most poignant thing Buk ever wrote. I got a rant of “how dare you disrespect a great poet. You aren’t even good enough to shine his shoes” kind of thing. But mostly these Buk adulators want to get into an elaborate debate of poetry standards and aesthetics. They’ve attended too many classes where “anything is poetry.” They’ve attended too many classes where “quality is subjective.” They don’t get beyond the question of “subjective to what?” They don’t understand that in order to develop an opinion on what is good and bad poetry, a poetic standard already has to have been established. I tend to cut these conversations to the bare bone early on by merely repeating that good poetry is what I deem is good by virtue of my education and experience in the medium. How could I honestly posit any other opinion?
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 23:37:16 +0000
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