A subscription offer for Poetry magazine showed up in the mail yesterday. The outside of the envelope carried a big quote: “New editor, new life, new kickassery.” A card on the inside repeated the quote. I’m all for useful and clever neologisms, but would you subscribe to a magazine about poetry that thinks “kickassery” is its great virtue?John J. Miller is the author of an essay on "the 50 greatest conservative rock songs." Also, here's something else he wrote about poetry:
Yesterday, I offered qualified praise on the selection of W.S. Merwin as poet laureate. Well, I probably should have qualified it even more! At First Things, Joseph Bottum exposes Merwin as a crazed Bush hater...Since all us liberals are supposed to be bullies now, I ask the politburo to see that Miller is silenced on matters of poesy. C'mon, I know he's not a millionaire CEO but it'll still be fun!
UPDATE. Commenters feel the sprung rhythm of laughter! "Poetry Magazine was been around since 1912," says (the good) Roger Ailes. "As far as I can tell, it hasn't had to resort to beg-a-thons, bamboozle-the-elderly cruises and Koch kissassery to stay in business." There are also some Michael Berube tribute locutions, e.g., "I used to read the humanists, but ever since the Sicilian Vespers I've been outraged by Dante Alighieri," and God help us a Seamus Heaney parody by coozledad:
The tightness and the nilness round that space
when your car stops in the road, the poets inspect
your Bush/ Cheney sticker and, as one bends his face
towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond. Gelignite, ticking
to sell you an arts magazine, or give you an ass kicking
and everything is pure condescension
until a poet motions and you leave
after Joseph Bottums is mentioned—
a little nervous, pulse slightly quickenedSilent upon a freakin' derr, I am.
as always by that quiver in the shorts
ready to fuck that chicken.
I'm waiting for the National Review Poetry Slam, wherein Kathryn Jean Lopez reads sestinas dedicated to chastity, and Jonah Goldberg emits free-form verse.
ReplyDeleteAnd John Miller digs up the crazed corpse of Ezra Pound to lecture on the virtues of fascism, a bug feature he seems to admire in artists.
ReplyDeleteAnd Pam Gellar grimaces, grunts, shrieks, jerks, and flails her arms wildly, spittle foam flying, in a freestyle interpretive dance thing...
ReplyDeleteOr possibly she's just spectating. It's hard to tell.
.
Not to be a stickler, but wouldn't that be "knickers?" "Knackers" are the people who render dead or dying animals unfit for consumption.
ReplyDeleteOr is this poetic license?
When I see a 'sorry for the Wrongthink' post like that, it makes me wonder what he was thinking. Shame over his deviancy? Panic? Resentment at having to put out such insincere bullshit? Or just boredom with the routine, same as every day, of blaming whatever comes to mind on the liberals? They're never candid enough to tell, so I guess we'll never know.
ReplyDeleteKnackers, nadgers, goolies. All fine English synonyms.
ReplyDeleteSo if Miller hadn't consulted "At First Things", he wouldn't have known about Merwin's political incorrectness and he would have continued his qualified appreciation of Merwin's poetry. Let that be a lesson to us all.
ReplyDeleteIt would be irresponsible not to spectate.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, I'm inclined to agree with the twerp in the first quote. Kickassery is a fine thing and all, but I find it hard to see it as a possible or desirable quality of poetry.
ReplyDeleteKickassery, kickassery
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing like kickassery...
Further development of this pome is stalled by the absence of rhymes. Other than 'antimacassary'.
ReplyDelete"knackers" is an English slang term for "testicles".
ReplyDelete.
Ah, yes, well, that is one meaning, among many. Never mind. Carry on.
ReplyDeleteOops, I should read, then post!
ReplyDeleteYep, nuts, balls, boys, family jewels.
Nads. Conkers. Acorns.
.
There's also a sort of needy pleading in, "but he said bad things about Bush!" The notion that one of the worst Presidents in all of the country's history should be immune from criticism strikes me as a pretty weak defense of conservatism, if that's what it is, and that a poet should be dismissed out of hand for a view that's more or less widely held is just more confirmation that these yahoos are closet Politburo apparatchiks who see every slight as if magnified under a microscope.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I think, if Merwin were presented with this, he'd likely say, "Miller who?"
How, exactly, would one tell the difference between that and her everyday behavior?
ReplyDeleteDon't know why, but "goolies" has always struck me as a particularly satisfying word.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a good linguistic study: what has the highest number of slangy synonyms? I bet it would be a dead heat between 'have sex' and 'get drunk'. Some of them ever overlap!
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a Wodehouse Glossary once. Many of the definitions were of the form "Pickled, see Pixillated", and "Pixillated, see Squiffy", and so on until
ReplyDeletea final entry sent you back to the beginning of the alphabet.
Janissary. Getting there.
ReplyDeleteThe tightness and the nilness round that space
ReplyDeletewhen your car stops in the road, the poets inspect
your Bush/ Cheney sticker and, as one bends his face
towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond. Gelignite, ticking
to sell you an arts magazine, or give you an ass kicking
and everything is pure condescension
until a poet motions and you leave
after Joseph Bottums is mentioned—
a little nervous, pulse slightly quickened
as always by that quiver in the shorts
ready to fuck that chicken.
I used to be a poetry-lover, but ever since 9/11 I'm outraged by Allen Ginsberg.
ReplyDeleteI used to read the humanists, but ever since the Sicilian Vespers I've been outraged by Dante Alighieri.
ReplyDeleteMoar Terza Rima plz.
ReplyDelete"Vomit" has to make anybody's short-list as well, I'd think. Puke, rowf; hurl; blow chunks; blow cookies; blowe donuts; lose one's lunch; make a street pizza; drive the porcelain bus; talk to God on the big white phone; yawn in technicolor; etc.
ReplyDeleteEvidently, someone else <a href="http://www.slangthesaurus.info/had the same idea</a>.
ReplyDeleteOur Australian colleagues have vastly encouraged that specialised lexicon.
ReplyDelete"Charles of Anjou regarded his Sicilian territories as a springboard for his Mediterranean mbitions, which included the overthrow of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, and the capture of Constantinople, then the richest city in the western world."
ReplyDeleteThanks, Obama.
Shame, never. Panic? Of course. That's a natural state among the wingnut welfare crowd. Resentment, yes. That's an idee fixe among them.
ReplyDeleteStill, that said, it's wholly reflexive, completely knee-jerk in character. Not ideologically pure? Banish from sight and mind.
I sort of have to go back to a former life to comment, but Poetry magazine did have a slightly stodgy reputation, and the poetry slam phenomenon has probably taken it by surprise, so this may be the editor's acknowledgment that there's interesting work going on in that arena.
ReplyDeleteShe's certainly expectorating.
ReplyDeleteYour Aunty Cassowary?
ReplyDeleteJohn J. Miller is the author of an essay on "the 50 greatest conservative rock songs."
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, where's the Nuge on that list of conservative rock songs? This is the thanks he gets for sucking up to the wingnuts?
Butt what does Joseph Topp have to say?
ReplyDeleteSomething something pâtisserie?
ReplyDelete"- and Jonah Goldberg emits free-form verse -" Eh, it's been done...
ReplyDeleteI thought "goolies" was a cricket term.
ReplyDeleteas in "I'm knackered, time for a kip."
ReplyDeleteTS Eliot?
ReplyDeleteI wondered that too.
ReplyDeleteThe Beach Boys are even there for "Wouldn't It Be Nice," but no Ted Nugent. I know it's petty of me, but I kinda hope he sees this list.
Pam Gellar vs. Jennifer Rubin in a harpy-off...who you got?
ReplyDelete~
The notion that one of the worst Presidents in all of the country's history should be immune from criticism strikes me as a pretty weak defense of conservatism
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not a defense. Miller's problem is that his research REMINDED him that Bush was president and a Republican.
The Beach Boys are even there for "Wouldn't It Be Nice
ReplyDeleteSo this guy can't even grasp the gentle irony of a song written shortly after Brian Wilson's first marriage went to shit? I know Brian didn't write the lyrics, but you can imagine him telling the lyricist "Make it about two kids who want to fuck, but at least one of them's stupid enough to think it'll be better if they're married, or he's just lying his ass off. Whatever, man".
You're going to need a squeegee.
ReplyDeleteMy money's on Mazel-tits Gellar due to her past public performances.
ReplyDeleteIs that the one where they both scream "Death to Islam" until they (hopefully) lose their voices?
ReplyDeleteHave you ever seen Topp and Bottum together in the same room? I thought not!
ReplyDeleteMr Goldberg has a fine head of hair. One could even call it a Peto-Mane.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, Joseph "Soundtrackification of America" Bottum, who dismissed music as an art because there are no ideas in it. In a just world, that would disqualify him from commenting on any art whatsoever. But in right-wing America, he's the go-to authority on poetry. No wonder nobody reads it...
ReplyDeleteI whole heartedly endorse Bill Hicks' assessment of marketing drones who contrive words like "kickassery" to sell shit. But Miller's brand of "I yousta not like the poetry of Philip Larkin until I learned he was a right-wing racist and now I love the stuff" artistic purity routine just keeps getting stupider.
ReplyDeleteThere is only one Eliot / Pynchon mash-up and it is tigrismus'.
ReplyDeleteDid Miller really say that about Larkin? And they accuse us of basing our judgements on PC...
ReplyDeleteJohn J. Miller is the author of an essay on "the 50 greatest conservative rock songs."
ReplyDeleteI am for some reason reminded of when the Soviet Union claimed they invented baseball.
I'm not wild about the word, either, but if it pisses off a conservative, I'm all for it.
ReplyDeleteSomething something rotisserie.
ReplyDeleteI want to take this comment to the City Lights bookstore and hang out with Lawrence Ferlinghetti for a while.
ReplyDeleteBut you've got to admit it's not quite the shit
ReplyDeleteas the movies based on lickassery?
"Two nations separated by a common language..."
ReplyDeleteExcellent. Here's a verbatim excerpt of A Visit to The Corner, (See if you can spot Goldberg):
ReplyDeleteThe slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
No way. That comment and I are crossing the road to the Vesuvio to get shitfaced on multiple pints of Russian River.
ReplyDeleteOr when Kim Jong il scored 11 holes-in one in 1994, 34 under par.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-20/golf-world-mourns-kim-jong-il/3739452
"...mooning, he turned his ass to me"?
ReplyDelete"...the fisherman gave his bass to me"?
"...the ophthalmologist helped the lass to see"?
I could go on. Please stop me now.
Miller has, quite literally, claimed that he used to like pomes from Merwin but now he's aware of Merwin's political leanings, he retrospectively retracts that enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteWhatever Miller might say about Larkin is superfluous.
I thought "poetry" was just lyrics without music to the Young'uns.
ReplyDeleteNice to know that ain't so.
We're well on the way to a Gilbert & Sullivan "patter" song here. Maybe something like "I Am the Very Model of an NROid With Jerking Knee".
ReplyDeleteThere once was a young man named Goldberg,
ReplyDeleteWhose writing stunk like a fresh turd....
...aw, fuck it.
Shorter Entire Right Wing:
ReplyDelete"You said "fuck"!!! You're uncivil, and therefore your entire argument is invalid!!11!!"
Did Miller really say that about Larkin?
ReplyDeletePoe's Law strikes again! (Nathan, not Edgar.)
What? He needed more than one swing to sink the other seven? Feed his caddie to the dogs!
ReplyDelete"At First Things, Joseph Bottum exposes Merwin as a crazed Bush hater."
ReplyDelete"Crazed"? Seriously??? Jesus, do these people NEVER look in a mirror?
Poetry is kind of an odd duck in the magazine world. They have a $200 million endowment thanks to Ruth Lilly, so they're under no obligation to have any mass appeal whatsoever. Their current editor's been on the job for only a year; one suspects after their recent tripling (!) of circulation, they're just trying stuff out.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_(magazine)
"Terza": Not acceptable in Scrabble. Grr!
ReplyDeleteZOMG; genius. WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED???!!!
ReplyDeleteIf Tig takes requests, can the next GR-inspired opus plese be "The Story of Byron the York"?
Bollocks!
ReplyDeleteI tip my cap to the rare blog post that effortlessly includes the word "poesy" without being strained or pretentious.
ReplyDeleteI like Pound's canto "With Usura," but his whole fascist thing is, shall we say, unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteI was once at a sporting event of some kind, and I really had no interest in it. At some point I cheered out of boredom at something the visiting team did. A few people around me looked at me funny. It must be something like that.
ReplyDeleteI suspect they do, and with no small degree of admiration for what they see.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that about Brian Wilson. It does shine a different light on the song.
ReplyDeleteI bet his ex-wife saw the irony right away. I can imagine her rolling her eyes when she hears Brian's voice on the radio crooning, "And then we'd be happy... ♪♫ ♪♫"
would you subscribe to a magazine about poetry that thinks “kickassery” is its great virtue?
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't know, as that doesn't inform one about the most important quality in poetry magazines, namely: what's their opinion of the Jr presidency?
Strange. They don't see a reflection of themselves in a mirror; they see a reflection of themselves when they look at Liberals.
ReplyDeleteRemember that it was Charles Krauthammer that coined the phrase "Bush Derangement Syndrome," saying that Bush's critics hated him irrationally.
There's a documentary out there where Brian's wife relates that she hears this song play and it brings back memories of helping him tie off and shoot heroin into his arm.
ReplyDelete"You said "fuck"!!! You're uncivil, and therefore your entire argument is invalid, so fuck you!!11!!"
ReplyDeleteThere I fixed it for ya :)
Goog grief!
ReplyDeleteI never imagined that bubblegum pop had such a seamy side to it! I don't even want to know what The Archies or Hermann's Hermits were secretly up to...
If they would just let Rush Limbaugh come right out and say that, it sure would save a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if the following limerick exhibits "kickassery," but it is asterisk-y:
ReplyDeleteMary bought a pair of skates
Upon the ice to frisk
Oh wasn't she a foolish thing
Her little *
I'm enjoying the fact that when you hover over the first link, you see "asinine-John-J-Miller". How nice of him to be so honest about his status as a human being!
ReplyDeleteI prefer to call it "controlled anal voicing".
ReplyDeleteYou know that widow who was married seven times before and wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam? Not *all* the other Henrys were dead, just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteMade me laugh!
ReplyDeleteIt whispers now gently, now with a lion's roar.
ReplyDeleteIt makes Jonah grow mentally.
Quoth the anus, "Ever more!"
Tis the wind and nothing more.
ReplyDeleteNo no no, see, Miller's not saying you can't criticize Bush, but you have to be rational about it. Merwin was a crazed Bush hater. Totally different.
ReplyDeleteWhere's the dividing line between honest critic and crazed hater... um, well, let me distract you by screaming about the queers.
Archie was pretty much always just a subtle ploy to inject pro-bigamy messages into pop culture.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think most about Jonah G,
ReplyDeleteI find deadlines catch up with me.
So now I will plead fer
The help of my readers
'Cause work's best when it's done for free.
Even worse: some of them *were*.
ReplyDelete"We came, we saw, we kicked its ass."
ReplyDelete--Dr. Peter Venkman, riffing off Jan III of Poland, riffing off Seutonius, apparently quoting Julius Caesar.
Okay, it's not exactly poetry, but it has a definite lyrical quality.
The white male is the Jew of liberal jackaknapery?
ReplyDeleteHonest criticism = "Bush could have been a great president if only he hadn't supported amnesty for illegals."
ReplyDeletePoetry Magazine was been around since 1912. As far as I can tell, it hasn't had to resort to beg-a-thons, bamboozle-the-elderly cruises and Koch kissassery to stay in business.
ReplyDeleteNow they just say all the Bushes were RINOs anyway so they don't count as conservative failures.
ReplyDeleteAnd all Bush haters are crazed because only a crazed person would have strong feelings against the president.
Unless he is Obama, in which case they are right to hate and fear him because he deserves it.
Krauthammer's lucky in that he actually can't see his reflection in a mirror since he doesn't have one.
ReplyDeleteDepends on which language, too. In my A Dictionary of Informal Brazilian Portuguese there are (Graham Chapman voice) no fewer than 47 slang terms for "penis." And this was in 1983!
ReplyDeleteOk. STOP.
ReplyDeleteWell, poetry slams have been a thing for quite a while. Maybe they are just filtering upwards from the masses to the elites?
ReplyDeleteI am in awe, coozledad. Just in awe.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough all the fighting over Eich had me dreaming of a Howl mashup about what the right wing thinks is going to happen to homophobes now that the gaystapo is ruling the roost.
ReplyDeleteI have seen the best minds of my generation...
just substitute gay for the man and oppression and I think you are on to something.
Awww.
ReplyDeleteThere once was a Goldberg named Jonah
ReplyDeleteWho thought poetry pure bologna.
Said he, “I blame the Left.
They have made us bereft
Since the glory that was My Sharona.”
I highly recommend their iPhone/Pad/other devices app, which is actually kickassery.
ReplyDeleteI’m all for useful and clever neologisms, but would you subscribe to a magazine about poetry that thinks “kickassery” is its great virtue?
ReplyDeleteSince my favorite poem is Egil Skallagrimsson's "Head Ransom", I would have to say "HELL YEAH!"
Miller just wanted to write "bottum exposes".
ReplyDeleteNo mirror?
ReplyDeleteI am the very model of a modern Corner gentleman,
ReplyDeleteI've information from the latest Koch-fed trustifarian.
I know the kings of Righties and I quote Burke, Smith and Milt Friedman.
From Loyalists to Teahardists I lord it over fellow men.
I'm very well acquainted too with matters pro-Republican.
I understand economies both Laffer and Kudlowian.
About Benghazi theories I get paid to let you know of them,
With many cheerful facts about the Clinton desecra-a-ation.
I'm very good at racist tropes and stand my ground at shooting Blacks.
I read everything that Sully wrote although I think that he's a hack.
In short in all concerning men I vote authoritarian,
I am the very model of the modern Corner gentleman.
yarbles
ReplyDeleteYou're just going to the wrong swingers' clubs.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it was subtle at all. IBIMB
ReplyDeleteAnd Pam Gellar grimaces, grunts, shrieks, jerks, and flails
ReplyDeleteOde to a Skree
Howling with rage?
ReplyDeleteMy husband says it's hilarious that the biggest grocery chain in Los Angeles is Ralphs.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the kid employed a bunch of knackers about whose welfare he was concerned.
ReplyDeleteI think Edgar's version would be, "when will the Corner make sense?" "Nevermore!"
ReplyDeleteAwww...some! Very, very nice. I hope you don't mind, coozledad, but I pictured you Enderby-like, perched on your throne, as you composed this.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Newsmax and The Independent, Kim's new execution method of choice is death by flamethrower. So I guess it's either that or they will have to come up with something new for the caddie. If he hasn't already died in a Gulag.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. It was inevitable.
ReplyDeleteQuoth the Raven: "Drink Blatz Beer!"
ReplyDeleteThe only guy I ever knew who actually needed somebody to do that for him got the other arm ripped off in a combine many years ago.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder they took so long in the studio.
Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter. Wanna keep her that way?
ReplyDelete"some of them *were*."
ReplyDeleteA little bit louder, and a little bit worse?
The fart comes
ReplyDeleteon little cat feet.
It sits stinking
up the harbor and city
and then moves on.
It's got a deadline.
I subscribe to Riddled, so there you go.
ReplyDeletehttp://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/
~
That's right. He's that ugly.
ReplyDeleteWe use a variant on the loveable loo (a shitbucket), and while it might be a perfect place to meditate on the troubles, I don't compose there.
ReplyDeleteOr by a comma when the feeling's not as strong...
ReplyDeletehttp://farm9.staticflickr.com/8455/8039800142_cd1a9b1293.jpg
I imagine :Loki's Flyting" must be a close runner-up.
ReplyDeleteI was expecting more Ancient Marinating. "And now 'twas like all instruments; now like a lonely flute..."
ReplyDeleteSince ol' Jonah's as cheap as can be
ReplyDelete(Hires them interns to work, like, for free)
When his "facts" gang agley
With a smirk he can say
Was the intern researched it, not me
Faaaaart
"We'll dive into that swimming pool when we get to it."
ReplyDeleteWhat? Too soon?
It strikes me as a trifle forced, like he's going for an informal tone that he can't quite pull off or has been spending too much time on cracked.com and thinks that's how people write online nowadays.
ReplyDeleteYou've broken my heart
ReplyDeleteYou've torn it apart...
I just CAME from our nearby Ralphs, thanks. Never thought of that. When the wife and/or I are feeling pretentious, we call it "Rafe's."
ReplyDeleteMivonks
ReplyDeleteI'll pass that on to Hubby, he'll love it!
ReplyDeleteNot Sonic Youth fans, I guess.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhnWQQNmFxM
I can respect that guiding principle. :D
ReplyDeleteLately I've been wondering about the worm at the heart of American pop. I don't know that Brian labored to disguise it. How could he? He was so obviously fucked up. But completely worthwhile:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOZ2pziuLjo
That's googlies - though the intent is to hit them in the goolies.
ReplyDeleteHemorrhoids and all that.
ReplyDeleteUm, Allen Ginsberg died April 5, 1997.
ReplyDeleteHe's probably glad, too, since every deli south of NYU has gone to hell since.
-dlj.
IMO, there is nothing not kickass about "America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel."
ReplyDeleteNever mind the bollocks...
ReplyDelete