PRESSURE PRESS ARCHIVE
They Can Teach You How to Write Poetry
There are many fine writing programs available in many colleges and universities, seminars, and retreats across the United States, for a price. Money is of course an issue with most people, but excluding that hitch, anybody can be taught how to write various forms of modern or ancient poetry. The academics are slick sellers and capable professors. Wear a beret to class and take notes.
This essay isn't about that. Let us accept the given: you can be taught how to write acceptable, publishable poems (time-frame open). You can spend most of your life in college writing environments, and maybe even be quite happy and content and a proficient poet. Do it, and ignore this shit I'm spouting. I don't care about you.
I'm 44 years old. I work as a press operator in a plastic reinforced fiberglass factory steady 3rd shift in Erie, Pennsylvania with 100 employees all in different worlds: from an underground poet to a guy who slaughters pigs and cows, from weight-lifter kids who must guzzle testosterone to old Bill who's been working the same job since 1956, from Polish, Puerto Rican, to Delbert and the KKK. It's easy to be chewed up by it all. I am honestly blue-collar.
Be blue.
Introduction over. The Coltrane cassette is too. It's 5:30 a.m., Sunday morning. I'm reclining in a recliner in this apartment livingroom. Ann is asleep in our bedroom. My biological clock is not a normal clock. I was planning to wash the dishes, but started scribbling in my notebook. Janan invited me by e-mail to compose something for AlienFlower's poetry essay workshop archives, AND a pipe-dream blooming through the dust of Mars has opened though it's barely dawn.
Look, if you aren't astonished by personal karma, if humility hasn't aged within your skull, stop reading this now. Buy a poetry-writing book. America's libraries are the best on the planet, and there's always amazon dot com, or Barnes and Noble. Go buy.
If, however, your senses transcend commercial politics and mass social logic, allow me to blab a while. Relax, friend. Let me tell you about a few natural laws of the universe and the life of a poet.
First thing, smoke marijuana. THC and poetry are inseparable. I realize this is wrong of me to say, but Ezra Pound said exterminate the Jewish race. Poets are all very human. Forget the legal or ethical aspects, whatever, and just say yes to marijuana. Smoke a whole bunch. I am not condoning under-age usage though. Those under 18: fall in love. Otherwise, smoke dope.
Daily.
For years.
Decades.What I mean is corrupt thyself.
Veer from sanity.
The disease of innocence must be eradicated.
Whenever survival is easy you are eating too much, living too well, cocooned within the dark, dead womb of capitalism like a normal pupa inside an empty TV void. If you crave and strive for comfort and comfortable reality, I've lost another reader. Fare ye well. Eat tofu and forget my name.
Is there still a person remaining who fits this essay's structure, this continuing absolution? Have I purged all the unfaithful writers who stumbled here this far?
There's an old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." You are thusly cursed.
Light your pipe. Now write.