Let me preface this rant with a short excerpt of “Things Procrast Already Knows”.
1. I am not a great photographer. I will never be known as a photographer. You will not hear my name along side Ansel Adams, Imogene Cunningham, Nan Goldin or the like. Photography, for me, is a joyous tidbit; a fulfillment to capture and manipulate a visual image. And in embracing my love of photography, I have also embraced my lack of painting talent. To hell with you paint, I shall photograph! So there it is.
2. I am not a great poet. I am, however, slowly becoming so and do not doubt my name could be known along side the greats. If only I could get some real publications under my belt. If only I could get some recognition by my true peers. If only….if only…if only….Sorry for the dramatic trail off but you know there are so many “if onlys” that I feel it would serve only to push the dagger further into my gut to list them. So there that is.
3. There are other people in the world who are now and will always be
a. Better at poetry/photography/everything than I.
b. More successful within the field of poetry/photography/everything than I.
c. More successful yet possessing less talent than I and on…and on…and on…
That all ‘round and about being said, I come here to this tableau of bitchery to vent my furious frustrations aloud to my one reader. OH READER! WHY HAST MY WORDS FALLEN ON MANY A DEF EAR? Rather, onto no ears at all? Well, I will tell you why. It is so because everyone who reads a book now and again feels they can write poetry. See? I have a good vocabulary, I can write poetry. SEE? I can rhyme too! I’m gonna muck up the postal service with my endless submissions to myriad lit mags with my deep, gothesque, emo, buffoonery.
Now, what angers me most, well most as of this moment, is not that the general half literate populous feels they can write poetry. No. Words are for everyone as poetry should be for the masses. I want everyone to write poetry. If anything, I think writing poetry, journaling, drawing, singing, art of all kinds, releases a bit of that pent up aggression/sadness/fear within us all. Art allows a bit of the cancerous bile we keep pocketed up in our squishy inner thoughts out and away from our person. It is good for everyone to write poetry. What is not good, however, what is the utter epoch of anti bueno, is the fact that these idiot editors at these hack lit mags keep PUBLISHING THE EMO BUFFOONERY! And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but this little gem on McSweeny’s Internet Tendencies: Sestinas (from which “Night Police” was rejected)
THE LIFTINGS AND THE FALLINGS
-by some dude
Grandmother, how I long once more in the gloaming
to hear your voice. Voicelessly, it speaks
in whispered sighs, the wind: statelessness.
With each daguerreotype I touch, a shroud
of darkness falls. I recall the breast pump
you gave me, how we gazed at the wainscoting
together, listening, how the wainscoting
echoed, a halcyon of sound, how the gloaming
enveloped the liftings and the fallings of the breast pump,
its capacious stillness immeasurable now. It speaks
to me in a voice I cannot hear, through a shroud
of silhouettes, bracken, statelessness.
Revenant, appear! Your statelessness
malingers in the chiffonier, the wainscoting's
absence, in the veil of dreams, the shroud
of sleep, the sidewalk of meaning, in the gloaming
of hunger, the chifforobe of chance ... One speaks
of incandescence, of what is needed, of breast pumps,
of fields which are no longer. Your breast pump
murmuring cantilevered statelessness
quells each ceaseless passerby, speaks
the language of grief, recombinant—such wainscoting
was not easy, such corridors— in the gloaming
of our hearts, as once they were, this shroud
forever flowering. Osterlind, our shroud,
undreams the unknowable. Breast pumps,
two fluttering ghosts, dreamless, undo the gloaming
in the leaves of dawn. Such statelessness
was not easy. With tenderness, the wainscoting
sings a song that you used to sing, speaks
with your voice, Grandmother. Persephone speaks
through you, in a tremolo: loud shroud.
Wrong song, for now, my heart demures ... The wainscoting
fades. The day is ended. Lost are the breast pumps
of sunlight. All is gone. All is statelessness, ruin. I sit alone, in the after-gloaming ...
And yet, in this post-gloaming, something speaks
to me of statelessness, then lifts the shroud
from my eyes: your breast pumps hang from the wainscoting.
Really?
Could you be anymore glib? Could you have used www.thesaurus.com more obviously? Could you have been listening to Radiohead on repeat more loudly?
So there. I just had to share with all of you the joyless boobery that was published in lieu of my work. And for those of you unfamiliar with my tired o’ft drug out piece “Night Police”, well then, here is a link to it. It is the last poem in this collection:
http://kathleen.marshall.googlepages.com/asinglemigration
Urg.
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