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18 jul 2005

For example, C. Dale Young's lines about You weigh me down / like generic hairspray... I like these lines more than I do any poem by [insert here the name of some poet you think I probably don't like but that you think C. Dale probably likes]. The simile is fresh and smart and the sentiment genuine. It's like a parody of one of those bad hardboiled styles ("She clung on me like cheap perfume...") C. Dale can only look back and think how bad his poetry used to be, whereas if I were to read these lines in an on-line poetry magazine named after a certain hair product they wouldn't be out of place at all.

6 comentarios:

  1. You don't have the remaining 25 lines of pathetic (and maudlin) undergrad drivel that followed these lines. These lines were not fresh or smart in the context of the poem at large.

    And you might be quite surprised by what I like and dislike in poetry. I suspect there are quite a few poets you like that I also like, admire even.

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  2. i agree that these are sharp and funny lines.

    i think that sometimes as we 'grow' as poets, we 'learn' that sharp and funny are not as important as 'serious.'

    not that i'm sharp and funny, but i'd never send a poem of mine to Ploughshares, for example, as it'd have a snowball's chance of getting accepted, as that journal's aesthetic contrasts markedly with mine.

    or perhaps my poems just blow. but i seem to have enough success publishing in magazines i like, so...

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  3. ***

    I probably couldn't even get arrested in Ploughshares.

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  4. You could get arrested in Texas, though.

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  5. Ploughshares isn't always the same. They are constantly rotating guest editors. That said, most of the guest editors fall within a certain range of the aesthetic.

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  6. (((}}}}}

    So you're saying maybe I could get arrested in Ploughshares? I'm not saying it's all bad--that would be a foolish statement about any journal--but that, like Tony, I perceive myself having very little chance there. Who's the guest editor who falls most outside this "certain range"? I'll have to check.

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