8 may 2003

I've never taught poetry writing to adults. I have a hard time telling people what to do! (One of my problems teaching generally.) It would be much worse to tell people how to write poetry or to influence them toward my weird demented aesthetics. Catherine Meng has sent me her wonderful poem based on JM's Experiments. Without looking back at the experiments themselves, I can recognize some but not all of them:

"You read Time Magazine
You write poems for Time Magazine"

"Running for mayor of the Pacific Ocean"

"And for six months you've been studying Wittgenstein's "Lectures & Conversations"
which you obtained from the liquidated library of the professor

lost to dementia. He has a son Elliot. A beatiful man who helps trees.
Not even a lifetime of 17th century poetry can console him."

"so you parodied yourself
and staged elaborate contests
and gambled with nickels
and created a vocabulary that only non-poets could understand"

If I taught poetry, I would only do it to those who were much better poets than I am. That way I wouldn't have to worry about influencing them unduly. Why would they study with me then?

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