T.L. Morrisey

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Poets All Types



                     
              


                                                            Hark, hark! the dogs do bark,
                                                            The poets are coming to town.
                                                            Some in rags, some in jags,
                                                            And some in velvet gowns.


Poetry and art is our refuge from darkness.


It is not up to poets to affirm anything. What we need is negative thinking; don't accept what people say; don't believe anything; give up trying to be a somebody.


My life was so small as to almost not exist; I avoided people, lived quietly, and never felt at home anywhere: I had become a permanent resident of Inner Space.


The poets were magnanimous, no cause was too small if it included getting published or a reading; they were garrulous and self-conscious, they were almost imposing.


She was published in dozens of online zines; when the zines went offline it was as though she never existed.


They wanted to be poets but what they wrote lacked meaning and authenticity. They refused to enter Inner Space.


Hard days at the poetry factory when production exceeds demand.


We used to laugh at creative writing courses, now no one gets the joke.


When a great poet dies the world is a darker place, we grieve their loss, they are not forgotten by us.


A prick without talent is just a prick.


He won many awards for his poetry, but no one remembers the poems, no one even remembers what the awards were all about.


This poet said she was a star; she hung out at bars, she had affairs with other poets, she was a poet until she joined AA, then she quit poetry.


It's the Great Decline, the end of history, the end of time, the river polluted, the old abandoned.



The first people we threw out of Inner Space were the poets. Plato made us do it.


Among poets I am looking for good people, loving people, who put the other person first; that means as much to me as what they write.


It is a sad day when a friend dies and you realize you were writing with him in mind, he was your audience and now you've lost both a friend and your audience.


These poets were all bigger than life, I was smaller than life.


Years of life elegiac; years of life spent remembering.


They were aggressively ambitious, but ambition without talent and hard work isn't worth anything.


If they don't have the talent to be eccentric poets, they should just be nice people.
           

1 comment:

judith said...

I just wrote you a comment but it seems to have vanished. I hope it reappears. I loved your poem!!