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 roofers are not sky walkers; 
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instagram poets are wack 

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: The Sixth Part

Ahh yes, the idiotic internet project once it is just over halfway finished, when one starts to suffer the digital existential crisis of whether any of this has any purpose or merit whatsoever. The only thing to do though is blindly hack on towards the end, swinging your keyboard kukri machete indiscriminantly without a fuck to be given.

#15: Solmaz Sharif (represented by Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned) vs. Jay Hopler (repped by That Light One Finds in Baby Pictures)

Both Solmaz Sharif and Jay Hopler made the National Book Award short list last season for books of poetry. Hopler has already been part of this 2017 fracas of battle poetry, whereas Sharif has not.

The Sharif poem is very sparse, with extreme spacing, and considering it is about confinement there is some assumed importance to that. Having briefly worked with jail writing programs (and really needing to do so again), the thick sadness which can never be revealed fully that one feels in such environments is fairly overwhelming. You cannot shower it off of you. It is a psychic grime. This poem, whether it wanted to or not, triggers that memory for me, and thus, is a solid punch of poetry.

The Hopler poem also triggers thoughts, namely how there is a weird picture of me as a tiny human where I look exactly like the male version of my youngest daughter, and she in fact has somehow dislodged this photo from whatever album it was in, and now it floats around her room, sometimes tacked to the wall, sometimes just sitting on the side table, sometimes beneath my feet on the floor as I tuck her in at night. Memories of our youth for whatever reason bring up melancholy as well because I guess we always end up realizing a lot of the hope we are spoonfed as a youngster is ultimately bullshit, which is likely why somebody wrote HELL in Hopler’s poem.

Ahh… shattered dreams of youth, and solitary confinement inside prison – a really nice pairing of poems. I think I’ll go swallow a hollow point underneath a sycamore tree now.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "Lanat Abad" is immediately disqualified due to utterly self-indulgent formatting and I don't even feel bad about it for a second. "The Light One Finds in Baby Pictures," in addition to being monumentally less obnoxious on the page, describes the light as old and pale and hurt, which is as correct as I think anyone has ever been about light, and, I mean, think about that. 

WINNER: "The Light One Finds in Baby Pictures"

Harsh but fair. Gone at #15 is Solmaz Sharif, she of the self-indulgent formatting.

#14: Joy Harjo (repped by An American Sunrise) vs. Liz Howard (repped by Standard Time)

Joy Harjo is back! And she is also my favorite now. Liz Howard makes her first appearance, as one of last year’s Griffin Prize winners, which I don’t remember what it is nor do I feel like looking it up, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because big poetry prizes are a fucking racket and your local homeless people write (freestyle) better poetry than most of what is considered Must-Read Poetry by the poetry industry (which, without academic subsidy, would have long been bankrupt).

I do not pretend to equate “white” underclass or any underclass with the native experience, but there are similarities (intersectionalism) in how we learn to deal with the shit life piles upon us, such as in this poem when she writes about losing days: “Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget.”

So much is fucked about United States existence right now, and it’s not fucked in like “well these things are breaking and need fixing” but the actual infrastructure of what is United States is so immensely perverted and corrupt that honestly the whole thing needs to go ahead and breakdown in order to ever have a hope of being halfway right again. The foundation is rotten and we’re thinking we can just put a new coat of paint on the drywall. I vote for giving everything back to the oldest 1000 indigenous people on the continent, and let them decide what happens next.

This Harjo poem is not my favorite I’ve read in her run through these Royal Poetry Rumbles, yet even lacking in that relative scale, it is so thoroughly worthwhile. In her lesser moments, she is still more immense than most poets could hope to be. I remind myself (again) that I really need to go get every fucking book of her’s from the university library, today.

Liz Howard’s poem is a good coupling with the Harjo one, and Howard herself is also indigenous. For clarification, Harjo is Mvskoke, and Howard is Anishinaabe. Also, in consulting the Wikipedia page on Howard, she studied cognitive neuroscience (which is some shit I love, to be honest). Howard’s poem is a good one as well, and without having known she was indigenous, it could be deduced. I’d like to think that if we really stripped down our social constructs, we were all ultimately indigenous, and when I am forest bathing amidst oaks and pines and crows, this makes sense. But when I walk through “civilization” (the scariest of scare quotes) it is pretty obvious that this is wishful thinking on my part. Our social constructs have destroyed too much shit.

Anyways, this “Standard Time” poem by Howard is great, but Joy Harjo remains the strongest of poetic spirits (in my humbled opinion).

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "An American Sunrise" is an admirably tough little poem and the "American" in the title is doing real work here so when I say what I am about to say about that I am actually excluding this poem from it mostly *but* the tendency in American things to think that putting the word American in front of an ordinary thing somehow makes it extraordinary or somehow more worthy of solemn refection is in my view a symptom of the (contemptible) habit of thought present even in many Americans critical of America to think that some unique thing is either at work in America or was once at work in America but now isn't and so saying an American something is going to make it more poignant; there is no other nation in the history of civilization that has been this needlessly baselessly arrogant even when writing/acting in supposed critique of this arrogance and so in that way yes there you go there is your unique experiment, no one has ever had their heads this far up there own asses, fuck off. But again this poem is good, and tough, and better than "Standard Time," which stacks up some images well enough that it is definitely ok.  

WINNER: "An American Sunrise" 

Again, harsh but fair scholarship, which likely will remain in the back of my mind from this point forward. Liz Howard more than respectfully bows out at #14.

#13: Diane Seuss (repped by Don’t Say Paris) vs. Kyle Dargan (repped by The Robots Are Coming)

Diane Seuss has knocked someone the fuck out of this thing already. Kyle Dargan makes a RPR debut, having been a Kingsley Tuft finalist.

In reading Seuss’s poem about Paris, I will admit right out front here that I am needlessly biased against the French. Actually, in realizing this bias in recent years, I have come to a greater appreciation of French culture, but the very simple linguistic harshness of their language bothers me. (I also am bothered by loud eating, specifically smacky eaters, and this fills me with rage at times, so I’m sure I have some sort of skull interior deficiency or imbalance involved in all this.) So I caught no feels for this Paris poem, like none. It was certainly a poetic poem, and I knew I was supposed to catch feels, but nope, none. I am cold and indifferent to it. I’m not proud of this, but it is what happened.

Meanwhile, the robots which are coming have “clear-cased woofers for heads” in the first line, and fuck if I do not understand that phrasing pretty deeply with my paranoid half-luddite ass.

They await counterintelligence 

transmissions from our laptops 

and our blue teeth

YES! And Dargan does not stop, offering up abandoned industrial rust belt shitholes to these robots, attempting to “barter for our lives”. This speaks to all my worries in this very moment of sitting in front of two monitors inside one cubicle with less life to live than I had yesterday. (Also my cell phone is sitting there, like a little fucking tombstone mock-up, just waiting to vibrate with more nothing.)

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "Don't Say Paris" has a world-weariness that feels unearned but what do I know, maybe it is the best earned thing ever and I am just being difficult. I think it is notable that of the two flowers (I think it was just two) mentioned here one is a peony, which is I think the most over-represented flower in all of literature (I say this with no desire to slight the peony itself). The excellent and at times superweird-Jungian novelist Robertson Davies I think wrote in his letters that his first memory was of a peony but I have become so suspicious of the peony as a trope or topoi or commonplace or maybe all three that I don't know what to believe (and he was a sneaky guy, too, so I am troubled all the more). "The Robots Are Coming" is utterly trivial but calls to mind the thing Tolkien said in one of his letters as the destruction of Germany (which grieved him awfully despite having sons in the war, and he himself a solider in the war before it) loomed and that is there would be, as he saw it, no true winner but the machines, the machines. I am going to go so far as to risk breaking with the whole spirit of this exercise and actually look it up: "Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter—leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines." It is haunting and right.  

WINNER: "Don't Say Paris" 

Dammit! THIS IS NOT UTTERLY TRIVIAL KVLT SCHOLAR – WE NOW LIVE IN A COLD AND HEARTLESS AGE OF ROBOTIC THINKING. (I guess the mention of Tolkien’s letter co-signs this sentiment, but I am disappointed in the lack of love for Dargan’s poem. Perhaps this once I will call this decision both harsh as well as unfair.

Gone at #13 is Kyle Dargan. 

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2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: The Fifth Thing Of It

Here is your recap up to this point:

#30: Daniel Borzutzky (eliminated by Jennifer Moxley)

#29: Rita Dove (eliminated by Monica Youn)

#28: Donald Hall (eliminated by Peter Gizzi)

#27: Kevin Young (eliminated by Peter Balakian)

#26: Fred Moten (eliminated by Jennifer Moxley)

#25: Eva HD (eliminated by Monica Youn)

#24: Elizabeth Willis (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

#23: Ross Gay (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#22: Jennifer Moxley (eliminated by Jane Mead)

#21: Donika Kelly (eliminated by Jane Mead)

#20: Ed Roberson (eliminated by Diane Seuss)

#19: Peter Gizzi (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#18: Jane Mead (represented by The Geese) vs. Norman Dubie (repped by Cantor, Frege & Gödel)

JANE MEAD HAS BEEN DRAWN AND ELIMINATED PEOPLE THE LAST TWO TIMES AND YET HERE SHE IS AGAIN. Also here is Norman Dubie, who makes his 2017 Royal Poetry Rumble debut as the winner of the Griffin Prize.

Mead has represented well enough, but this The Geese poem is a little too poem-y for my tastes. (I say this as a man who pulled over to gawk at flying geese formation this evening on way home from work.)

But fuck man, Dubie steps out the gate dropping shit like “the inert baritone of transfictional time” and it reminds me of spotfest indy wrestling where the crowd is a mark for itself and the wrestlers are actually the crowd but having trained to feel superior and everyone is a mark and they do their mark shit and everybody marks out together but none of it actually means a fucking thing at all. Sadly, the Norman Dubie poem does not even try to transcend this beginning. Ugh.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: A poem that offers worthy considerations of swole geese -- and, indeed, "the snowy fields over which the nuanced and muscular geese are calling, while time and the heart take measure" -- vs. a poem that says "the inert baritone of transfictional time" is a thunderous ippon of an elimination here, as decisive as has ever been or ever could be.   

WINNER: "The Geese"

Eliminado at #18 is Norman Dubie (and Jane Mead be dropping this bitch ass poets daily).

#17: Peter Balakian (repped by A Letter to Wallace Stevens) vs. Jay Hopler (repped by Outof These Wounds, The Moon Will Rise)

Balakian is back. Jay Hopler was National Book Award short-lister but not winner. Last poesy showdown left me wanting, so let us see if these two can salvage my hopes.

Balakian’s poem is another really poem-y poem, and perhaps I’m not in the right mind frame for this shit today.

[Insert 24 hour break, to refresh hope for poesy, but I don’t know man, these pretentious fuckers trying to ruin it, stay trying to ruin it.]

Haha, Jay Hopler writes “the neighborhood is lit” even though I take it out of context to make it read that. That’s good enough for me. Fuck these people.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I am notoriously wild for the poesy of Wallace Stevens (ask anyone) and the one of his that I am getting weird on lately is "Asides on the Oboe," with its considerations of The Central Man (How was it then with the central man? Did weFind peace? We found the sum of men), but I am not at all sure I have gotten anywhere or can get anywhere with it but I am ok and it will be ok. I thought this poem, with its numbered sections, might make its way up to thirteen to mirror Stevens' number of ways of looking at a blackbird, but no. Have you read the earliest John Ashbury stuff? From before he could utterly obscure (not really a diss, he does work with it) and instead just wanted to Yung Wallace Stevens? The Mooring of Starting Out is the name of a collection of those poems. Anyway I am predisposed towards thinking about Wallace Stevens but I am not at all sure this poem helps with that (for me, hopefully it did for the poet, or else all is lost). "Out of These Wounds, The Moon Will Rise" never gets as good as its title really but man, what a title. 

WINNER: "Out of These Woulds, The Moon Will Rise" 

#16: Tyehimba Jess (repped by Hagar in the Wilderness) vs. Monica Youn (repped by IgnatzDomesticus)

Tyehimba Jess wont the Lannan Award last year. Please welcome him to our contest. Monica Youn has already been welcomed, but welcome her back.

I’ve been studying (meaning reading and then thinking about on the backburner of consciousness throughout the day) a lot of nature-based hadiths the past few days, so Jess’s poem speaks to me. I would say at this point in my life (I am 44) I am no longer a technical atheist and actually believe in a creator even if that means everything is composed of a creative energy and all the shit we see is made of that. Jess’s poem shares that sort of generous interpretation of what “God” means so I am cool with this poem, although I still have trouble really capitalizing “God” and never use that word for what I believe, only the creator, but in practice only capitalize Earth. That’s just where I am, and I am unapologetic about it but I also don’t plan on forcing that shit on anyone else; in fact I would prefer everyone else go away and let me listen to the crow sermons in peace.

I honestly have no fucking clue what is going in this Monica Youn poem, but I enjoy it nonetheless. In that sense I guess she is Matt Hardy (extending the wrestling metaphor of Royal Poetry Rumble).

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I want more poems to be ekphrastic poems and so "Hagar in the Wilderness" has me from the moment it tells me it is about carved marble but then it turns out to also be a Strong poem on a Strong theme and just top to bottom Strong. Ever since reading the King James front to back a while ago I am way in on bible stories in a much more serious way than ever before (I always liked them but not like now) but it doesn't even need any of that. This is the much discussed and rightly venerated intersection of real techniques + real emotion and I can do nothing other than hail it. "Ignatz Domesticus" is fine and the idea of "the forest bleeding into her waking life" is an intriguing one but there is no shame in this loss. 

WINNER: "Hagar in the Wilderness" 

Oh good, the kvlt scholar is not a god hater. Monica Youn put in a valiant effort in this thing, having her moments yes indeed (eliminating two others), but alas, she is eliminated herself at #16, and we have also whittled away half our field of 30.

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: The Third Act

Welcome to the third installment of this Royal Poetry Rumble, where each day (at least in the beginning) three one-on-one match-ups of modern poets do battle, to eliminate each other, and survive unto the deeper realms of this imaginary battle royale. Let us recap the eliminations thus far…

#30: Daniel Borzutzky (eliminated by Jennifer Moxley)

#29: Rita Dove (eliminated by Monica Youn)

#28: Donald Hall (eliminated by Peter Gizzi)

#27: Kevin Young (eliminated by Peter Balakian)

#26: Fred Moten (eliminated by Jennifer Moxley)

#25: Eva HD (eliminated by Monica Youn)

#24: Elizabeth Willis (represented by Ephemeral Stream) vs. Allison Hedge Coke (repped by Percheron Nambe Morning)

Elizabeth Willis was a Pulitzier finalist, and Allison Hedge Coke was appointed to a Wytter Bynner fellowship by current U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera (who will enter this thing later at some point).

Lolol I’m not sure Willis is really even trying too hard as (in the second stanza):

I wanted to write a poem  and call it "Ephemeral Stream"

I do not feel this at all. I do however feel Allison Hedge Coke’s poem strongly, specifically the part about flicking your lights at oncoming traffic to warn them of pigs ahead:

and Pueblo patrol cars we catch in peripheral focus signal turn the halogens off and on on and off until they code the signal distress signal approaching tribal police traffic trap commuting the 35 mph racket

She owns. I’m gonna be so mad if the kvlt scholar picks the shitty ass Willis poem.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: It has been said that all great poesy is in some way at its core about itself as poesy but I think sometimes people take that too literally and do this kind of thing? I am not dismissing the move towards foregrounding process completely and in fact turn to Al Purdy's admission/apology/declaration "I have been stupid in a poem" in my heart often, but one must tread lightly, in my view. "Percheron Nambe Morning" however is a credible little poem about a pretty a horse and so I do not hesitate even slightly to give it the nod here, pausing only to note that this poem speaks of the first catholic church in North America and I would add to this by way of trivia that the first Anglican church in North America is in the unassailable locale of Halifax, Nova Scotia and if you did not know now you do. 

WINNER: "Percheron Nambe Morning"

Okay, good. Out at #24 is Elizabeth Willis.

#23: Joy Harjo (repped by A Map to the Next World) vs. Ross Gay (repped by To My Best Friend’s Big Sister)

Joy Harjo enters the poetic fracas, as last year’s Royal Poetry Rumble defending champion. She perhaps did not show as strongly as Laura Kasischke, but that doesn’t matter really because she still earned the win. Ross Gay is also a returning competitor, last year having been a National Book Award finalist, and then he followed that up by the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for that same collection, Unabashed Gratitude. BOTH THESE POETS (albeit not for real like) ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE POETRY RUMBLE’S FORMAT. WILL THIS GIVE THEM AN ADVANTAGE?

I seriously contemplated quoting about every other part of the Joy Harjo poem (because it is in my opinion so very great) and I can’t encourage you enough to click the title link and read it fully. But specific to my current sentiments upon this Earth is this part:

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it. 

Where I live physically upon the surface of the Earth is in America, part of what was the Virginia colony, and actually where colonial conquest butted ways with Monacan people who inhabited large part of Virginia along the James River from the fall of the James just west of Richmond all the way up to the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had an elder influence in my life talk about the language of the land (this was a native person, so obviously a much stronger concept in indigenous culture), and thinking about where I live and how it is so scarred by 21st Century American existence (not to mention the fact my goats dug up a couple quartz arrowheads over the years) got me to thinking about linguistics and nature, and how English is quite literally foreign to this land in terms of the centuries before the arrival of the English. So what of that Monacan language? I reached out to a Monacan poet, as she has done extensive academic research in this very issue, and the language itself is mostly evaporated. There are older members who can speak a few words, but the language itself is mostly gone. (And the tribe is not federally recognized either.)

This brings to mind perhaps the most ironic and yet ultimately United States-ish tale (I try to use “United States” instead of “America” when disparaging this cultural hegemony that crushes us all, because the still-misnomered “American” native cultures might be our only hope to self-correct ourselves back from oblivion) of Thomas Jefferson being fascinated by these indigenous people when he observed them returning to burial mounds near Monticello (15 miles from the Bird Tribe Compound, as the car groans), so he began collecting their words onto paper, in one of the first academic dictionaries of indigenous language. At some point though, thieves robbed his cart in transit, and made off with the trunk with this meticulously compiled dictionary, but seeing nothing of known value (that they could sell immediately), they tossed it into the James River. Jefferson’s dictionary of indigenous words was lost to the very river the English traveled up to manufacture the United States.

Anyways, I wish I knew the language of this land better, but it is lost, except one can still go outside and lean against trees and listen to crows and the wind and look at the blackberry and pokeberry and all the other supernatural shit, and re-learn the language by immersion. But we have lost so many centuries of solid work that had already been done.

Harjo also writes “The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine” and I don’t think we’ve ever had a stronger poem in any of these rumble nonsenses, and I am going to read this poem to my children, and also likely go get all the Joy Harjo I can find from the university library later this week.

There really is zero hope for Ross Gay’s poem in comparison, and I read it a couple times over but honestly was still so thoroughly lit up by Harjo’s words which all resonated so deeply with me that I might as well been looking at Cyrillic when reading Gay’s thing. A sly pop cultural reference of Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock was no counter for pure Planet Rock truthstorms of a (potentially) healing nature.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" is pretty much the long and the short of "A Map to the New World" and do not say that to belittle it but instead to praise it generally and to praise the beauty of "Once we knew everything in this lush promise" in particular, because that line alone would be enough to elevate a terrible poem but this is on the contrary a very good one. "To My Best Friend's Big Sister" is probably totally good (and impressively lurid in its art; you read this one and don't feel good about it) but "A Map to the New World" is the best one yet I think.  

WINNER: "A Map to the New World"

Out at #23 is Ross Gay, and regardless of whether she wins or not, Joy Harjo is the winner in the larger sense of the intent behind this ridiculous internet project. That poem is amazing.

#22: Jane Mead (repped by I Have Been Living) vs. Jennifer Moxley (repped by There Is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry)

Jane Mead was a National Book Award long-lister, and poor dear Jennifer Moxley has been drawn both previous days, and won both previous times. She is randomly pulled back into the fracas a third time already, with half the field not even been drawn once, and this does not seem fair but the process of most things in life follow unfair protocols that you just try to keep transparent so that when shit goes wrong ( as it will), nobody has good argument to shoot you in the face.

Mead’s poem is short but full of ocean love, and suggests the cleansing power of that ocean (and the humane recklessness to sometimes want to abandon land completely for that deep cleansing). Moxley’s poem is perhaps not bad but has been obliterated by an overuse of Hardcore Poetry Formatting. It moves from solid wrestling match poetry metaphor into gimmicky spotfest where the good parts are lost in the overbearing “Look at me! I am fucking Poetry!” of it.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "I Have Been Living" is a fine seaside lyric, and that is a genre I am never less than extremely ready for, and does it not call to mind Donald Glover's character's dream in the first episode of the seemingly good television show "Atlanta" that I have only watched the first to episodes of, please don't tell me what happens. I don't know if this came up last year (I would not at all be surprised if it did; I am not going to check) but for reasons I have never been able to properly articulate I just don't like the word "birdsong," which is weird, because it is a very ordinary poetry word to talk about the songs of birds, no problem, and I am all the way in on birds, I watch them eagerly and look up in books to learn about the ones that appear newly in the yard. But "birdsong" has always seemed a little precious to me, I guess? I don't know. I first brought this up with an old friend and fine poet who was about to send a bunch of his stuff off to Faber & Faber (why not, was my position on that; why the fvkk not) and this was probably fifteen years ago, or close to it, and all I could manage then was pretty much that "this word . . . this word is not my kind of word" and I am no further ahead with it now. Also please note that poems that appear on the page as "There is Birdsong at the Root of Poetry" are pretty much universally bad.  

WINNER: "I Have Been Living" 

So gone at #22 is Jennifer Moxley, who put up a valiant effort (unbeknownst to her) in this thing.

Well it also appears our scholarship has been in full agreement throughout this third day of the Royal Poetry Rumble, and that is because (I assume) we are both attuned the truthfulness of nature. Perhaps man vs. nature is a binary fallacy created by man to desperately hold onto his dominion over the Earth? I do not know. But I do care.

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: The Second Part

A recap of yesterday’s eliminations for accounting and reconciliation purposes:

#30: Daniel Borzutzky (eliminated by Jennifer Moxley)

#29: Rita Dove (eliminated by Monica Youn)

#28: Donald Hall (eliminated by Peter Gizzi)

Please consult the tag below about Royal Poetry Rumble if you need to understand what the fuck is going on, or maybe to revisit what happened last year. With all that out the way, let us begin our journey through today’s poetic showdowns…

#27: Peter Balakian (represented by “My Mother is a Fish”) vs. Kevin Young (repped by Hurricane Song)

Balakian won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry last year, and Kevin Young is another National Book Award long-lister. I guess Balakian’s poem’s title is a quote from Faulkner, and honestly it’s lost on me and the beginning leaves me expecting corniness galore. As reading it though, it’s not entirely corny, and perhaps I am projecting my own primordial traditionalist beliefs into his words. Then again, fuck it man, that’s all art is ultimately, is us the artz consumptor, projecting our experiences into the thing we are regarding. Balakian’s poem’s narrator’s father though is not metaphor for coming from the muck, but straight up fisherman it seems, and I think one could get a lot more of fishing in a poem. Maybe Peter Balakian doesn’t like codeine, which would make sense because he doesn’t seem to particularly like fishing, and the two acts go hand-in-hand in my opinion.

The Kevin Young poem I think is sexual but in that high-brow way where it refuses to even entertain Bukowski-ness and is not sexual at all. Thus it’s like I read a Penthouse Forum letter with all the good parts (most of it) blackened out, but instead of black highlighter, Young just deleted the parts. I refuse to entertain any notion that this Kevin Young poem is worth a shit, yet I am bound by the rules of kvlt scholarship…

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: As I Lay Dying, right? In the days before I could totally decide what I taught I had to teach that once, I guess it was fourteen years ago or something, and like all the Faulkner I have read (I have not read much at all) it seemed totally good but I am pretty deeply unlettered in its intricacies; I know there are plenty of full-on Faulkner people and I respect their choice to be that way despite not having any inclination in that direction myself (this is how I feel about people to whom Elvis Costello is super important also). I am staunchly in favour of shore poems and this reads to me like a pretty good one. R.I.P. the kingfisher here mentioned (Old English: īs-earn ["eez-ay-arn"], m.n: literally "ice-eagle"). I can also very much enjoy poesy of the "take it easy, mama" genre, from "The Passionate Shepherd" all the way through to the oft-revisited classic rock hits of FM radio, and "Hurricane Song" is part of that noble tradition, but the shore carries the day. 

WINNER: MY MOTHER IS A FISH

So outta this bitch at #27 is Kevin Young.

#26: Fred Moten (repped by there is religious tattooing) vs. Jennifer Moxley (repped by Dividend of the Social Opt Out)

Fred Moten was a Kingsley Tufts finalist, and Moxley already did battle once yesterday, vanquishing the far weaker poesy of Daniel Borzutzky.

I think Moten is trying pretty hard to be clever, and I actually enjoy (a little) how he does his line breaks to repeat short phrases at the beginning of a fresh line. It is like he is peppering us with poetic punches; however, to follow this metaphor, the content of the rest of his poetical moveset is not quite so striking, even if he is very clearly attempting to be (and probably think he is) clever.

As such, this match-up is akin to drag racing where one racer very obviously red lights and has blown any opportunity at victory, so ultimately all the other person has to do is not fuck it up entirely. And Jennifer Moxley very clearly does not fuck it up entirely, and in fact speaks to my lazy anti-social yet highly conflicted ass with her poem.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I don't actually like "There is Religious Tattooing" at all but "somebody pour some beautiful jute / on me" is an utterly killer line (or line and a quarter I guess). "Dividend of the Social Opt Out" addresses a very real phenomenon, the incredible pleasure of having a totally valid reason not to do something that, while not at all horrible, is not as good as staying home, and this speaks to me deeply, as I think I value staying home at least as much as anyone else ever and in many many instances more. I have reservations about the arch tone, no single line is as good as the jute one, and I reject the notion at the end of being sad that you won't be missed, but on the whole I am swayed. 

WINNER: DIVIDEND OF THE SOCIAL OPT OUT

Gone at #26 is that chump Fred Moten, and already, two days in, Jennifer Moxley has knocked two sucka ass bitches out this thing.

#25: Eva HD (repped by 38 Michigans) vs. Monica Youn (repped by Ersatz Ignatz)

Eva HD clocked a fat check for winning the Montreal International Poetry Prize for a single poem, which in fact was this single poem we read here. Monica Youn already eliminated one person yesterday and is already drawn (randomly) back into the fray by the cold, inhuman nature of spreadsheet functions.

This 38 Michigans poem is obviously a play on distance, and a fun one at that, for me at least (which apparently is not consensus, as you will soon see), and I can imagine this Eva HD what with her abnormal surname sitting there contemplating all this in a brief moment before calling someone who she wishes were nearer, but then the blast of thought turned into poetic free-write, and honestly she probably never called the fucker and spent far more time on this poem, and then also got a $20,000 check for having completed it (as well as all the proper paperwork in order to be recognized in such manners).

And yet the Universe conspires against Eva HD, because I literally looked up the word “planaria” this very morning, having encountered it elsewhere while looking for sonnet rhymes for “contrarian”, and low and behold Monica Youn drops that fuckin’ word in the first line of this Ersatz Ignatz. The entire poem is short and thick, not necessarily amazing but solid blend of natural knowledge and poetics, and brings to mind the thickness of such blends encountered in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, which I not-so-distantly listened to on book on tape (actually, cd, but even then imported into itunes and through my blip bloop device). There are far worse things for a poet to be called than “reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy” and I in fact wonder if ol’ Cormac himself has scribbled out some poems. Cormac literally means “son of raven” which had I ever had a son, he likely would’ve gotten that name because then his name would literally be double-truth.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "38 Michigans" is in my view (and please remember I am an idiot) largely nonsense and it has made the fatal error of mentioning the Trans-Siberian which immediately calls to mind my old friend and colleague John who rode the Trans-Siberian once but didn't get off at any stops because his papers weren't like *super duper* in order and he was worried about getting in some sense or another gulag'd (so he just rode it man he just rode it) and later he would wed a Finn, settle in Thailand, and continue to publish poems that are way better than "38 Michigans," so congratulations, 38 Michigans Poet, you just played yourself. I am not all-in on "Ersatz Ignatz" but the fact of sparrow-presence is all it takes some times.  

WINNER: ERSATZ IGNATZ

And thus, Eva HD is out quickly at #25. Even more interesting though is the fact both Jennifer Moxley and Monica Youn have already been drawn twice, and survived two battles. SHALL WE SEE ONE OF THEM AGAIN TOMORROW? Lolol, like I’m gonna spoiler your ass like that.