SONG OF THE DAY: All That I Got Is You

One of the all-time greatest ad-libs on a hip hop track is Ghost saying “word up mommy, I love you” at the end of this song. That shit always kills me. I love, when talking to unsuspecting bougie crowds at one of my haiku slams, to say, “I think the greatest living American poet is Dennis Coles. Have any of you seen Dennis Coles’ work?” And mostly people will be like, “wtf?” for a second and I’ll go, “He publishes poetry under the pseudonym Ghostface Killah,” and then they laugh, because they think I’m joking, BUT I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING GODDAMMIT.

freestyle sonnet #099: UPON CONTEMPLATING AUDRE LORDE'S POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY ESSAY A WHOLE LOT WHILE FUCKING OFF IN MY DISSATISFYING CUBICLE AT WORK

Poetry is not a luxury, though hoarded 
by wack academic gatekeepers lacking grime, 
with self-divine shine of whiteness, room and boarded 
most their path, afforded intellectual time 

self-perpetuated by internal traditions 
begging the question about what's intelligent? 
But what of dirty revelations from perdition's 
position further down, and far less evident, 

most def less respected, the broken and ignored 
choking for breathe and deplored by authorities? 
What of these tenant voices unheard by landlord 
of Culture, assimilating minorities 

into echoes of accepted poetic place, 
without ever once considering ceding space. 

P30PL3 WH0 WR1T3 PO3TRY...

people who write poetry

on cinderblock buildings make

self-publishing seem sexy

R34D1NG MY M4N 4TT4R 0F...

reading my man Attar of

Nishapur underneath some

trees, wishing I knew Persian

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: THE FINALE

Recap of all previous entrants and eliminations:

#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: Norman Dubie (eliminated by Jane Mead)

#17: Peter Balakian (eliminated by Jay Hopler)

#16: Monica Youn (eliminated by Tyehimba Jess)

#15: Solmaz Sharif (eliminated by Jay Hopler)

#14: Liz Howard (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#13: Kyle Dargan (eliminated by Diane Seuss)

#12: Sharon Olds (eliminated by Diane Seuss)

#11: Jane Mead (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

#10: Amy Gerstler (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

#9: Tyehimba Jess (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

#8: Ben Ladouceur (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#7: Juan Felipe Herrera (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

#6: Diane Seuss (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

#5: Nathaniel Mackey (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

#4: Allison Hedge Coke (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#3: Jay Hopler (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

Thus we are left with Lorna Crozier, who has tossed four poets out, and Joy Harjo, who has tossed five, and was last year’s winner to boot.

THE FINAL: Lorna Crozier (represented by Barren) vs. Joy Harjo (represented by Everybody Has a Heartache: A Blues)

I am trying really hard to be completely biased against Crozier, as at this point it is probably obvious I am a huge Harjo mark, but describing a deer with “his chest white with moon-spill” is pretty fuckin’ sick line. Right after that poetic jab she gives the power punch of “They touch the high things humans don’t sense are there.” I am woozy.

Harjo’s poem is as good as I’d expect, tying us all together with our heartache. One man’s stanza is specifically striking:

This man speaks to no one, but his body does. 

Half his liver is swollen with anger; the other half is trying 

To apologize —  

What a mess I’ve made of history, he thinks without thinking.

I love the Harjo poem immensely, but there is something to be said for how quick the Crozier one strikes. I have a well-known love for form poetries (accursed with a brain synchronized too tightly with math), but this makes me wonder if perhaps the ever-popular free verse is not comparable to mixed martial arts, and going the distance is not as striking (no pun intended) when appearing right beside a quick KO.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S PREAMBLE: Before I render my final hantei 判定 of this year's Royal Poetry Rumble I would like to first thank the poet and scholar Raven Mack for asking once again that I render my idiot decision(s) upon all of this art which was no doubt created expressly for the purpose of some goon (me) making pronouncements about it that range from the banal all the way up to the facile. Thanks too to all the poets! I am sorry for what I have done to your work and continue to do to it! But at the same time, I am reading it, which is more than most, so you get it where you can, I guess. This leads me to again thank Raven because it is possible and indeed definite that I spend too much time in the poesy of ġēaradagas (yore-days) and not enough in the present and so this now-annual opportunity to read from among the most celebrated contemporary poets has been, one more, illuminating. That said IT IS TIME TO RUMBLE IT IS TIME TO ROOOOOOYAL POETRY RUMBLE YYYYEEEAAAAHHHHH  

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: Holy fvkkn shit "Barren" is maybe the best one yet what the hekkkkkkkk just happened to the place in my heart where deer are. "In the orchard a deer stands on his hind legs" is a an all-time great first line of poesy in my view and when whoever-this-is' collected works comes out at the end of her (if this is not a ladypoet I will eat my hat) long life it will hold I am sure a place of privilege amongst the other lines listed in the index of first lines (all volumes of poetry longer than a chapbook should have this). Please do not think I am in anyway trivializing any of this, I don't know, Elizabeth Bishop/Marianne Moore-level animal poem (I know no greater praise) when I tell you that the lines "his chest white with moon-spill, his antlers tall hard hands, fingers splayed" call to mind together in their totality two of my favourite instances of recent deer-art, one the "Lunar Stag" of Eric Sabee (kvlt fantasy art), the other the "Laurence Elk" of Welcome skateboards (kvlt sk8tbört art), the first of which extends the stag's antlers until they are themselves lunar in proportion and aspect; the second offering literal antler-hands (["If you fall, I will catch, I'll be waiting," the time{aftertime}less words of Cyndi Lauper rendered haunting and new below]; my wife bought me this skateboard for my birthday years ago). I saw a deer near a stream by the hill as I drove through Marshy Hope on my way to the best judo tournament I ever won; I saw a deer and her young walking with my daughter in Hemlock Ravine, they crossed the path just ahead of us. Deer are important both symbolically and actually and this poem offers us both without either collapsing into the other and this is an achievement. No ideas but in things, no deer-ideas but in deer-things, this has both, what more could we ask of it. As to its rival here: I have long felt weird about how a blues is a form a lot of poets just take as a given, as a form for them to have a go at, and when I say this I am in no way making a point about cultural appropriation (Maya Angelou was right that all poetry is a human heritage and to deny anyone any of it is to deny their humanity) but about the oddness that that popular form is the one that poets seem to want to just work into the mix, and I was about to make a (dumb) point about how it's not like poets do that with other genres like for example there is no poem here called Treesorrow: A Black Metal but it occurs to me there is literally no reason not to write that poem and I guess I will now? I don't like this poem very much (in the fullness of time it might well remain Superior to Treesorrow; who can say) but to the extent to which it is has compelled me to reevaluate or at least examine how I have always thought this was an odd kind of poem to write I salute it; also any poet who makes it this far in the Royal Poetry Rumble is entitled to no small measure of respect. Remember the Royal Rumble a few years ago that was kind of awful until almost the end but then Ryback of all people (who most would describe I think as himself *quite* awful) came out at like number twenty-six or something and then all of a sudden the match was inexplicably awesome? Now that I write that out it doesn't seem directly relevant.  

WINNER: "BARREN"

Yeah, I can’t disagree with any of that. The nature of this Royal Poetry Rumble is that one only need survive both the luck of the draw as well as the match-ups they are drawn into, and Crozier did so to make this final, against our established Poetry Superstar in Joy Harjo. And Crozier earned her victory in that last battle, which was the one that counted more than all.

And thus, eliminated most honourably at #2 is Joy Harjo, and your victor of the 2017 Royal Poetry Rumble is Lorna Crozier, in what has to be considered an upset, as Canadians weren’t even entered in last year’s contest. Perhaps we go international next year. Perhaps we never do this again. There are many perhaps in our lives and our cultures, but poesy is not one of them. So regardless, any fucker who is still reading this far along, I hope you love on some poetry and read it and cultivate it and MAKE THAT SHIT FUCKING HAPPEN.

Peace.

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: The Tenth Installment

Well, we have arrived (slowly but honestly) at our final four poets – Allison Hedge Coke, Jay Hopler, Lorna Crozier, and last year’s winner Joy Harjo. To quickly repeat our protocol for learned poesy, as these match-ups have been generated randomly by Excel spreadsheet randomization formulas, the people are added back in. If there is any favoritism involved in the match-ups (or lack of being drawn at all until late in the game), it is Bill Gates fault (or the Google derivative to be more honest), not our’s. And as I looked at these final four after the last set of 3 match-ups were finished, I thunk to myself, “Oh man I hope I hope I HOPE that somehow Allison Hedge Coke and Joy Harjo make the final.”

Last summer in the build-up to the MOST IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION EVER (until next one), I did an Amtrak/Greyhound loop around the entire American country, from Virginia out to Seattle down to L.A. back over to New Orleans then up home. I wrote tanka poetry (which likely will never see the light of day) the entire time. On that trip I had two things which really stuck out to me as take-aways – a) fuck fences or walls, they are arbitrary in definition and apply ownership to everything, and b) you know what? give control of the land back to the indigenous elders. I know that sounds corny and cliché, and the automatic response anybody deeply immersed in our form of empirical civilization would say, “You can’t just give all the land away… that’d bring chaos!” And even in my own personal life, it’d be difficult to literally give up ownership of the place I really don’t even have a single cent of equity in to claim actual ownership of. But those were my  takeaways.

I have thought a lot in the past six months as well about English as a colonial language, and whether it has taken the necessary steps to be as natural a language as it could be, or whether it has been used as an oppressing language. People around the world do not learn English to write poetry – they learn it to conduct business, or get jobs. This makes me sad, because this is the only language I am totally fluent in.

All this land we walk on (speaking to Americans here but really the whole of the western hemisphere this is applicable to) did not know the language currently used upon its surface until very recent times. The language of the land has traditionally been something very different. I’m not sure why this weighs so heavy on me the past half a year or so, but it does, not like a “wow, that’s a sad fact, oh well, history, let’s go to the movies,” but as a real fucking heavily saddening glaring fault that needs some rectification of some sort.

Anyways, all this left me excited for two indigenous women, both writing in what would not be their people’s native language, but applying their innate philosophies to that language – “reinventing the enemy’s language” as it is called in a collection of women indigenous writers co-edited by Harjo I’m currently reading.

I don’t know how many people actually click these things, or actually read these stories, but I suggest one of the most important things one can do if they love poetry is to plant that language back into the Earth, reconnect it with nature (even if writing about seemingly unnatural humane subjects). There’s a lot of imbalance in our current situation as people – politically, environmentally, poetically – and nature recalibrates shit if it is allowed to.

And thus, here we are…

#4: Allison Hedge Coke (represented by Wokiksuye) vs. Joy Harjo (repped by Ah Ah)

I would’ve happily wrote all that for a proud finale showdown between these two amazing writers, but our method did not accommodate such manmade perfection. That is fine. One can’t go on long internet diatribe about letting things happen more naturally, then complain because what naturally happened didn’t meet their personal desires. Before this year’s Royal Poetry Rumble, I had never read Allison Hedge Coke, so I am immensely thankful this ridiculousness existed a second year for that alone.

Coke’s poem is of cancer, and mostly in Siouan language it appears, so I am in the dark on half of it. I work in my day job in a mundane administrative position related to cancer research, and though that sounds noble (and certainly one can make a noble-sounding email signature for themselves in such work), seeing the sausage made at the ol’ cancer research factory scares the fuck out of me on many levels. I have lost loved ones to cancer (haven’t we all at this point?), and likely will lose more (statistically speaking, as well as knowing the medical history of family members). Perhaps I am just stoned by the sunshine I sit under in my backyard on this off day writing this shit at a tiny table, but perhaps the imbalance spoken of earlier as applied to our words and our actions all contributes to this cancer. I can’t say for certain in any scientific way, nor do I care to (having seen the sausage factory on the inside). As for judging the poem, there’s little for me to judge, but this:

The spirit is connected 

to the hair at the 

crown—pahin hocoka. 

The hair falls 

the spirit goes, 

the will is 

connected no more.

This feels more truthful than the science that rules my mundane desk job activities forty hours a week.

Harjo’s poem begins by saying the crow calls “ah ah” and then this “ah ah” is a universal language also spoken by ocean waves and human lungs and the sounds of their oars and even the plane overhead (you see? through language man reunited with nature, instead of “man vs. nature”) and the sound of her soul being scraped also is “ah ah”, and as someone who often sits in the woods attempting to better understand what the crows are saying (no shit, I do this), I can say I support this poem heartily, in the most literal sense of that word “heartily” possible.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I don't think it is an unreasonable position that I take when I insist that no cancer poems are good; I have read a bunch of them, and they are just not good, and this is no exception. Why do people do this. When I was the (bad) fiction editor of a (pretty good) completely tiny literary magazine we would get so many stories about people getting cancer and literally none of them were ever even ok. I think poems about cancer are only like one discourse-level above people who say "fuck cancer" when somebody dies of cancer, which is just the gooniest shit ever. It is going to take a real fuckup on the part of "Ah Ah" not to beat a poem that says "chemotherapy" and "leukemia" in it and I say we find out together. Oh shit, it has crows. And also some other things. I tell you this: "Ah ah scrapes the hull of my soul" is some Melville-level seafaring compared to saying chemotherapy in a poem, everybody please stop. 

WINNER: "AH AH"

Eliminated at #4, but given (arbitrarily by me) the 2017 Laura Kasischke Award for out-of-nowhere greatness, is Allison Hedge Coke.

#3: Lorna Crozier (repped by Once There Was a Singing) vs. Jay Hopler (repped by And the Sunflower Weeps for the Sun, Its Flower)

Lorna Crozier won last year’s Pat Crowther Award for top Canadian woman poet. I figured I’d clarify that since I’ve been too lazy to do so thus far, and she’s already eliminated three other poets, and is now in the final four. I have not loved Crozier’s stuff, but I have not hated it either. She very much reminds me of high school English teacher exposing the young to poetry, which is to say I could not possibly dislike her, despite her content being far off my base of knowledge. This Crozier poem is much like the others in that I personally do not vibe to it, but I can see where someone who is not me could enjoy it. I do not fault anyone for not being like me; in fact, I’d encourage it.

Lololol, almost as if on cue, Hopler’s poem goes through things I can relate to, and then drops:

As a man, I am a disappointment, I know that. 

Is it my fault I was born in shadow?

The Hopler poem is depressing, but I feel it more than Crozier’s, perhaps because I am generally depressed.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: "Once There Was A Singing" uses familiar tales of myth and legend to talk about birds and also trees that turn to ghosts and won't grow leaves which is to say it is a poem written directly for me (thank you, mystery poet) so despite the really quite lovely title of "And The Sunflower Weeps for the Sun, It's Flower" this wasn't ever going to be close, was it, and also I fundamentally disagree with the idea (in the latter) that emptiness is the only freedom in a fallen world; I think that is an adolescent nihilism that insufficiently accounts for love.  

WINNER: "Once There Was a Singing"

Gone at #3 is Jay Hopler, and our Canadian kvlt scholar (while blinded to author) pushes this last Canadian wild card poetess through to the final, where Lorna Crozier will take on last year’s champion, Joy Harjo. That will happen tomorrow on this ridiculous compendium of illegitimate arts and scholarship called Rojonekku dotcom.

2017 Royal Poetry Rumble: Number 9 Number 9 Number 9

Welcome back friends (and potential haters). Let us recap what has transpired thus far in brutally simplistic list form:

#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: Norman Dubie (eliminated by Jane Mead)

#17: Peter Balakian (eliminated by Jay Hopler)

#16: Monica Youn (eliminated by Tyehimba Jess)

#15: Solmaz Sharif (eliminated by Jay Hopler)

#14: Liz Howard (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#13: Kyle Dargan (eliminated by Diane Seuss)

#12: Sharon Olds (eliminated by Diane Seuss)

#11: Jane Mead (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

#10: Amy Gerstler (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

#9: Tyehimba Jess (eliminated by Lorna Crozier)

#8: Ben Ladouceur (eliminated by Joy Harjo)

#7: Juan Felipe Herrera (eliminated by Allison Hedge Coke)

And thus there are only six poetic souls left to compete in this thing for which they don’t even know they are competing in…

#6: Allison Hedge Coke (represented by When the Animals Leave This Place) vs. Diane Seuss (repped by Hey Pauly)

Coke, the Witter Bynner Fellow (an under-position to the U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera) and Seuss, a Pulitzer Prize for poetry finalist, have both knocked out three other folks in this thing. And now they face each other. (Hadn’t noticed that Coke eliminated her appointer at end of last round of battles. But she did.)

I do not know Seuss in specific from this thing yet, though I remember she was strong, whereas I’ve looked up Allison Hedge Coke books to get from the library. (They had none, which is pretty shoddy imo, even if they are the 35th largest library in the United States, according to Wikipedia.)

This Allison Hedge Coke poem I have to admit I read while listening to Mannie Fresh instrumentals on headphones, and it was a great chocolate and peanut butter moment inside my brain, because the poem is about the most beautiful and natural way to describe an impending flood of a lifetime as you will ever read. I love this style, where the manmade which is doomed is not necessarily a bad thing because perhaps man was being fucking stupid in the first place. And yet, he is still a part of everything and he does not deserve to be smitten from the Earth, but just beaten by the larger lessons, and maybe man will learn. Maybe.

The Diane Seuss poem also is a pretty wonderful poem in that it alludes to the larger complexities of two working dudes’ lives, as well as a pair of women who happen to be attached to the poem as supporting characters, and fuck what a great poem. Normally I would say I’m partial to the natural world poems, which would be Coke’s, but this “Hey Pauly” is pretty great little Polaroid snapshot telling two hundred thousand words if you let it. Thus I’m glad I don’t have to be the official judge.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: I don't know how long my list of favourite poem-kinds would be but I can say with certainty that if I ever actually did some kind of a ranked list (that would be weird, and I won't, don't worry), animal poems and poems of apocalypse would both be right up there, but what I had not previously considered, certainly not properly if at all, is the apocalyptic animal poem, but here we are, and this is so intense, like an incantation. It is entirely possible I have done this before in these pages before (I know I have done it somewhere recently, but I think it was in the context of Japanese shoot-style grappling, and not here), but consider please the Old English "ġealdor" or "galdor," From Proto-Germanic *galdrą, *galdraz ‎(“magical song, incantation”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰel- ‎(“to shout, sing, charm, enchant”). Cognate with Old Saxon *galdar, Old High German galdar, kalter ‎(“spell, enchantment”), Old Norse galdr ‎(Icelandic galdur, “enchantment, spell”). Related to Old English galan ‎(“to sing, shout”). More at yell. Noun. galdor n 1. song, incantation; enchantment, spell, divination 2. charm; magic; sorcery 3. sound.  That is kind of a mess the way I copied it from Wiktionary but all the crucial words about what this poem is are there.  "Hey Pauly" is like "hey did you hear the poignant thing about the barber and the undertaker?" and you are like no, tell me and it is like "ok, so . . ." and the results are totally fine but this is an overwhelming win, a win with the force of prophecy. 

WINNER: "When The Animals Leave This Place"

I could’ve lived with either choice, and am actually disappointed either of these women will be eliminated, but hey, without rules what sort of stupid internet projects would this world even have? Out at #6 is Diane Seuss.

#5: Lorna Crozier (repped by Man from the Stars) vs. Nathaniel Mackey (repped by As If It Were “This Is Our Music”)

Lorna Crozier has (oddly) won twice already, perhaps a budding Canadian conspiracy. Nathaniel Mackey has not even appeared in this year’s Royal Poetry Rumble yet, but he is a returning vet from last year (finished 17th). Mackey is the Bollingen Prize winner of 2015.

I have not liked Crozier’s poetry at all, and perhaps this is because I have seen pictures of her as well in finding them, and she looks like an old lady in small town writing poetry. (Suddenly I feel horrible for dismissing that, because what is wrong with that? Why wouldn’t I want even more of that? Why is there some “serious ass poetry” litmus test I am applying?) Plus, none of her poems are at the two mainstream poetry sites I dig for these from, and I have to google search separately, and anything is at her site alone. (Again, why is this bad? What the fuck do I think people find if they google “Raven Mack”? Only my stupid site, which to be honest, looks way fucking worse than Lorna Crozier’s.) But even beyond all this very judgmental personal prejudice, I specifically don’t like this poem. It feels trite.

Mackey jumps into the mix, and I want to like this poem because aesthetically, at first at least, I like how he lays it out. But fuck man, it goes on and is not hitting killer riffs. I imagine this band he has back together is some shitty jazzy noodling band because it’s definitely not thrash. He should’ve had a thrash band getting back together, and one of them still had a short-and-long haircut, and then maybe this would’ve been a good poem. Fuck man, these two are a letdown after the last two.

THE KVLT SCHOLAR’S HANTEI: The last thing I mean to be in any of these hantei (判定) is simply dismissive and if I have been so in any of these as we have gone along please forgive me, but I don't like either of these poems at all and I don't think it's because I am kind of reeling still from "When The Animals Leave This Place" but really it might be, who knows what's happening right now after that. But I think I will go with "Man From the Stars" because it doesn't have any lines about Heidegger and it's shorter and therefore more respectful of what little time we have here together. 

WINNER: "Man From the Stars"

Yeah. Out at #5 is Nathaniel Mackey (perhaps furthering the Canadian conspiracy that keeps Lorna Crozier in this thing). We are down to a Final Four which will occur (perhaps) next week. See you then! (Perhaps!)