Here is a true story about poets: they are all a bunch of whining pussies, except for Jane Kenyon, Robert Frost, and the two guys who played the precogs in Minority Report. When JFK asked Robert Frost to read a poem at his swearing-in, Robert Frost wrote a poem specifically for the purpose and then when he couldn’t read it, on account of being a million years old and all of the terrible howling winds, he just cold recited another poem of his, from memory. Then the strapping 86-year-old walked 500 miles uphill in the snow to get home, because he was Robert Fucking Frost.
Now the Washington Post has a compilation of quotes from an assortment of precious mincing poets complaining about “the muse,” and how they couldn’t possibly bestir themselves to produce a poem for anything as dull as a presidential inauguration. Quoth Charles Simic, a poet who we actually like:
“The best stuff that happens in poems you cannot will,” he said. “I can’t, for example, lock you in a room and say, ‘Give me a great metaphor.’ You can’t. I can’t, if somebody pointed a gun at me.”
WELL CHARLES SIMIC JUST BE GLAD BARACK OBAMA DIDN’T ASK YOU TO WRITE A GODDAMN POEM, WITH METAPHORS IN IT, AT GUNPOINT.
Anyhow, the woman who will be reading at Obama’s inaugural is the poet Elizabeth Alexander, who once wrote this:
Shockingly vital, mammoth giblet,
the second living thing to break free
of my body in fifteen minutes.The midwife presents it on a platter.
We do not eat, have no Tupperware
to take it home and sanctify a tree.
Nom nom nom!
In all seriousness, it is nice that Obama has decided to have poetry read at his inauguration, and God knows poets do not get a lot in the way of publicity or money or any other useful things, so yay to Obama for promoting poetry. Still: “mammoth giblet”?
Inaugural Committee Selects Poet for Ceremony [Washington Post]
{ 85 comments }
It’s obvious, innit? Elizabeth Alexander’s muse was Sarah Palin, squawking in front of the turkey decapitator. I mean, duh.
Robert Frost: still dead. And rightfully so. That fucking hack.
Elizabeth Alexander: Award winning, awesometown. Does not eat dick.
“Barry is not white
He came with Allah to lead
Muhammad gets pissed”
A HAIKU OF GENIUSSS.
If only I could think of words that rhymed with Campbell Brown, Bill Kristol and Nantucket I’d try to get that sweet gig for myself.
Robert Fucking Frost wasn’t afraid of no god damned terror neither.
maybe she meant “gibbet” … but that is just weird. i got nuthin
Vogon poetry is notoriously bad.
If only our poets had something momentous to comment upon at the inauguration. Something or someone that might reflect a tremendous achievement of our nation’s hopes and dreams.
Is Dice Clay available. Hickory Dickory Dock, Charlie Crist was …
No more fitting poetry than having W read from “My Pet Goat” one last time.
First arugula and now poetry. How about using Chris Rock instead? Sen. Byrd can play his fiddle. Oh wrong. He can’t.
Alexander will assure that this will be the first Presidential Inauguration to be fined by the FCC. Yay.
First stanza of her poem:
“Neonatology
Is
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.”
Ralph.
The poem will be accompanied by a tenor sax, bass and drums. The audience will light up Galoises and, at the end, say “Yeah, man.”
This is really a bummer. If the Repugs had won, and McCain keeled over from a heart attack, we would have been treated to a Robert Service marathon.
“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up
In the Malamute saloon . . . .”
Now, THAT’S poetry.
There is no chin under Robert Frost’s beard. There is only another fist.
Ted Kooser. Former Poet Laureate. Totally Rocks.
Campbell Brown is brewing her own mammoth giblet from some ‘heckuva job’ type Bushie.
8pm weeknights CNN
I sort of know what this woman means- Right after I gave birth- a long painful birth- the nurse insisted I should look at the placenta. I told her I was going to vomit and they had to give me oxygen. I didn’t write a poem. I puked.
Whose giblets these are I think I know,
She’s on CNN 8pm weeknights.
I inaugurate myself, and swear myself in,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every vote belonging to me as good belongs to you.
We are the people we have been waiting for
If we knew we were coming
We would have baked ourselves
A cake
This was the time
From sea to shining sea
Yes we can
And so forth
Oh and
Fuck you, John McCain.
Also.
From Allen Sherman:
“Ladies and gentleman
Take my advice:
Pull down your pants
And slide on the ice.”
I have written a poem in honor of the holidays and this thread.
Homeless for the Holidays
On Christmas night
We’ll have a potato toss for fun
then eat the potato when we’re done
We’ll sing some songs
Atleast they’re free
And imagine that we have a tree
And when the Christmas star has risen
We’ll steal some rum and go to prison.
Amen.
The poet should have been Lord Buckley (very dead), or that puma Maya Angelou.
[re=201435]wheelie[/re]:
[thumb snaps]
Next time with bongos, please.
I want this poem to be read at the inauguration.
“Rose are Red,
Violets are Blue,
The Bush years sucked dick,
Hunt him down, my minions, and feed his carcass to the jackels!”
Alexander is kind of a bland, wussy choice, but a shitload better than Maya Angelou. So let’s be thankful for that.
And the poem Frost read? The Gift Outright is so loaded with manifest destiny, white man’s burden crap that I think everyone’s quietly repressed it from their memories.
Nothing says presidential like an ode to placenta
Let us go then, you and I –
With the recession etched across the sky.
Let us go, through rubble-strewn Iraqi streets –
The muttering retreats
Of Moqatada al-Sadr in his ebon robes
And through the books of Paulson and his fleshy lobes.
And in the studio Sean Hannity howls and glares
About Wright and Rezko and Bill Ayers.
If you can’t write on demand, then what the fuck kind of writer are you? Music composers do that shit all the time. Did Bernie Herrmann ever say “Gee Mr Hitchcock, you’ll have to wait on that soundtrack, I’m sitting around huffing brandy waiting for the inspiration to strike! Check back with me, I dunno, later, much later!”
No, it’s mammouth GIMLET, slice o’lime.
Ummmmmm……gimlet…………
Peggy Noonan is a poet. As is T-Pain. What doth they wrought?
There’s a stake in your fat white heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Dubya, dubya, you bastard, I’m through.
The poet-king avails himself a bard of the land.
Next we will have a court-jester in the White House.
There once was a Senator from Chicago,
Who escaped the reach of Governor Blago.
But if guilt-by-association is fair,
Then the gotcha media has him in a snare,
And Barry’s just a commie like Ivan Drago!
[re=201432]finallyhappy[/re]: The truest poetry always comes from the gut.
[re=201483]magic titty[/re]:
Correction
“What hath they wrought” /
“What doth they wreak”;
The verb and tense
Should match, you freak!
[re=201433]Come here a minute[/re]:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
But no-one these days gives a damn
They’re watching Campbell on teevee.
[re=201466]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Nice poeming!
I will shut up now.
“…lock you in a room and say, ‘Give me a great metaphor…”
It appears obvious to me that Charles Simic never passed his Grade Six English Composition examination.
A pastor and a poet? Wake me up when it’s over.
Barry had a little lamb
And it was always gruntin’
He tied it to a five bar gate
And kicked its little cunt in
After my twins were born, the nurses slung the afterbirth on top of the incubator in a ziplock bag. I assure you that “mammoth giblet” is exactly right.
That was too much information, wasn’t it.
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry bias or bull too far
We may choose something like Campbell Brown
To stay our minds on and be swayed to watch weeknights 8 pm on CNN
[re=201455]S.Luggo[/re]: “Hipsters, Flipsters, and finger-poppin’ daddies, knock me your lobes!” at an inaugural would be completely righteous.
A big hand, everyone, for SKS, for bringing teh funny in truckloads today. Clap, clap, clap.
[re=201412]bfstevie[/re]: There once was a man from Nantucket
Who told young Bill Kristol to suck it.
Campbell Brown got the scoop
Mr. Bill thought that poop
Was the thing he should slurp. Ew, gross, fuck it.
I was kinda hoping for Chuck D to do something like this….
Bass! How low can you go?
Now they got me up here’cause my policies they sell
‘Cause a brother like me said “Well…
…Jeremiah Wright’s a prophet and I think you ought to listen to
what he can say to you, what you ought to do.”
Follow for now, power of the people, say,
“Make a miracle, B, pump the lyrical”
Black is back, all in, we’re gonna win
Check it out, yeah y’all, here we go again
Turn it up! Bring the noise!
We are a center right country.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Also, Superfreak, Superfreak, the girl is Superfreaky is poetic.
[re=201433]Come here a minute[/re]: [re=201460]Cape Clod[/re]: full-throated, cacophonous LOL
[re=201541]randomsausage[/re]: I bet you also know about the Amazing Powers of Llap Goch. Fear no man!
Analysis:
Shockingly vital, mammoth giblet, -> Took a huge dump
the second living thing to break free -> It came out in two stools
of my body in fifteen minutes. -> God I thought I was on the pot forever
The midwife presents it on a platter. -> The second one was so big it was like giving birth
We do not eat, have no Tupperware -> I shouldn’t have eaten all the leftovers
to take it home and sanctify a tree. -> Still, it’s worthy of a poem so I’ll throw in
-> some imagery, better make it something that won’t
-> won’t give away that I’m writing a poem about a
-> bowel movement
them coloreds do likes them words that sound alike
Sigmund, Sigmund, you bastard, I’m through
Okay. First, the picture is WALT WHITMAN not Robert Frost. I didn’t feel like reading through the entire thread, but it sure looks like no one figured this out. Robert Frost was a very brave, rascally character. He read the Mending Wall to the Soviets and made Kennedy so damn mad that Kennedy basically fired him as Poet Laureate. Did Frost care? No. Now, if it was YOU, Wonkette, who posted the Whitman pix–better brush up on your poets. A good poet for this occasion would have been Billy Collins, but I don’t think he would have written a thing for the occasion–but maybe one of P. Diddy’s works or maybe a little poem by Kanye West?
[re=201659]Scotsfury[/re]: If you had read the alt-text in the pic, you’d have known that it wasn’t a mistake. SKS knows her poets.
I don’t believe you.
Had we but giblets enough and time,
This gravy, lady, would be no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To ladle, and pass our long Sunday.
Thou by the Tupperware’s burping sigh
Shoulds’t platters find: I by the side
Of Saran Wrap should complain. I would
Cover food ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, reuse,
Til the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable food should go
Into the crisper, down below;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine olives, and on thy pickles gaze;
Two hundred for each turkey breast…
Ah, whiskey tango foxtrot.
…but surely you approve of the terrible choice Obama has made? I agree with Wonkette, on this one. Get an Alpha male poet–not another wimpy new age confessional burp up a hairball I cry wanna be poet.
[re=201666]Scotsfury[/re]: But the theory now goes
That the Whitman’s a Frost
[re=201659]Scotsfury[/re]: Billy Collins sucks. Seriously. I mean he seriously sucks. As a poet. As a human being he’s probably fine.
If Barry’s going to pick Rick Warren for the invocation, then he should be obliged to pick Amiri (Leroy Jones) Baraka for the fight-the-power poetry slam.
Where is William Carlos Williams when you need him?
Some say that the world will end in poo
Some say Wonkette
From what I’ve tasted of your taint
I hold with those who say it ain’t
But if I had to place a bet
I think I know enough Wonkette
To say that for destruction snark
Is more precise
And hits the mark
[re=201674]Scandalabra[/re]: He’s riding in a red wagon with “Radio Flyer” painted over with the number 5.
[re=201569]FreshCliches[/re]:
Truth.
Their digging the bebop jazz,
where have all
the white hipsters gone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-b6S94O-Wk
For the inauguration trip,
this should be perfect
if you are hip,
after gaging
on a dollop
of Rick Warren.
[re=201460]Cape Clod[/re]: [re=201435]wheelie[/re]: Win
WOW!
ZZ Topps gonnay play at Barrys Big Party?
OMFG!
That totally rocks!
[re=201441]Mustang[/re]: Win, also.
When life hands you a mammoth giblet, make lots of gravy.
[re=201666]Scotsfury[/re]: I don’t believe you.
Ah, the dreary drumbeat of the solipsist when confronted with verifiable evidence. I won’t point out that there’s an obvious way to find out what the alt-text says, because I don’t feel like wrestling with a pig today, so please don’t consider it a concession that I don’t recommend you put your mouse over the goddamn picture and wait for the alt-text to appear and then notice that it’s an obvious Whitman reference. I wouldn’t be so patronizing as to recommend such an obvious course of action, as it would insult your vast intellect. I’m just going to assume from your downright intransigence that you’re completely faith-based when it comes to the existence of such well-documented HTML entities, and wouldn’t dream of belaboring the point.
[re=201679]Warren Terror[/re]: That was lovely, thank you.
Trashing The World On A Snowy Evening
Whose world this is I think I know.
The United States under my toe.
It will not acknowledge that I have
Sucked it into a useless war
In Iraquistan.
And miles to go after I sleep,
And miles to go after I sleep.
[re=201687]S.Luggo[/re]: Thanks, and favorited.
Here are two that I previously had in my YT faves:
Lord Buckley on Groucho’s “You Bet Your Life”
Beany And Cecil – The Wildman Of Wildsville
voted in on hope
and change in a land stuck
yes, he smoked some dope–
yes, we are fucked.
but then a wizard from the middle-west
comes to soothe us here tonight
we skip past all the rest
because we know that he is right.
and so, to d.c. we ride
despite lack of lodgings or toilets
nor space in which to hide
nor tall skinny soys… let’s
[sorry]
forget the years gone by…
we will string them up later
and never wonder why
we love justice ginsburg, ruth bader.
so we convict george and dick
and end the war in iraq
and that’s why we did pick
our senator, our man, barack.
[re=201704]SayItWithWookies[/re]: I don’t believe you wasted keystrokes and energy on the Scotsfury (signifying nothing).
That said, it was glorious to read.
[re=201718]thwanger[/re]:
“[sorry]” keep sanitation alive
History shall ne’er survey
A nobler grave than this.
Here lie the bones of John McCain.
Stop traveller!
And piss.
“Quoth Charles Simic, a poet who we actually like”
This should be, “Quoth Charles Simic, a bard WHOM we actually [as opposed to not actually?] liketh”
Another gadzillion dollars in an Ivy League edmacation into the fabled crapper.
“a poet who we actually like:”
Okay, I want the instant replay on this one. Isn’t it Whom we like, because we is the subject and who the object of the verb, like?
Don’t mean to go all Strunk and White on anyone’s ass, but I actually would like to know and since we’ve got some pain in the neck elitist whose name I can’t remember always being pissy over grammar, I thought this would be a good place to ask.
And if someone has already mentioned this, well excuse me. Being a deformed person, I think you people can cut me some slack.
I like Jane Kenyon, too, Sara. Have you read Donald Hall’s “Without” collection.
Shit, I’m sorry, I was starting to treat wonkette as if it were literati chatting, rather than what it is– a bunch of potty-mouthed losers bitching.
[re=201731]Numbat Dundee[/re]:
Point, set and match.
I heart Ian McKellen plenty, but Robert Frost looks much more like Gandalf.
[re=201704]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Is what’s going on between you and Scotsguy what passes for a flaming war on wonkette?
And WTF–Was Calvin Trillin busy that day?
And Rick Warren? Please. Couldn’t Hopey go ahead and demonstrate a little of that elitism and ask someone like Rev. Edgar from the National Council of Churches? Or the Sojourners guy?
Fuckin’ Walnuts could’ve come up with a loser like Warren.
[re=201744]DustBowlBlues[/re]:
“Being a deformed person, I think you people can cut me some slack.”
No. But how about a boost-up to reach the elevator buttons?
I guess that this get me banned. Don’t care.
[re=201747]aleks[/re]: Frost was always clean shavem. In his persona, he tried to perpetuate the image of a wizzened, grey New England farmer despite his San Francisco origins. http://quotationsbook.com/assets/shared/img/2661/460px-Robert_Frost_NYWTS_4.jpg Total crap, of course. But it sold booka.
[re=201672]Iggy Plop[/re]:
In the world of letters, Collins’ reputation suffers because Collins is able to easily combine playful humor (some call it irony) with serious theme. In the limited world of poetry, this weave allows Collins to be accessible to the everyday reader. For shame. But he can also be naked and spare: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/poems/july-dec02/names_9-06.html
[re=201744]DustBowlBlues[/re]: Ha ha yes, I loved that collection by Donald Hall! Except that it made me cry the whole time.
Will the poet be reading against Prop 8?
Still: “mammoth giblet”?
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, afterbirth….*Guhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*
Save the placenta for me!
nothing gets my engine revving faster than afterbirth. yummy!
[re=201750]DustBowlBlues[/re]: I don’t know if that qualifies as a flame, but it works for me. And Calvin Trillin would rock as the inaugural poet — it might even make up for his not being named poet laureate.
[re=201674]Scandalabra[/re]: Didn’t William Carlos Williams write “Tonight, I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight?”
BTW, “mammoth giblet” = big penis.
“Mammoth Giblet” — at last, Elephant Man’s mother is revealed.
The trouble with these dead poets is, well, that they have pre-deceased us. Robin Williams, however, is still available.
No one has linked to this yet?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=75f_1224180574
I’m shocked!
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