blogging again and like i've never blogged before

When I am not knee deep in contemporary music and pornography enjoying the fruits of our rich multi media society,I write. A favorite topic of Nate and Sean that spreads to the rest of us is the question of repetition, when you follow an artists work you notice themes that present themselves in multiple pieces, you recognize things and it makes you think about the author. Since, you as the author know your own work better then anyone else you see first hand the mind numbing repetition; the things that you come back to over and over and over. It may not be a subject you always touch on it may actually be a word or a phrase. I'm not ready to get on here and lay out every poets repetitive phrases, honestly this thing is a child of paranoia mostly. Most people don't pay enough attention or retain enough memory of your work to catch these things, its the author who knows and resents it being there and fears that you know.

I started thinking about this when a man came up to me in IHOP and said he loved my stuff, it seemed silly to be commended on your poetic merit at the international house of pancakes but It's not like i'm going be at a classier place any time soon. I started thinking about this and about Nate's relationship with it, he comes back to it all the time saying that its ok but not in the tone where I believe he believes it. He talks about Saul Williams and the infamous debate over his use or over-use of the meditative OM but in the lobby at IHOP waiting for my table so I could dine on my VIVA LE FRENCH TOAST, the thought came to me that this is all natural.

Of course we all repeat phrases or concepts or even themes, it goes beyond artistic merit these things you come back to define you. If I told Saul Williams that the term OM is the very structure from which I feel his writing comes from he might disagree but I don't think he'd be that insulted. I've noticed on a personal front that I say I LOVE YOU a lot in my poetry not just in love pieces about my fiance but in poems about other things as well. I don't want to diminish its meaning, you can't over analyze it! At least not more then I have, when I write I have a desperate need to champion the values of that which I love and whatever it is whoever its dedicated too I want to take the time with verse to kiss them on the forehead. If it means that i'm not hard edged enough or not filled enough with righteous indignations about the wrongs of the world, thats fine. I don't want to fit, I want to repeat what i'm saying because its awkward. I WANT TO REPEAT WHAT I'M SAYING BECAUSE ITS AWKWARD and inside that awkward space is where I write.

?????

The oldest question in poetry is not, why do people think Charles Bukowski is a genius? It's what on earth should I write about. Anyone who picked up a pen or pounded a keyboard (or put quill to parchment for all you nerds) had to sit there and think about it. It's a jarring process, alone with your insatiable need to write but with nothing to say one can feel their most arrogant. Think about it! Knowing that you want your voice to be heard while you can't think of what you want it to say? Sounds kind of screwed up if you have to explain it, some modern poets like Andy Rooney of 60 minutes don't have to think about what topic to pick he just jabbers words out of his crazy pie hole until he's exhausted and then goes back to quiet. Now thats a pure creative process.

You can write about politics but you won't be the only one, on any side of any issue its been taken on. If your honest with yourself and your writing for an audience you end up taking into account the balance of disclosure your craft requires. People ultimately want to know about you, but not too much. They want to watch you laugh, watch you cry but they don't want to watch you poop. If you think all topics in poetry have been covered write a whole book about urinating and pooping then try to sell it. You'll learn the hard way not all topics in life are covered and if they are some are lightly touched and its for a reason. I'm very vague right now but poetry and writing in general is about balance.

Sex gets written about and rightfully so but if your too close to your own emotions while your putting it together it can end up written just for you with so much information that it cant be looked at by someone outside of your sphere with value. I don't want to give the impression that this is a lesson and that I know what I'm talking about. I was sharing my confusion on the subject with you, I've written about some amazingly stupid things(I almost wrote a whole story about a guy who paid for hookers and didn't have relations with them he just beat them at Yahtzee)

The worst part is that every profound re-defining line of inspirational poetry will have an awful aftertaste for you as a writer. You will wish on some level that you could duplicate it and if your an honest person you'll admit you wish you wrote it. If you meet and hang out with writers you admire you should grow to fear them and use your common love for writing to create an arms race. Fear that person and write better to crush them under you and then shake that shit out of your head and what you've written will be great. I THINK! I can't be blamed for any of this stuff not working because if I'm just bullshitting but one of the great things that writing has taught me is that when you bullshit you should bullshit confidently.

The deep unnatural depression that Andrea Gibson brings to me

I've seen Andrea Gibson live before, you know. She came to the North Star Cafe on a Tuesday night and all i knew is that she was a big deal. A slam poet of the top tier and sure she killed that night but she looked nothing like her poetry. Performers should look like their poetry, mine does, its jumbled and trembling but opinionated and obese. It needs to represent me and for a while I thought most people's work looked like them. Buddy Wakefield looks just as weird as his poetry trust me but Andrea Gibson looks nothing like her verse.

She is small, and I recall even sometimes feeling like she was a scared looking person. Anyone who has read at an open mic was scared and should have been but most of the top tier mask it professionally. Like Jack McCarthy before her I didn't value her as much in person as when I got her book, I guess being somewhat of a dink I looked at her and shrugged. A poet, like the rest of us trembling like a leaf to deliver the thoughts she so carefully ironed and starched. I undervalued her until I purchased her book POLE DANCING TO GOSPEL HYMNS and I have spent a lot of time combing through it. I knew from the first poem that I had fucked up, this is the T S Elliot of slam poetry I swear. The metaphors come together so well that they become a community of words calling back to one another and each line is something you want to write down and use as the basis for a new poem. They don't seem like enough, ideas she just stumbles upon are too fantastically intricate and interesting to be left where they are. I felt that way about The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and now I feel that way about at least six or seven of the poems in her book.

Great poets depress me intensely, reading this made me never want to write poetry again. I honestly contemplated going right back to the short story after the third piece it is called BIRTHDAY for jenn. I was wrong because she is like her poetry, her verse is a human being raging against her own frailty beating it and beating it with lyrical strength unmatched until she feels she can live in a world with teeth so sharp.

She makes me envious and jealous and appreciative and I just wish I she could read this. I just wish I had stood human to human with her and hugged her to be able to tell people I did.

Here is hoping any of this makes sense to the few who read it.

I've taken sides

What is poetry? Well the answer I stand by that caused great discomfort to my English teacher is that poetry is democratically elected so whatever I say is a poem is a poem. Its very similar to the way I consider the word genius, your only a genius if no really argues against you. If I go up to any random person and say Albert Einstein and Stevie Wonder are genius's I bet that person will agree. Its that way with poetry, which is why I've never understood the blanket statement that rappers or emcee's are poets.

The opposite is still not true in my eyes, to say all rappers or emcee's aren't poets is just as false. To have a distinguished career that has given depth and definition to subject matter, that is a poet. Do I want to tell people that Eminem is a poet...the honest answer is no. As clever as this dude is his career is built on fart jokes and drug references. It might not even be important to meaningfully distinguish between the two, just write whatever you feel and if it doesnt suck let that be your reward.

I have seen some people so determined to be what they consider a good emcee that they never blossom into any kind of serious poet. An emcee to a lot of people is supposed to be someone who can play with words and has a mastery of that as a skill. The problem with this is if you perfect the meaningless management of words of words you never master the pursuit of the right words for your meaning. To a certain extent I am pissing in the wind here anyone who can easily define what poetry is or being a poet is...is full of crap. Rakim already defined being an emcee in a question "How could I move the crowd?"

Some emcees move the crowd with intellectual and inspirational verse that should stand right next to the classics. Some of them make cheap and tawdry party songs and yes I am old so I don't understand the layers of symbolism in the Yin Yang Twins music. All I really want people to do is think before they give someone the title, Sage Francis, Geologic from the Blue Scholars, and countless others have balanced being both emcee's and poets(who literally were spoken word poets first) but record sales and popularity don't determine it. Don't let a watered down simplistic message spread through mass media get you drunk on someone who is taking the spotlight from great minds.