When Newsmax gets pissy about Obama’s selection of… a poet, you realize that there is simply nothing that Obama will do that will not be bitched about by someone.
Whatever.
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BethanyAnne
It’s a slap in the bus, I tell you!
demkat620
Well, I am pretty pissed off myself about those god awful commemorative Obama plates being sold on my teevee.
Who buys this shit? Can you stop now?
"And his kind eyes…" Who wrote that dreck?
This is why we can never have anything nice.
Zuzu's Petals
I notice that towards the very end of the Newsmax piece, they note that she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
A totally unworthy pick indeed.
/snark
Radon Chong
Why is nobody talking about the idea that everyone’s talking Obama’s inauguration should rightly be considered a SLAP IN THE FACE to Clinton and McCain voters? Can’t Obama have a small, private, non-presumptuous inaugural instead of rubbing everyone’s noses in the fact that he won and gets to be the new Decider?
Laura W
@demkat620: You beat me to that ("Those kind eyes"…) Every time I hear that I want to mock it publicly. Thanks.
But seriously, I linked through to the Elizabeth Alexander poems page and ended up on Neonatology thinking I was going somewhere else entirely.
I, the anti-breeder, had to take off reading glasses due to moist eyes and let the vibrant images and gorgeous words sink in more than thrice. Those of you who do give birth, and give witness to birth,
Go Now.
Wow.
Fuck Rick Warren. I can’t wait to hear this woman speak.
rob
@demkat- I’m with you. These commercials are driving me crazzzzy. When the "dad" in the commercial says "we thought this day would never come" the family looks like they just left Rev. Saddlebacks we hate the gays conference. I was in Barnes & Noble today and saw an Obama 2009 calendar. I loves me some Obama but, even I don’t want to look at his ass everyday in 2009.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – Lolcats – my attempt.
http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/Default.aspx#step2
Also the whole boxers in the reindeer ears did not go well, at all. I suspect a plot.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/December202008265.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/December202008263.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/December202008264.jpg
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: As a twice witness, I described it as sheer terror and limitless euphoria at the same time. If I was a poet, I’d have figured out how to rhyme that.
john b
(more than we’ll already have to for the next 4/8 years)
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Hey, brevity can be beautiful too, you know.
Snow dry?
jenniebee
This is a slap in the face to Maya Angelou!
Litlebritdifrnt
Hmmm the lolcat thing didn’t work, however it was this pic with the caption
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/December202008251.jpg
"tumorrow yr shooz will be full of"
a) vomit, b) pee c) poo, yoo chooze.
justcorbly
This is because it’s a lot easier to generate copy ranting about the evils of something than it is to generate original and thoughtful copy.
Unpaid bloggers and paid professionals face the same dilemma over their morning coffee: What am I going to write about today? Finding something about which you can stomp your feet in public, even if you think differently in private, is the easiest answer.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: As beautiful as this:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue
That was terrifying
And euphoric too.
?
(I can haz inaugural spot naow??)
The snow was a huge disappointment. It dried but didn’t stick. And now the doughclay I used to build the train track embankment to each side of the trestle won’t harden. I suck at crafts.
Comrade Jake
I’d suggest a moratorium on more clever poem posts in this thread. We’re not really that good.
Comrade Stuck
Everyone knows that Revolutionary Marxists are really just subversive poets at heart. Until they git in power and become paranoid right wing Liberal Fascists who hate poetry, unless the titles are "We Loves Our Obammunist". It’s all right there in Goldberg’s Wankofesto book.
So they shouldn’t worry too much about poetry running amuck in the WH. On the other hand, Our Lady of Perp Outrage and intrepid citizen journo is hot on the case of what does "Change" really mean. Is it just a harmless word, or a secret Obama government website to raise money for the Wingnut Workcamps to come? Stay tuned.
jenniebee
I’m offering $100 cash to the person in the crowd at the inauguration who can start a conga line, chanting:
ponies, ponies, pone-eez!
ponies, ponies, pone-eez!
I want that going on on the National Mall. I want to see it on NBC, CBS, I want to believe, at last, that we have come to the end of the shit and found the godamn bowelful beautiful horse.
$100 cash, 5 minutes, that’s Spitzer money, baby, that’s Vitter rates, and all you have to do is dance and sing and smile for the cameras.
Litlebritdifrnt
There once was a boy named Obama
who got a strange name from his Mama
He aspired to be pres
and ran a campaign to impress
so thank god he wasn’t called Osama.
Thanks you, I’ll be here all week, try the tuna.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think your poem is very sweet. You could slip the placenta inside the envelope, wrap the umbilical cord around it, and give it to Mrs. Fuckhead with some gorgeous flowers as soon as she is ambulatory again. Next time.
Gotta go…I paid $3.99 for Sex and the City on PPV and Carrie is reading love poems to Mr. Big in bed.
No shit.
(Miranda and Steve gross me out. I want that on the record.)
I think photos of your FAILED Christmas Train to Santa’s Horror Village are in order. Don’t Photoshop out the cat paw prints, either.
Laura W
@Litlebritdifrnt: And remember: TIP YOUR WAITRESSES.
They work hard for the money.
(Are you really thinking you can do a drive-by post and not update on The Orange Boy?)
JL
Litlebritdifrnt, I love the pic and thank you for sharing.
What a great blog, the best (almost) blog ever. Can you imagine what it might be like to be in Elizabeth Alexander’s shoes right now. Her poems and prose are wonderful but to come up with the appropriate words for the inauguration has to be stressful.
gil mann
I would’ve gone with Amiri Baraka. He’d get into a shouting match with Rick Warren and then, as their mutual antipathy reached fever-pitch, they’d realize they’re two sides of the same coin and start making out.
I believe I just invented the "vom-com."
Joshua Norton
There was a young guy named Barack
Who was dissed by the loons talking smack.
"He’s Muslim," they cried,
Or "His birthday’s a lie!"
Which was all wingnut code for "He’s black!"
================
There was a man named John McCain
Everyone thought he was plain
He thought he would rise,
But to his surprise
He got the crap kicked out of him by his opponent who left him lying beaten in the dust until the republican party picked him up and dusted him off and sent him back to the Senate.
=============
OK, that last one may need a little more work….
Litlebritdifrnt
Laura – still under the bed, he has been eating though (and pooing, somewhat of a problem) still allowing me to scritch him, albeit at a distance. Tomorrow he and I are going to have a talk. Face to face, because it is either going to work or it isn’t. He cannot stay under the bed forever, (cause if I allow him to the smell in the bedroom would kill DH and I) so eventually he is going to have to come out and begin to socialize with the other cats and the dogs. His choice. Sigh. I know he is traumatized, but he has to understand that this is pretty much cat and dog utopia. Come and go as you please, food 24/7, toys, treats warm comfy places to sleep, slonk. When we adopted Con (short for Amy’s Con because we were conned into taking him by one of my DHs students). He pretty much lived under the couch for a couple of weeks. Eventually we got him around. He is now the sweetest cat (albeit hated by the other cats) but he is IMHO the most beautiful cat I have ever laid eyes on.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/Pets%20and%20miscellaneous/DSC01982.jpg
JL
Can someone explain how the filter works? I can say fuck but somehow my comment at 22 got caught in the trap?
Just Some Fuckhead
@JL: You used the word for the things you put on your feet in a short message.
tomjones
@Joshua Norton: A haiku:
Senator McCain
Prisoner of War and Bush
P O W too
Vincent
Heh, BJ is great. For a while, the problem was that you couldn’t even access the site without an error message. Then you could get to the site but the Black Screen of Death would arbitrarily prevent you from reading further comments. Now you have to play Russian Roulette with the spam filter and hope your comments get posted. Keeps things interesting.
JL
@Just Some Fuckhead: This is a test.. what the f**k do shoes have to do with the filter.
JL
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yup, your right! I’m in moderation again.
EZSmirkzz
Why not?
Shygetz
I don’t know about this poetry stuff, but if that f*cker Obama wears a red tie, I’m burning sh*t down.
Reverend Dennis
Che Guevara wrote poetry. Che Guevara was a Commie revolutionary.
Just sayin’.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@demkat620: God love us, but my son-in-law got one for us. Was damn pleased with himself for having done so.
Lawd, that boy ain’t got the good taste of a water buffalo.
Ssgt. White
Good Christ I hate poetry.
You can convey meaningful ideas without confusing the shit out of people, you know.
Just Some Fuckhead
I feel stupid for blowing my poem on childbirth after reading all these great political poems. So I’m going to take the liberty to reprise my entry:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Fuck you, Rahm!
No, Rod, fuck you! !
Bill H
My mother wrote poetry and from the time I was very young convinced me that the reason I didn’t like her poetry was that I was too fucking stupid to understand it. I bought that whole line and flunked out of college in a matter of a few weeks in my first year. (Enlisted in the Navy, which turned out to be the best move I ever made, but…) Was in my forties when the manager of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona told me that the reason I neither liked nor understood my mother’s poetry was because it was absolute crap. There was nothing in it to understand, and she (the manager) didn’t like it either.
After that I started looking into it and discovered there is some poetry I like. Not much, but some. Oh yeah, and it turns out my IQ is in the 99.9 percentile. For whatever that’s worth. That and $1.95 will get me a hamburger at Burger King.
Tonal Crow
But, but, but, weren’t the Con-Orcs boasting about how far Obama has "moved to the right" just yesterday?
Laura W
Sex & The City, The Movie, Spoiler Alert:
Carrie marries Big.
Thud.
Reverend Dennis
I enjoy poems by Baudelaire, e.e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and sometimes even Richard Brautigan. Elizabeth Alexander, not so much.
kay
@Tonal Crow:
This poetry controversy has been developing….for a while.
CHICAGO, Nov. 8 (UPI) — President-elect Barack Obama was carrying a book of poems while leaving the Chicago school of his daughters, witnesses say.
The U.S. senator, fresh off his Election Day victory, presumably had time to enjoy some poetry while visiting his daughters’ school Friday, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.
While the Illinois Democrat was not spotted reading the book of poems by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, he personally carried the new-looking book to an awaiting car.
Comrade Stuck
Somebody needs to start quoting some happy poetry to our witty friends on Sadly. No!. The comments are sounding like Obama has turned out to be the devil for his picks of Warren and Rahmbo, and now we’re all gonna die. I swear, I just don’t get it. WE WON, and yet for so many liberals the game is over before the goddamn season begins. BJ may be the only left of center blog left standing after the others all tie an anchor to their asses and jump overboard.
Laura W
@Comrade Stuck: Take this to those sad people, Stuck.
Dog speed!
libarbarian
He threw us under the face!!!!
Hyperion
@Ssgt. White:
is this confusing?
Toil and grow rich.
What’s that but to lie
With a foul witch.
And after, drained dry,
To be brought
To the chamber where
Lies one sought
With despair.
most of the time, if it’s confusing, somebody isn’t doing it right. "somebody" = writer or reader. but your choice of adjective meaningful is right on: great poetry is FULL of meaning.
JL
@Laura W: West Side Story is on the local PBS station. I think that was the original Sex in the City.
Hyperion
@Comrade Stuck:
is that what BJ is?
Which reminds me: exactly where do the libertarians fit on that continuum these days. IIRC JC self-identifies as a libertarian but is a registered dem. Given Goldberg’s "Liberal Fascism" BS, how to assign the folks at Reason, for example.
(I’m leaving Tim F. out for the moment. He is certainly left of center but posts much less.)
maybe the ideological continuum is actually a moebius strip.
Comrade Stuck
@Hyperion:
Of course Hype, what right of center blog posts endless, and wonderful too, furry dogs and cute cats and brags about eating Arugula and drinking Fruity Drinks. None. Wingnuts hate animals, unless their dead and strapped to the hood of their pickup. But then we have folks like you, who flutter around the edges where idiots troll for something to criticize. Sometimes interesting criticism, usually not. Like now.
Reverend Dennis
Somewhere between "ostracized" and "the butt of jokes".
Comrade Stuck
@Laura W:
Thank you Laura. But I think it will take more than a good tune to cheer them up. I suspect a Cheney indictment would do it, but that’s not likely.
smiley
As someone who has actually had his poetry published, I think The Venus Hottentot (1825), is awesome — but I question whether it’s poetry. It’s a compelling narrative about a compelling story. How is poetry defined? By how it’s formatted? There’s very little rhythm and no rhyme to it. Of course, neither of those components are required for something to be called a poem. So, BJers, what’s a poem and how does The Venus Hottentot (1825) qualify? (Damn I’m going to be flamed for this for sure). It’s a serious question, because I wonder myself, and I don’t know the answer (my stuff usually has at least a rhythmic pattern). Flame away…
Steve V
I didn’t have a chance to read the entire poem(s) quoted by Newsmax, but I thought the snippets they quoted were wonderful.
BTW, I’m more convinced than ever that the word "some people" in a news article, even in a respectable news source, must be translated to "the proprietors of this publication/website."
Comrade Jake
So, Suzanne Somers is now on Larry King, and she’s completely unrecognizable. She would appear to have had a lot of work done. A LOT.
And she’s mildly insane. Good times.
cyntax
@smiley:
I’d say the one thing poems have in common with each other is that their impact comes from compression. The author can use any of a bunch of methods to distill the language, but the motor is always some sort of distillation of language into a more essential form.
You always know a poem when you read it, but you never know what form it’s going to take.
Laura W
@cyntax:
Beautiful.
Laura W
@Comrade Jake: "Alan and I are starting a foundation which we haven’t started yet which is why we don’t walk for cancer because we are going to put happy and sad faces on all of the free radicals and show them to school children.
And tumeric.
I’d rather have a smoothie instead of sex any day.
Hello Sailor."
OMIGOD. She’s 62. With Bo Dereck hair on top of Julia Roberts lips.
A funner watch than Suze Orman anyway. Thanks for the tip, as late to the party as I was.
Comrade Jake
@Laura W:
I’m going to look for the YouTube later. I was late to the party too and she still said some pretty incredible things.
King is pretty much the master of giving nutjobs enough rope to hang themselves. I think Suzanne thought King believed and agreed with every word she said.
Incertus
@kay:
And Alexander studied with Walcott at Boston U. The conspiracy deepens. Has Obama actually read any of Alexander’s poetry? Or is he faking it like most of my 2000-level students do every semester?
Incertus
@smiley: I think it’s a poem; just one that’s more narrative than lyric. I tend to write in that vein myself, though less so as my career has progressed. It sounds like you lean toward the formal side of poetry, and I do too, but I’m also really open to a lot of alternative work. Just had my first prose poem accepted a couple of weeks ago–it’ll be in Quarterly West next year–and that was a huge jump from the quatrains and blank verse I generally write.
And when my book comes out in 2010, I’m going to be positively obnoxious about trying to sell copies. Forewarned–that’s all I’m saying here.
smiley
@cyntax: Thanks for responding cyntax. I ‘m not sure I agree. When Shakespeare wrote, " What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name smells as sweet." And Gertrude Stein said,"a rose is a rose is a rose.", I think they were saying the same thing. Which is more compressed and which is more poetic? I’d argue that Shakespeare was the more poetic.
I’m not sure what "form" means here. Quatrain? Really, what the hell are you talking about?
cyntax
@Laura W:
=)
cyntax
@smiley:
Sounds to me like you’re asking about whether poetry is defined by its form. I’m arguing that no it’s not, it’s defined by the effect it has on you, and that effect is achieved by something unique to poetry–the way the language is used. So it doesn’t have to rhyme, it doesn’t have to be a sonnet, a lyric, a ballad, blank verse, and so on, but it does have to have that effect. And the effecct is hard to define (maybe impossible) but you know when it happens, whether it’s Antonio Machado, Shakespeare, Ovid, Denise Levertov, Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou.
You can argue that Shakespeare was more poetic (and I’d be inclined to agree with you) but the difference between Stein and Shakespeare is also, largely, a difference of style. I don’t own a copy of Tenderbuttons, but that’s certainly not because it isn’t poetry.
kay
@Incertus:
It began with the two poems Obama wrote, as an undergraduate. They’re terrible. He admits it.
Obama has a poetry problem.
AhabTRuler, V
@Comrade Stuck: I looked in on that thread, and then I decided to just keep walking.
Oh, and I like Bukowski’s poems, I just like his short stories better.
Incertus
By the way, I can’t say I understand what Newsmax’s beef is–not all that surprising, I admit, but still. Is it that she’s a political choice? So was Angelou, and Frost, if he wasn’t political, sure read a politically charged poem (though one whose politics give me the willies). Or do they just not like Alexander’s poetry? I can’t say I know enough of it to form an opinion either way.
jrcjr
I never liked poetry.
Until I read Ladinsky’s translations of Hafiz. Amazing stuff. I honestly couldn’t put it down.
Chris
Those Republicans and their crazy support and concern for the arts!
Shawn in ShowMe
Mr. Obama, an academic to the core, will have a poet from academia read at his inauguration. We at Newsmax found this development utterly disturbing. What’s next, a scientist at the Department of Energy?
Brick Oven Bill
I like Hilzoy. But instead of the snippet, she refers the reader to the poet’s greater body of work, suggesting substance. And God love Elizabeth Alexander and Barack Obama. But the poems are really pretty bad. Yale University.
John Cole
I know nothing about poetry whatsoever.
The extent of my knowledge of poetry includes a couple verse of Kubla Khan that I was forced to memorize as a child.
The rest of the poems I know all start with “There once was a man from Nantucket…”
Yeah. It is bad how little I know.
Fencedude
…so there were 71 posts in this thread.
Then I refreshed the main page and there were 69.
Now I’m in here again and there’s 65.
WHAT IS WITH THIS!?
Cain
@John Cole:
I’m sorry John, but Rush lyrics don’t count.
cain
mclaren
Shortest Newsmax:
It’s astounding, time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. But listen closely, not for very much longer. I’ve got to keep control… – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975.
Zuzu's Petals
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Of course Newsmax even got the Pulitzer info wrong.
Alexander was nominated in 2006, not 2005.
Pulitzer winners and finalists
I have read the Claudia Emerson collection that won that year…it was wonderfully readable, as I recall.
(Edit: to be fair, they might have meant the book was published, not nominated, in 2005, in which case they are guilty only of their usual sloppy writing style.)
Shane
Thanks John, this is my new go to example to back up "Obama Derangement Syndrome" and "Barack Haters".
Fern
@Comrade Stuck:
Indeed. Getting pretty damn gloomy in some circles.
Don’t Americans usually give new presidents a week or two after the inauguration before declaring them utterly useless and complete traitors to the cause?
A la lanterne les aristos
Wow, and I thought S,N! was depressing during the week when all I could see was the Jackie Gingrich Cushman post.
libarbarian
I have unanswered questions!
Satrahanam Dadrishim Tumram Indram
OriGuy
I demand that Obama release his high school poetry compositions so that we can see if there are any references to Muslim ideas!
/wingnut
Michael D.
I haven’t read through the comments, so this might have been mentioned.
I, too, HATE the Obama memorabilia commercials, especially seeing the old white guy sitting at the table, and then glancing at the plate, smiling, and nodding approvingly. Not that I think an old white guy wouldn’t approve of Obama. It’s just NO ONE DOES THAT!
BUT, the commercials that drive me batshit crazy are the ones for the commemorative 7th anniversary of 9/11 silver-plated 20 bills…
…officially authorized and approved as legal tender – In fucking Liberia.
And, if that wasn’t bad enough – the bills don’t have the number 20 on them. They have 9-11, which ADDS UP to 20.
Kill me now.
Comrade Baron Elmo
This Newsmax-fueled "controversy" reminds me of when Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for literature, deservedly awarded for the many brilliant plays with which he electrified the British stage… and yet wingnut after wingnut after wingnut pulled out this single tossed-off poem to prove Pinter’s unworthiness to receive the Nobel, entitled "American Football":
Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!
Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.
Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.
We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
Funny–if the likes of Confederate Yankee or Ace of Spades had posted this poem (minus the homo finale, of course) to celebrate the kickoff of "Shock & Awe," they’d be getting kudos galore from their respective peanut galleries. One man’s meat, I suppose…
harlana pepper
Old white guy smiling and nodding approvingly at Obama plate? I haven’t seen those. Perhaps they are banned here in the South.
Awesome!
Notorious P.A.T.
But. . . but. . . but I thought that picking Rick Warren to speak at his inauguration showed that Obama was reaching out, and would bring conservatives over to his side ! ! ! ! !
Litlebritdifrnt
I have had a great love of poetry my entire life (despite being forced to read Matthew Arnold for my English Lit GCE, a poet who, to be honest, should only be read while having no access to sharp objects, gawd he is depressing), my favorite poem of all time is "The Listeners" it tells such a story and bathes the reader in a small world of imagination. One of my favorite poets, strangely enough, is Spike Milligan, yes that Spike Milligan, his poems go from astoundingly deep to sheer nonsense in the style of Edward Lear. One of his best for its sheer simplicity.
"2B or not 2B
When I was small and five, I found a pencil sharpener alive!
He lay in lonely grasses, Looking for work.
I brought a pencil for him, He ate and ate until all that was
Left was a pile of wood dust. It was the happiest pencil sharpener
I ever had"
and this
"Christmas 1970
A little girl called Sile Javotte, said "look at the lovely presents I’ve got"
While a little girl in Biafra said, "Oh what a lovely slice of bread".
For those so inclined check out "Small Dreams of a Scorpion" by Milligan.