Save poetry!
Save it from the critics
Who only name-drop obscure poets
To make themselves look smarter than they are.
Save it from half-smart students
Who fill it full of Freudian innuendos,
Just so they can feel sharp
When they slip in a dick joke.
Smash the “post” movements
That made poetry out to be a body on a table
To be dissected and studied.
Write in form,
Write in free,
Write upside down, sideways and backwards.
Write a poem about drinking cheap wine
And screwing hookers.
Write a poem about being ordinary,
About the daily grind of work and worrying about bills.
Write a poem about your favorite bars
Or your favorite pair of boxer shorts.
Don’t spoon feed your audiences,
Give them your mind
Without a doubt,
Reservation,
Or a second thought.
Don’t read poetry and look at it
From a Marxist angle,
A feminist angle,
Or a queer theory angle;
Destroy angles and isms.
Read poetry because you love it,
Read it because it speaks to you
On a raw human level.
Save it from the stuffy greenhouse
Of the desks and lecture halls,
Sow the seeds of literary madness everywhere!
Take poetry to work,
Take it to church,
Take to the dinner table,
Hell, take to the gas station.
Start a riot on stage,
Be banned from venues,
Give people a show,
Give them shock & awe,
Give them something to write about.
Burn down poetry’s ivory tower
And piss on the ashes,
Become poetry’s
Public Animal #1.
–Walter Beck