Robert Hass is someone I’ve learned to admire but could never be.
He holds erudite grace in one hand and a cheap domestic beer in the other. This is why he’s the ambassador of poetry!
Sometimes I wake up at night sweating and wondering if Bob Hass ever gets embarrassed, but then I get embarrassed
because calling him “Bob” feels disingenuous in my mouth, like a monkey wearing a tuxedo, or whatever the opposite of that is.
I have a hard time respecting other poets because they’re all in bed with Orpheus and Eurydice.
Plus, they’re all full of facts about trains and lobsters and the antebellum South and stuff, and they love to share them!
They are very sluttish with their facts, whereas I am very selfish. People always accuse me of stating my opinions as if they’re facts,
but at least I don’t share trivial nuggets about goats and powder-wigs as if I invented them!
Going to a poetry reading is worse than visiting somebody’s family because you can’t steal ham or prescription drugs
and if you want to sneak out for a smoke you can’t ever ask the poet who’s reading for a recommendation to Yaddo.
If you want to be popular in the poetry world, become a novelist! With a really long attention span and an interest in genealogy.
Like I care about Aunt Laughing Boar on the reservation circa 1962 when she can’t even put a stiff drink in my hand!
Sometimes I just want to piss on Elizabeth Bishop because poems are basically made of paint and/or geography:
“the geography of the cerulean body scraped clean with the side of a knife.” This isn’t a real line from a real poem,
but you didn’t know that until I told you! Most poets should have been mapmakers, but they are all too lazy
and all of the maps have already been made! Instead they inscribe coastlines on the blank canvases of their lovers’ naked bodies and make us all feel very ill at ease!
