Two Best Lines

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A brochure I received, circulated by the International Poetry Museum Campaign, asked “all poets to send in their TWO BEST LINES” in order to participate in the creation of the “National Collage Poem.” How has poetry gotten so ridiculous? How did so many poets end up so desperately egocentric as to wish to be part of such inanity? No matter, they'll surely send the required $5 checks, which will help establish an equally absurd poetry museum in San Francisco, sponsored and supported by, amongst others, politician Mayor Willie Brown, tenured academics indifferent to academic corruption Robert Pinsky and Robert Creeley, curtseying poets before politicians Robert Haas and Rita Dove, millionaire Beatnik myth-pusher Lawrence Ferlinguetti, poet-editor of one of the most vapidly unoriginal poetry anthologies X. J. Kennedy, millionaire corporate Valentine greeting-card poet Maya Angelou, and the National Poetry Association, which not only refuses criticism on its website but seeks to spread poetry like fast-food garbage. Poetry has been reduced to a pitiful racket, abandoning itself to the celebrity crap destroying the minds of so many American youths. Whatever the hell are “world-class poets” anyhow? Do they wear white shorts and play tennis in tournaments? Well, surely they must be poets who do not criticize the world-class oligarchs who feed them, n'est-ce pas? Surely, they must also be poets who have sold out in the name of corporate (and academic) money. Moreover, they must be self-congratulating, backslappers calling each other “brilliant” and “creative” as in “now we have a brilliant committee of seven creative members calling for Charter Members [$50 fee!] who will join us in realizing the first such institution in the world which will be devoted to our ancient Muse.” Well, at least the campaign managers employ the term “institution” correctly, for all institutions demand a certain autocratic hierarchy, self-censorship, lack of exterior accountability, and general gung-ho institutional patriotism. In accord with the campaign logo, “let the voice of the poet be heard throughout the world,” I requested that a letter I sent in lieu of my two best lines be included in the future museum. Doubtfully the request will be granted. “Let the voice of the non-critical, sellout, happy-face poet be heard throughout the world” would have been a more honest logo. But the campaign manager-poets are doubtfully into honesty at all. Selling out means, of course, never criticizing the hand that stuffs your face with material goodies. Poetry was never meant to be in a museum. It was meant to be current, active, and, in the case of sociopolitically-engaged verse, thrown in the face of corrupt oligarchs. What amazes is why so few poets are capable of examining such a brochure with a critical eye. In quelling criticism and instituting happy-face fascism amongst the populace, including poets, the corporation has succeeded in co-opting not only academe, but also literature and the arts. The campaign manager-poets have become nothing but corporate lackeys and probably don't realize it. How have we become so dumbed down in America since the Sixties?

Amiri Baraka is poet laureate of New Jersey now. How can one ascend to such a bourgeois position without selling out? Well, Baraka in denial and rationalization probably has an answer. Poet Billy Collins, anointed Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress, is eager to spread the poet laureate myth, and even up it a notch. He has been billed, of all ludicrous things, as a “rebel poet.” So poets, what have you been up to? Do you get out on that edge now and then?

Tod Slone
reprinted from The American Dissident