Poet of the Week: Philip Levine
I am going to the Catskills this afternoon, so I spent a while this morning looking for a poem that would encompass all I hope will happen this coming weekend.
But then I remembered that most people writing poems about being in the country—especially in New England—talk about the rain, and the little bird that twitters at them in the morning, and the way that their wife looks as she walks away from them down the path before they have their coffee.
BORING.
(Not you though, Larry Clark.)
I’ve been thinking a little bit lately about how writers are so nostalgic, and also cowards. It makes them into copycats, and it makes their language sound stiff and antiquated. Everyone’s afraid to write in the language of “their time,” as if the present demeans their intelligence.
But seriously, I don’t want to read another poem in quatrains about someone padding down the stairs and mourning the passing of youth in the style of a 21st century Walt Whitman. I want to read a collection of young writers’ thoughts in the style of Gchats.
Gchat conversations are all about pacing, and tone, and spontaneity. Shit is something that I could get lost in. In fact, I already do, for up to 8-10 hours a day.
