Against Clean-Line Poetry as Such

for Silliman's Blog

What ... no tips that might take the mystery out of reading poetry?
Description: An English professor offers students some
Down-to-earth how-to advice on tackling poetry:
In other places it's dirty, mud churning, wild and angry, demanding
your full attention ... back to list: Part dog, part vulture
I like to get my nose in it I am a refuse collector I never walk
W/my head upright and my pockets are filled with buttons dirty coins
You in your drudging clothes, dirty and smelly, he in his washed-out
Jeans, T-shirt and sling-backs, rapping with you like friend to friend
Using slogan-like phrases such as "sexual blood" and "dirty desires"
Still shiny barely alive and very, very dirty waiting there
The long winding hairs in the bathtub from the pretty
Ankles up to the holy line of the slut holy girl's holy pantyhose
Magnet Poetry from my fridge Drunk angel of passion Smear music
W/smoke and picture psychedelic harmony
Dirty hand, callused palm, black fingernails: "What's the most
Times you've had sex in a night?" together like hornets in
Swarms, so dirty their dirty jokes, blonde jokes, funny jokes
Dirty clothes go in the hamper, not in your poem
I once believed a single line in a Chinese poem could change forever
How blossoms fell: these little dirty things in dark places
Dirty rain drips down in your broken box
Like the lunch-line-lady, old woman in scraggly old clothes
Smells like farts and dirty rot socks: "poetry which
Concerns itself entirely w/the actual length of each line"
I've been writing poetry since I began spelling ... doing research online
For the poetry writing: mangoes taste like Mozart
I leave a piece of myself on the dirty floor, crawl by to rub
Scribbled lies, small, only poetry is top-of-the line cyber meat-o-god
Dominator republic: we vote: you in the city take your drugs
Think of grammar as a dirty word: pigs dirty and fat rolling
Joyfully like a ball but not the little things, the dirty boy who'd never
Reeked smoke weary, shuffling along the line
Well, fill in your own dirty little analogy: "He was thin; a black line
Against the sea of dirty city and traffic: they more or less said
"Get in line" promising a battlefield, the odorous dirty versus the
Unfolded clean, they: her (!) husband the artist, and a can of beans
A conch shell, a painted stick, a dirty sock: Reader's Review:
Poetry Boring and Compulsory: Over-Determined:
Money Adorated and Effective: Always
Be dirty like the BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1996
As a French tickler or line from a static line
Every century, creative instincts, repressions, amoebae, dirty stories,
Pain: instead, in the priest's mildewed basket spilling rumpled sheets
& dirty tablecloths, money fills our hands Our hands are dirty
Always keep a list of your favourite lines of poetry to participate
Even with all of your small dirty inadequacies: line up in a row, show
Self attempting to explain to a friend how dirty a person
Gives one the opportunity to spritz the words, or simply open the line
Like a locked window and: my elder brother came running up
From the depths, what always bugged me about poetry was the
"You are my friend," as an opening line, the language
Once again goodbye to symphonies and dirty trees
Hop into that straight line, say "Cheese" and tousle heads sway left
Under mountains of hair clippings, old shirts, dirty hand soap
The line "I hate talking to other writers about poetry"
In honour of poets who ground us, tattered by the wind
Like flatfooted description passing itself off as Maggie Dubris
In Dallas Daylight Dreamer Devil and Billy Markham Diet
The Dirty Feet Don Shelby's Kiddie Corner Uncle Shelby's
Unemployment Line Unicorn, Where My Clothes Are Dirty
Americana presented in stories, poetry, and Dirty Sponge Visitors
DON'T TOUCH THAT DOG Just Brush Off the Ceiling
This poem pays tribute to the popular romantic mythos
Of poetry as an expression of madness with classical overtones
But pure down and dirty as a gas station across from the motel
A song is to fall in love the voice all dirty but pure
You: The outline of your thinning hair lit against
The line of your form blurred by time, shifting from the
Newsgroups or participate in discussions, I'll never be a lap dog
Licking dirty feet, humming to a rhyme of -y, as in dirty, oily and
Elizabeth Bishop: American Poetry: The Rhetoric: No matter
Which side of the dangling dirty laundry line you stand
World Meets the Word, my poetry has failed, speaks the obvious
Meeting her mouth with a hungry kiss but she says something
Starting with "G": Georgian Poetry, 1918-1919, ed. by Edward Howard
Marsh?: pans of water collect dirty bugs: the apparitions
Look wildly about, I know what this looks like, these fish
The Express Leggings crawling and sliding along the dirty floor