Guess the Poet. Win a Prize.
I know a game. It's called "guess who said these things at last night's reading." Wanna play?
The rules are simple. Read this post and then tell me in the thread who you think Poetry Snark heard read last night. First one to get it right gets, um, gets...
The poetry snark secret lame-ass-poet decoder ring!
With it, you can secretly occupy the imaginative position of someone who actually likes this shit. OK, not really. My ring actually exploded last night in a frenzied effort to translate the reading into something that resembles art. C'est la vie.
Let's play anyway, shall we? Anyone who was at the reading is asked to refrain from posting in this thread--that is, unless you once thought that you liked this writer and want to repent now before the muses smite you down. Then it's OK.
Alright then, here goes:
Clue number 1: Mystery poet needed to explain what a word in one of his/her poems meant because the poet assigned to introduce him/her didn't know how to pronounce it. It turned out to be made up.
Clue number 2: Mystery poet interrupted the reading to imitate the sound of the wind (I don't mean farting--actual imitation).
Clue number 3: Mystery poet felt compelled to explain every single "poem" he/she read with an introduction that exceeded the length of the poem.
Clue number 4: Mystery poet felt compelled to explain to the audience who Oliver North is. I'm not kidding.
Clue number 5: Mystery poet felt compelled to offer his/her philosophy of teaching. This is what mystery poet said, word for word (yes, I took notes): "There is a state between trance and logic where teachers rest."
Still baffled? Let's see if a few excerpts from the reading will help. All of these are verbatim quotes, without any alteration or exaggeration. Some of these are things said between poems, others are lines from poems. I'll let you try to figure out which are which:
"Caliban, besides being a character in Shakespeare, is also the name of my convertible."
"Coastal pine trees must wonder why it isn't enough just to be good pine trees."
"Rocks are like consciousness."
"At some point, I am going to turn the poem sideways, because that's what they did to the mountain."
"Teaching the epic is difficult for me because there is a lot of murder and violence in it. And I'm a pacifist."
"Be what orange? Be what orange?"
OK, gentle readers, who is the mystery poet?