Today
I don't know why writing something every day is supposed to be so valuable. I'm not going to "be" a "writer" or "be" a "poet" any more than I'm going to "be" a "composer"
No future Ken Burns will be making any archaelogical profit from any of this mundane chattering.
A cartoon in the Times is making a point about the inanity of this blog/myspace sort of "conversation"
Buddy Hackett's act was once described as "He just talks until he gets to a punch line"
He was a famous comedian.
Punch line
The cabinet people have the cabinets ready, I'll go and get them.
Reading Jan Swafford's "Charls Ives, a life with music".
Depressing, but what isn't these dark days?
Vale, lacerte.
No future Ken Burns will be making any archaelogical profit from any of this mundane chattering.
A cartoon in the Times is making a point about the inanity of this blog/myspace sort of "conversation"
Buddy Hackett's act was once described as "He just talks until he gets to a punch line"
He was a famous comedian.
Punch line
The cabinet people have the cabinets ready, I'll go and get them.
Reading Jan Swafford's "Charls Ives, a life with music".
Depressing, but what isn't these dark days?
Vale, lacerte.
posted by Lane Savant at 8:45 AM
5 Comments:
Lane:
Of course, you're "not going to BE a composer"; you ARE a composer!
-- Anonomann
Dougie:
For a fellow who is not a "writer", you certainly have spent a lot of time writing. I still have a stack of your plays. This blogsite is testament to your ability to express yourself in written language, painting with words. I have amassed several of your poems on 1millionstories.com, and my aunt Jean has put my recent poems that were all responses to yours in a section called PALMER INFLUENCES BUTCH.
As a malcontent, an ersatz pariah, somewhat of a maverick and loose cannon, as a man whose IQ surpasses his bowling average, you cannot help yourself. You dive into the creative arts like a starving man. You always have. You are a writer, a poet, a composer. Anonomann is absolutely bang on with his comment. There are those who may not consider you a great writer, an inspired poet, or a prolific composer --but who the hell cares what they think?
Remember what Jeff Bridge's Dad told him in THE LAST AMERICAN HERO. "Son, damned foolishness to one man is the breath of life to another." I think of that quote every day of my life. I write so much not because I can, but more because I have to. Even cartoonists have to take things of value and lampoon them. That's their job. The only thing that is truly "inane" is the strong silent type who says zip, does nothing, and influences no one.
A number of poets and writers have weighed in on how they feel about poetry:
Do not commit your poems
to pages alone.
Sing them,
I pray you.
Virgil
(70-19 BC)
Always be a poet, even in prose.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
My verse represents a handle
I can grasp
in order not to yield
to the centrifugal forces
which are trying to throw me
off the world.
Ogden Nash
(1902-1971)
The poet is
in the end
more afraid of the dogmatist,
who wants to extract the message
from the poem
and then throw the poem away,
than he is of the sentimentalist,
who says,
Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.
The poem is a little myth
of man's capacity
for making life meaningful.
And in the end,
the poem is not a thing
we see-
it is rather
a light by which we may see-
and what we actually see
is life.
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
Poetry is just the evidence of life.
If your life is burning well,
poetry is just the ash.
Leonard Cohen ( b. 1934 )
God is the perfect poet.
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
When power narrows
the areas of man's concern,
poetry reminds him
of the richness and diversity
of his existence.
When power corrupts,
poetry cleanses.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
(1917-1963)
Poetry is an act of peace.
Peace goes into the making
of a poet
as flour
goes into the making
of bread.
Pablo Neruda
(1874-1973)
The world seems always waiting
for its new poets.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
Poets were the first teachers
of mankind.
Horace (65-8 BC)
When writing poetry,
it is not inspiration
that produces bright ideas,
but the bright idea
that kindles the fire
of inspiration.
Cesare Pavese
(1908-1950)
Poets should be treated
with lenience,
and even when damned,
should be damned
with respect.
Edgar Allen Poe
(1809-1849)
I am proud to call myself a teacher, a writer, an actor, and a poet. I am proud to consider you a compeer. I look forward to your "written" comments.
PUNCHLINE (1988) directed by David Seltzer is a fine movie starring Sally Field, Tom Hanks, Damon Wayans, Mark Rydell, Paul Mazursky, and John Goodman.
At the height of the standup-comedy boom of the 1980s, this film offered the revelation that many comedians were, in fact, rather psychologically unstable individuals for whom performing was an outlet for hostility and aggression. Wow--who would have guessed? This film focuses on two who meet and forge an unlikely friendship: Tom Hanks plays a caustic, self-destructive comic looking for his big break and Sally Field plays a more Roseannelike comedian who begins neglecting her husband (John Goodman) and children because she gets such a kick out of performing. The offstage stuff is strictly soap opera, but Hanks and Field both develop solid comedic rhythms once they get behind a microphone. --Marshall Fine
Yes, my old friend, these are the days of darkness, a time of American Fascism, of capitalist greed, or corporate rape, or planet plundering, of wasted young lives squandered in a wasteland once trodden on by prophets --but still there are those good lattes, those fine creative moments when you finish one of your musical instruments, take a bike ride, write a poem, or log something on the FFTL site and wait for some of us to respond.
Glenn
You are right, Butch, I am a creppy bowler.
A poem for Virgil, Baudelaire, Nash, Warren, Cohen, Browning, Kennedy, Neruda, Emerson, Horace, Pavese, Poe, and others;
Poetry is flinging the sweat off my brow,
Dealing with the beans I had for dinner,
Something I have to wipe up after.
Doug:
I never saw you bowl. You probably bowl too hard. Thanks for the poem. I sent it to Jean. And here is one of mine.
A poem for Kerouac and Brautigan:
ALBATROSS ANEW: BITCH IN HEAT
Albatross,
What flotsam is this
Held carefully in your beak,
Falling abyss tenderly
And warm?
It appears to be
A high wild flower
With small breasts
And a tiny waist,
With nine bracelets chiming
Along a thin bony wrist, first
Peeking out of paisley puffed sleeves
Then clanking like demure box cars;
Whose minty soft breath caresses the small
Of my thick neck, swirling
Long locks into curly tangles;
Like a jeweled isle
Pouting small in a dark gray corner
Of the San Juans,
With only three trees still standing,
But deceptively beautifully solid with shores
Lashed hard by tall waves,
Turgid with nets and broken pieces
Of driftwood and computers, yes definitely
Female, fecund, smelling of fish,
Providing complex coitus with a tasseled cushion,
Steaming sex devoid of din and teeth,
Just hanging on for a ball-busting ride
On that bullock orgasmatron,
Tearing at the fabric of propriety
Like a sad rat chewing dead fingers
To the bone;
Connected, you dig,
But not whole,
Fragmented like a Monet
Swirl of dot matrix,
Drenched deep in the sin of many colors,
Yet frightening, dude,
As the chilling screams of the innocent millions mingle
Into one horrific chorus
On the 6:00 News
Just before I came
To my senses and tried in vain
To see who the hell you actually were
Cradled in that musky brown beak,
A swallowed thing that still lives,
That I could kiss without lips
Leaving your vanilla essence in my hot mouth,
Startled by a flurry
As you flew without wings
To Atlantis,
And all I could in Christ’s world do
Was stand mute watching your contrail
Dissipate into husky mist,
And wait impatiently
For my own feathers
To sprout.
Glenn A. Buttkus March 2006
You write because you can. You write because it's fun. You write to hear and validate your own voice. That is what matters most.
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