Thax Douglas: C/D?

What, are you taking him out?

Use your Google search function.

He was also a really nice guy to talk to about music, even if he only ever seemed to half remember you.

You've gotta be kidding me. They're like eighty sixth rate Allen Ginsberg mixed with half-formed Dr. Seuss.

His disillusionment is too spot-on to be very interesting, especially when it comes to poetry: there are a lot of people out there who seem to think they might someday be recognized and plucked out of the wide world as great poets, but the thing is that even if they are great poets, it's entirely true that the world doesn't care about poetry. Poetry, like ballet, is a niche art sustained largely by patronage and academic interest. Leave alone the quality of his poetry -- the guy's crazy if he thinks he's going to get invited to local colleges out of the blue, when there are already plenty of published MFA-holding academically-aware poets scrambling over each other to properly angle for every grant, fellowship, reading opportunity, or teaching post out there.

-- hstencil

perfect. he's moving your way!

John, I know you've said before that you like his poetry. Can you post something that you like, 'cause all that I've heard is notably awful. I want to see if you know something I don't or if we really just have different opinions on the matter.

Oh, here's one from ME:

"Grapes"

Swollen wings gravitate over canopies of fear,
while cloud bursts wail in the imagined
details of misanthropy. Arched over railings
to the achieved choir singing Hallelujah
while returning alone to where we once
stood with our caramel veiled lovers.

If anybody wants me to read for their band, I'm "available".

MMMMMMMRRRRRRRRZZZZZZZZPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFTTTTTT.

vistas are seen better when you perch atop the pile of ancient beetle prostheses carved before each bug came out shiny and new every second, their new lives crammed so close it seemed like immortality. -4/9/06 Trevia

i think you guys are all OTM, but i still say classic.

Haha, oh man.

Also, Derek, can we make a Thax Douglas poem generator?

Frequently the title of a poem provides a kind of passkey for unlocking (or simply providing a new interpretation of) a poem's metaphors. I don't know when this practice dates to exactly, but certainly you can find it in many symbolist poems, esp. Mallarmé. I think this is still how it's used in most cases, but it's true that many poets seem to have taken from this formal opportunity only the idea that poem titles ought to be especially obscure.

my real name is starting to show up in some really weird places on the internet as a result of being a Thax poem title.