An Introduction by the Author...
This is the record of my shame.
For a brief period in the spring and early summer of 1994, I was a famous poet. Fame, of course, is relative; in this context I define it as: "once or twice, strangers on the street complimented me on my 'work' after having recognized me from open-mike poetry night at the pretentious coffee shop."
I'd been writing poetry for a number of years, from crappy junior high rhyming poems about elves to crappy high school free verse about suicide, but 1994 was the year I really began to take my "art" "seriously".
This is the record of my shame.
1994 was the year I discovered the Cafe WA in Tacoma, Washington, with its cheap coffee, overpriced pizza, and biweekly open-mic poetry readings.I'd never been particularly shy about sharing my writings with others, but this was the first time I'd ever recited anything. It was surprisingly well received.
I was hooked. I went back every two weeks without fail, but never again did I recite any poetry. Instead, I performed poetry. Hell, I hawked the shit like morphine-laden snake oil.
And the suckers ate it up.
By mid-summer, I had quit poetry in disgust. Poetry was important to me back then. I cared about this crap; it was a major part of who I was. But it didn't take long at all before I found myself writing for the audience. I'd jot down a couple lines and think to myself, "I can take this poem in this direction and they'll cheer, that direction and get an ironic chuckle out of them, and then finish with this and get a couple seconds of stunned silence followed by a standing ovation."
In short, I was a sellout--in the least-lucrative art form known to man.
A year later I was married, living in another city, and no longer remotely hip. I'd just discovered the internet and, in an attempt to rekindle my intrerest in poetry, typed up some of my old stuff out of one of the few poetry notebooks I didn't throw away when I moved.
The attempt failed, and with just one or two exceptions, I haven't written a poem in over ten years.
This is the record of my shame.
The poems you see here are the product of five exhaustive minutes of Google Groups research. I wrote many, many others. Some were better, some were worse, but the ones reprinted here are a fairly representative sample of the sort of crap I was churning out in those days. They're cut and pasted directly from the newsgroup archives, typographical errors and all. If I'd gone in to fix the spelling, I wouldn't have been able to stop there. I would have had to move some line breaks around to make them more visually impactful, replace a couple words with better-chosen ones, tightened up a few murky metaphors and, you know, completely rewritten the damned things so they didn't suck.
I didn't want to do that. First of all, it would be disingenuous: this is a historical record, posted here to satisfy an internet friend's curiosity. Mostly, however, it's just that I didn't want to get any of the stuff on me, if you know what I mean.
This is the record of my shame...
For a brief period in the spring and early summer of 1994, I was a famous poet. Fame, of course, is relative; in this context I define it as: "once or twice, strangers on the street complimented me on my 'work' after having recognized me from open-mike poetry night at the pretentious coffee shop."
I'd been writing poetry for a number of years, from crappy junior high rhyming poems about elves to crappy high school free verse about suicide, but 1994 was the year I really began to take my "art" "seriously".
This is the record of my shame.
1994 was the year I discovered the Cafe WA in Tacoma, Washington, with its cheap coffee, overpriced pizza, and biweekly open-mic poetry readings.I'd never been particularly shy about sharing my writings with others, but this was the first time I'd ever recited anything. It was surprisingly well received.
I was hooked. I went back every two weeks without fail, but never again did I recite any poetry. Instead, I performed poetry. Hell, I hawked the shit like morphine-laden snake oil.
And the suckers ate it up.
By mid-summer, I had quit poetry in disgust. Poetry was important to me back then. I cared about this crap; it was a major part of who I was. But it didn't take long at all before I found myself writing for the audience. I'd jot down a couple lines and think to myself, "I can take this poem in this direction and they'll cheer, that direction and get an ironic chuckle out of them, and then finish with this and get a couple seconds of stunned silence followed by a standing ovation."
In short, I was a sellout--in the least-lucrative art form known to man.
A year later I was married, living in another city, and no longer remotely hip. I'd just discovered the internet and, in an attempt to rekindle my intrerest in poetry, typed up some of my old stuff out of one of the few poetry notebooks I didn't throw away when I moved.
The attempt failed, and with just one or two exceptions, I haven't written a poem in over ten years.
This is the record of my shame.
The poems you see here are the product of five exhaustive minutes of Google Groups research. I wrote many, many others. Some were better, some were worse, but the ones reprinted here are a fairly representative sample of the sort of crap I was churning out in those days. They're cut and pasted directly from the newsgroup archives, typographical errors and all. If I'd gone in to fix the spelling, I wouldn't have been able to stop there. I would have had to move some line breaks around to make them more visually impactful, replace a couple words with better-chosen ones, tightened up a few murky metaphors and, you know, completely rewritten the damned things so they didn't suck.
I didn't want to do that. First of all, it would be disingenuous: this is a historical record, posted here to satisfy an internet friend's curiosity. Mostly, however, it's just that I didn't want to get any of the stuff on me, if you know what I mean.
This is the record of my shame...
posted by cometzero | 6:47 PM
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