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December 18, 2006 | 5 Comments

Post to the Host:
Heard your 12/16 show on KUHF. As always, I enjoyed the show. The highlight (in my view) was the portion of the show with Billy Collins. I've always enjoyed poetry, but have always been left with an after-taste of depression (at least with contemporary poets). Clearly Collins has a wonderful sense of humor, and he has no fear of demonstrating that. Perfect for your show!

Thank you,
David

So right, David, and we have to encourage these few poets such as Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Barbara Hamby, Denise Duhamel, and others, who dare to be witty. Jerry Douglas sat backstage and loved Billy's stuff, and stagehands perked up, and all of us got a big lift from his presence. The dead dog poem was a gem, the "suddenly" poem was a big hit — and all written with more style and cadence than the morose narcissistic complaint that you find depressing. ("I sit alone at the window/trying to write this poem/and suddenly the sky darkens and/ I see that my life makes no sense") Being witty and entertaining, they will always be suspect in the poetry world. But they'll have the satisfaction of knowing that they made us laugh and thereby made it less necessary for us to sit down and write a poem about sitting alone at the window.

5 Comments

Daniel Johnson | December 19, 2006 7:28 AM

Well said. Especially the sitting by the window business. That's poetry! Or not. I am certain that levity is as truly necessary to great poetry as gravity! Shakespeare, Joyce, Seuss! Robert Service!

Joan | December 19, 2006 6:13 PM

I so enjoyed Billy Collins' reading. It was so refreshing, and so funny. I ran to the bookstore and bought one of his books. Have 'The Dead Dog Poem' and 'Suddenly' been published? I looked through some of those available, but didn't find them.

Joan

michael autin | December 24, 2006 4:27 PM

I enjoy writing poetry. I prefer WITTY poems to most other types, but then I am an educated person, and so in a crowd political people accuse my facial features of being a BUMMER... that's how I know they are NOT witty! Also people who accuse me of being Jesus and Violating BOTH the 8th commandment AND my 4th AMENDMENT are NOT WITTY PEOPLE! If only they could articulate such vulgarity in a witty manner, call me zeus, Odin, or ask if what I say and do are appropriate for NON IRISH WAKES (Us Irish laugh and dance EVERYWHERE and that annoys non-irish who do not celebrate the dead with the living in the presence of the dead. Oh well we can't all enjoy good WIT, we would be our old selves again, and people who have family in WAR ZONES would have more reason to hate us, and bring POLITICAL VIOLENCE to our shores (I was so mad 9-11 I almost forgot about due process, and THAT is what Political VIOLENCE is all about) and that's why I look for old fashioned American bravado when I can find it. Being American in public in AMERICA attracts so many non-Americans to act like ILYICH IVANOVICH i need more that a 6-shooter to defend myself.

PS If anything here seems witty, please USE it, and pass it on. I would like proper renumeration and even consideration for a writing job, but that is not how things work anymore. So I release what I have typed, with only the tourch of WIT to keep this Darwin, history, science, person going... and that's not easy when so few can bolster the morale of such a remnant... (Will rodgers and Samuel Clemens come to mind; but they are dead white men, and NOT rainbow enough for todays people under 60.) When did people forget it's WHAT they said, and not WHO said it that we try to stimulate amongst each other? I try to pass American culture, and I get Ilyich in my face saying DEMOCRACY and PARTICIPATION is BAD---- Conformity to DOMINATION and POLITIC correctness are good liberal things we must all exhibit. (To me this seems like a christian acting Buddhist... VERY apparent, and not very WITTY!)

Thanks and MERRY CHRISTMAS, and winter solstice.
Jesus may be historical or not, but what was was and we fill today and tomorrow with wit to avoid the rut.

Mike

Carolyn D Kaminski | January 4, 2007 8:56 PM

Some people just don't have a sense of humor. I thought Filthy Fred's antics were quite entertaining.

anonymous | October 20, 2011 4:25 AM

Dress Use #62 – Halloween Costume

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I did a little trick-or-treating tonight. The benefit of the wedding dress costume is that it also doubled as candy sack. I took a little break next to a pile of trash someone in my neighborhood had staged on their sidewalk. I was calling myself a caveman but a couple people thought I was Moses. Costume options were somewhat limited because there is no way for me to actually fit into the dress. I think the caveman wrap turned out pretty good.