The Church of Poetry, Take II

Okay, you get your wish. I'm taking this, of all days, to kick in a few doors.

This piece I wrote just minutes ago, as a comment on the blog of Bloggingpoet, concerning a 1991 article in Atlantic Monthly that declared poetry a dead art form. I cringe rereading it, as I found some typos!

Enjoi.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

Poetry can and does matter. We have failed, however, on two fronts. We have allowed a dilution of the faith, in our quest for broader acceptance (if you write poetry, you're a poet: and if you remove splinters you are a doctor? I don't think so...there is a distinction). And, we have retreated into our incestuous little circles of poets. One of the reasons I quit the reading scene in Los Angeles a few years back was I realized that nearly every "public reading" I was attending was attended by nothing but other people planning to read (and a few cute, but literarily untalented, poetry groupies...God love em!). This damned us two ways: 1. No new blood to expose to our beautiful disease and 2. No earnest feedback as everyone was so worried they might not get a standing ovation, they'd applaud a guy reading haiku naked (both obviously short forms).

Poetry is not JUST an art form, it is the simplest, most direct and most spiritual of the literary arts. It is found everywhere from the Bible to rap song lyrics. A 15 year old article in Atlantic Monthly is not going to convince me of what I knew in 1979 when I left the love of my life because she asked me to "give up this poetry thing".

Poetry is not a dead art form.

It may be suffering mutation, and as in all mutation, most will be unviable offspring, but with the advent of the internet and the subsequent Digital Renaissance, we have made mighty inroads. The POD revolution has tranformed the chapbook crowd to allow them to achieve worldwide distribution of their works, and websites have sprung up to allow poets their moment in the light. I coordinate my reading tours via email. I podcast. I blog.

I blog, therefore, I am. But just as mere existence is insufficient to purpose, so is merely casting the pearls before swine, peers and those previously mentioned poetry groupies insufficient to our needs. Not our wants, our needs.

Having had a website since 1996, having been labelled the Romantic Poet of the Internet by Yahoo that very year(five years after AM declared the artform dead), having hosted chats and classes on America Online, having taken control of my own books away from editors who do not believe in the faith of our fathers and mothers like Poe, Browning, Shelley, Stein, Buchowski and some guy who was a better playwrite than poet, having taught real world classes on this passionate craft and having found friends and lovers, peers and critics through this medium, all I can say is this:

Rise. The revolution is upon us. We need to band together, creating something more than a reading circle. I propose a manifesto that treats poetry as a religion, a link to the divine. It is, you know. And, despite lovers who lie, politicians who fail to deliver and churches that hide pedophiles, the church of poetry has never failed me.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

My website is not the prettiest, but I spend more time writing than formatting. I am not the handsomest poet to step to the microphone, but the propositions I get after my readings tell me I'm getting through, at least to those aforementioned women. I am not rich from my writing, but I am content that five hundred years from now, I'll still be read.

And that's why poetry is not dead. Because as long as there a few true believers, the faith will get through the dark ages of cynicism and disillusionment.

I want every poet who reads this to call three local venues, just three. Ask to read during National Poetry Month. I don't care if it is a church, a school, a bar, an ice cream parlour or a brothel, I've read in them all. A slightly different crowd in each and mostly not poets. Thank God, and with each reading there are converts.

Last year I testified before the West Virginia State Board of Education about the need for "full spectrum" education. Let's get in the faces of the people who make decisions and make sure they know that there are poets alive in the world today, this is not just a "Dead Poet" society. If you're within driving distance of me and want me to show, let me know...I'll be there and we'll make 'em think that they're living in the end times before I leave town.

I stand resolute in my faith. Who is with me? The Amomancer calls.

Either answer or surrender the damn microphone.

Atlantic Monthly, your fifteen years of infamy are up.