The New Formalist
Poetry Editor
Leo Yankevich
Publication:
The New Formalist is published biannually
in spring and fall
in PDF format.
Submissions:
lyankevich@gmail.com
Send no more than 5 poems in either the body of an email message
or in a single attached file (RTF, MS Word, or Open Office).
© 2006 by respective authors.
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Joseph Aimone
THE HUMAN BECOME THE GLASS
This morning I discover myself changed:I have been simplified, my every part replaced
With glass. My bones are crystal structures ranged
In interlocking phalanxes, all laced
With semi-molten structures, muscles once
And tendons underneath the bubble smooth
That once was skin. And penetrating thence
From every surface, from each beaded tooth
And every organ’s now translucent flesh
Are fiber optic networks that were nerves,
And up into and down from skull they flash
Their scintillating paths and glowing curves.
But I am delicate: treat me with care—
You see through me your own fragility,
For broken, my heart’s blood will scorch the air,
And I am shattered irreplaceably.
Michael Battram
ON SEEING MY EX-WIFE AT KROGER’S
Six months since the divorce, and there she is,Long just a testy voice upon the phone,
Now words made flesh. “Buying groceries?”
I hear myself ask, like the dumbest man
Who’s ever lived. She looks at me; I shrink
A little more into my shoes. “Of course,”
I follow up, not like some dope who’d think
She never eats, “that’s why they have these stores.”
I say, “Well, you look good——you losing weight?”
“I’ve got to go. There’s someone in the lot
Waiting for me.” “Oh, sure, you’ve got a date.
I’m seeing people too, don’t think I’m not!”
“Take care,” she grimaces, and leaves me there,
With my toilet paper, frozen dinners, beer.
Malachi Black
THE PUNCTURE
A vein is lightning, forked and full.Skin dimples like a sail in wind.
Just ease the needle, squeeze, and pull.
It trampolines beneath the tucked-in pin:
Skin dimples like a sail in wind,
A curtsy in the softest skirt.
It trampolines beneath the tucked-in pin,
One worm immersing in its dirt.
A curtsy in the softest skirt;
A winged thing, like a wrinkled gull.
One worm immersing in its dirt.
Heat swarms, encircling one skull.
A winged thing, like a wrinkled gull,
Will sculpt a gust to hug its fringe.
Heat swarms, encircling one skull.
Add water, powdered sun; syringe
…will sculpt a gust to hug its fringe.
Afloat: below the bone, above:
Add water, powdered sun, syringe.
Like waking to the just-dreamed-of.
Afloat: below the bone, above:
When wishes wander from their well.
Like waking to the just-dreamed-of,
The beat slows but repeats itself.
When wishes wander from their well,
And I, I sleep more than I should,
The beat slows but repeats itself:
A slumber pent within the blood.
And I, I sleep more than I should,
Just ease the needle, squeeze, and pull.
A slumber pent within the blood:
A vein is lightning, forked and full.
Jared Carter
METEOR SHOWER
Now in the dark I can hear their approach—in an houror two, when the moon is down,
And the churchyard is still, the summer’s last meteor shower
will begin, far from the lights of town.
They have met here before, but never this late. If they stay
past midnight, her father will know.
They look up at the stars. At the edge of the Milky Way,
three luminous planets show.
I remember how real it all seemed. But no trails of light
can brighten the place where I stay,
Nor the way they are whispering now make this night
any different from day.
WHEN SHADOWLESS
When shadowless you stand, with folded wings,and watch from some high place—it still may seem
The storms that sweep across the sea can bring
no change upon the deep, nor in our dreams,
When shadowless you stand.
When shadowless you stand, beside bright kings,
when all the turmoil drawn up by the sun
Condenses into light, and great bells ring—
will you remember how you held me once,
When shadowless you stand?
When shadowless you stand, beyond imagining,
there will be part of me joined with you still,
Where dark, unfathomable waters spring
and crash against the rocks, and always will,
When shadowless you stand.
SAY YOU REMEMBER
Say you remember—even if all that staysIs no more lasting than the silver foil
Of quarter moon, or the west wind’s toil
Upon the deep, among the darkening waves.
Say you remember.
Say you remember—candle that burned so bright,
Casting our shapes against the winding stair;
Casement thrown open, letting a rush of air
Prolong the surge from far within the night.
Say you remember.
Say you remember—morning, with gulls crying,
The yellow sand swept clean, and not a sign
That we came that way. No trace left behind
By the incoming waves. And the wind sighing.
Say you remember.
VISITANT
What is that calling on the windthat never seems a moment still?
That moves in darkness like a hand
of many fingers taken chill?
What is it seeking when it flows
about my head, and seems to wrest
All motion from my heart, as though
I still had something to confess?
How can it be it knows my crime—
this troubled whistling in the air?
‘Tis true, I left her long behind,
but this is dark, and she was fair.
Michael Curtis
MY INSPIRATION
How to inscribe the beauty in a young man’s eyesBut as a reflection,
A pleasant sensation
Whose sensuous form is impressed in his mind.
Just so, Love, your person impressed my life
With early vexation
And with inspiration
That has shown your image in every rhyme.
All thoughts of love are you; each verse I make
Recreates your lost lips—
I will name you, Karen,
Yet, give you no epic
Verses; those are for girls who loved and stayed:
Cold night, Love, is not as ripe as fruitful days.
ASTROMANCY
The sun will not come out todayBecause she heard her sisters say
Your beauty overbears her flame,
And she, poor dear, retired in shame.
So here we are, Love, in the dark
With only passion’s heat to spark
A light that we may warm our way
Throughout the night of our today.
Ah… What Glory! Now your beauty glows
And heaven’s truest planet shows
The wonders of our vaulted earth;
This tripersoned universe:
Me, and you—a truer Venus—
With Orion’s sword between us.
NOTHING NEW
There is nothing new in the new;There never will be, and never was.
Never has novelty told the truth;
Novelty is never new, because
In the moment of the making, new
Things are old, then older: This is true.
Too, truth is constant, never changing,
Always the same as when it began.
And so, a prankish rearranging
Is but the puzzlement of the plan;
Until, unpuzzled yet again,
The game of novelty reaches its end.
MOTHER OF CHANGE
Go slow, Mother of Change;Turn with the earth
Into a wiser age.
Learn by each birth
That some men come in time
To virtue, others to crime.
So, move at a slow pace
Change; nothing new
Seems to be good these days.
Instead, be true
Mother of Change, and hearken to
Father Time who chastens you.
BEFORE THE HARVEST
The corn grows golden before the harvest,The gray clouds billow before they break,
The ripe fruit falls when full of sweetness,
And the slow tides rise on an even pace.
Nothing that comes will ever come late:
The sun in due course reclines in the west,
The heart to a purpose flows through the race,
And all who will move will move to their rest.
Each moment through time fades to another;
Season, to season, to season will pass.
The seed to the tree, babe to the mother;
The moment before gives birth to the last,
As the song of the youth lives in the man
Long after the tune of his music ends.
Anna Evans
COLORLESS
I’ve heard no word from you; the sky hangs dullas coins that weight the lids of sightless eyes.
The trees stand, statues in the eerie lull
which signals coming thunder to the wise.
In my new house I pace from floor to floor—
I bought the paint and meant to decorate.
The shade looks poorly chosen now, the chore
too tiring for my mind to contemplate.
I will not call you; thus I keep my grief
subdued, a dead child’s hair inside a locket
I wear with dignity. You are a thief
who’s stolen more than trinkets from my pocket.
You’ve stripped the depth and color from my sight;
the trees refuse to sway; the walls stay white.
SIMPLE VISION
Let’s take a simple object like this chairI’m sitting on. You see it every night;
I doubt you could describe it though, from there.
Our dog can tell by odor who sat where.
She only sees the room in black and white,
but, from my perfume, knows this is my chair.
Your voice hums down the phone: “I do not care
about this chair, unless it shows up right
in front of me.” I guess you have me, there.
I swat away an insect – it’s unfair
a thing so stupid can see UV light,
when you can’t see my point about this chair.
You say you work too hard to be aware
of shadows, how they shift outside the bright
focus of your desk. Though I’m not there,
I can detail your smile, your face and hair,
your breath hot on my cheek, as if you might
pull me toward you like an easy chair,
as if you loved me, as if I were there.
T.S. Kerrigan
SUMMER SNOW
The winters at my uncle’s lodgeare faded childhood memories,
except that vivid face of hers
I saw just once when I was eight.
Returning from the slopes one day,
I shivered by a blazing fire.
Two girls I’d never seen approached.
“Been sledding through the snow?” one asked,
a stunning girl of twelve or so,
with long black hair and deep blue eyes.
“I bet you’re freezing cold,” she purred.
I lied, a quaver in my voice.
“You haven’t found the summer snow beyond
the ridge?” she asked. “There’s drifts and drifts.
It’s warm and cozy there. You just lie down
and let it cover you; it’s dreamy stuff.”
Her silent friend exchanged a look with her.
“I guess we have to go,” she said. “Goodbye,
but don’t forget those drifts of summer snow.
Perhaps we’ll see you there some time.”
A blaze destroyed my uncle’s lodge
next autumn, when it didn’t rain.
Although we didn’t know it then,
we’d spent our final winter there.
What slopes I see these days appear
in dreams of summits far away.
I pull my sled across that ridge,
still seeking drifts of summer snow.
ROGER KELLEY
They placed us alphabeticallyin history and math;
you sat between Bob Katz and me.
You’d been expelled from other schools,
for truancy and theft,
and bragged you’d broken all the rules.
By spring we heard you faced arrest
for unpaid traffic fines;
your brand new Ford was repossessed.
It’s ages since we saw your face,
or read your name in print,
but who’d forget that time and place?
The week they took the Ford away,
to get to Mexico,
you panicked, stole a Chevrolet.
The owner tried to intervene,
a teacher from the school.
You shot her twice and fled the scene.
The day I read they gave you life,
I swore I’d rather die
than live without a girl or wife.
Yet even grief wears off at last;
we spoke about you less,
tried not to think about the past.
But social workers called one day
to see Bob Katz and me,
then shook their heads and went away.
You’d named us each your closest friend,
two kids you swore to them
“would back you to the very end,”
acquaintances you’d only met
by happenstance,
contingent on the alphabet.
AUBADE
Their spouses still asleep indoors,they leisurely retrace
their steps at dawn, their arms entwined,
content in smoky light
to sniff a damask rose or two.
The daffodils have reappeared
in clumps beneath the oaks.
They find their special bench again,
grown shy, who were so bold
last night beneath a darker sky.
Remembering the wild bouquets
they gathered here, their years
together, years apart, they sit,
recalling vanished things,
the squandering of all those springs.
David W. Landrum
THE PLANET MERCURY
October, 2003
the morning I saw Mercury beside
a new, emergent sun. Fields frosted white,
wheat harvest done, and our liaison new,
my paean rose for old religion’s sake:
God of thieves and translators, and Lord
of swindlers, sharpers, slick fast-talking cons;
quicksilver deity and messenger,
wing-footed shyster, bless my reveries.
You saw the bare-assed Ares and his sweet
consort (bright dazzling Aphrodite) caught
fast in the netting Hephaestus had hid
and laughed with all the other gods but said
(whispering to Apollo), I wish I,
not Ares, were the one entangled there.
You broke news to Calypso: her bed-mate,
the bold Odysseus, must return back home.
You earned you pay leading dim-witted dead
down the dark path into the underworld.
Stretch out your wand. Approve my wayward course,
approve my peccadilloes, ruses, lies.
Shine, god of word-play, lord and savior of
all ambiguity and double-code.
I turned and went into the restaurant.
When I emerged, the god had gone away.
CATS
Lovers, fervent, and scholars, austere,Both choose (when seasons pass and they are old
And are confined at home) cats, soft, demure,
To sit with them and share their hearth's warm fold.
Cats are like lovers, and like scholars too.
They prowl and lurk, sometimes as if they dread
An unseen thing; and yet their pride is true:
They won’t bow down to hell or to the dead.
They sit, sphinx-like, silent, as if they knew
All wisdom and all mystery. They seem
To sleep awake in an eternal dream.
They move with rhythmic steps, and when they do,
Magical sparks of gold flash from their thighs
And stars illuminate their sleepy eyes.
EPIGRAPH 90
Bassa, I knew you never slept with menand thought you were a good girl—ah, but then
I noticed, all around you, sat the likes
of lesbians—a company of dykes!
You seemed Lucrece, but now, my Bassa dear,
I write you off as just a common queer.
The perverse things you and your girlfriends do
but palely imitate a proper screw.
You’re like the Sphinx, and here’s your paradox:
you fuck, but without men or balls or cocks!
Richard Moore
LOST AND FOUND WITH OCCULT INFLUENCE
From under your bed, where, an hour,of your sweet flesh I was the plower
(perhaps I only mean the hoer),
my watch returned, dear, running slower.
POOR LITTLE RICH
who doesn’t speak to men,
I’m no politeness ender
and speak to either gender.
Wild man or wilder woman,
they only need be human—
proviso sad. That, then,
excludes our Adrienne.
TRUE TO HIS ROOTS
Rural developer, urbanized clown,always a seeker and hunter, he
founded a whorehouse in his home town.
Now he delights in the cuntery.
THE CALCULUS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS
OR
THE SUMMING OF INTELLECTUAL INFINITESIMALS
fits beautifully with feces.
Thus, these near nothings, summed, may raise, we think,
a noticeable stink.
TO THOSE WHO SPEAK IN PUBLIC
be pleasantries for social good;
let none of you dare recognize
society’s foundation lies. . .
society’s foundation, lies.
MOHAMMEDANS, JEWS, HINDUS
“Such bizarre people! When they dine,they do not eat the flesh of swine.
Our food becomes us,“ archly said he,
“Well, hey, maybe they’re swine already. ”
FOR A LITERARY COMPETITOR
So, “having what it takes,”what is it now you’ve won a badge in?
I think there may be deeper stakes
than you, sir, can imagine.
COMPANY DIRECTIVEE
(overheard on the Moscow subway)
Since profit’s the intent
and though it cracks your face,
smile, smile on all the swine.
The cost, friends? Not a cent.
Great for the bottom line.
THE POET VIEWS HIS OWN WORK DISPASSIONATELY
Trickles of verse, Dick’s tricky treacle:so sweet, say some; say others, fecal.
Richard O’Connell
NOSFERATU
Evil as an active causeGoes complicit with the good;
Nor can the garlic wreath or cross
Allay for long the thirst for blood.
Tom Riley
THE LUDDITE’S TESTIMONY
On a hand-copied Bible I placeMy right hand, full of strength and of grace
Which mere speed can’t demean—
And I curse the machine:
If it had one, I’d spit in its face.
THE QUIET MAN
As he quietly thought, others shoutedThat his mind was the thing they all doubted.
Yes, they clamored and cried
And grew weary and sighed.
But his thoughts all refused to be outed.
Leo Yankevich
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE OLDEST MAN IN EUROPE
Amid the leaves of this his final Fallhis eyes reflect the blue unminding heavens,
but tell me nothing of the girl he wed
while serving in the Tsar’s Imperial Guard,
tell me nothing of the six sons she bore
during the Great War and Revolution,
and nothing of the hellish years he spent,
a prisoner-slave in Kolyma’s mines.
Like Midas, all he touches turns to gold—
the leaves are fallen sons and memories,
the numbers on his wrist his gilded name.
He is too close to death to answer questions.
Three died for Hitler, and three died for Stalin.
And he was cursed to have survived them all.
BUTUGYCHAG, EASTERN SIBERIA
From this hillside full of multiple graves(marked by discs made from the lids of tin cans,
rusty now, stamped with the ID numbers
of Tsarist and reactionary slaves),
some with their inhabitants’ remains
exposed to heaven, as if halfway risen,
we look down at the commandant’s old house,
past the howls in the cramped punishment cells,
as the wind brushes bent and brambled bars,
behind which stand the spectres of those who,
before the Great Patriotic War,
sinned against the state in dreams and whispers,
and we behold the spacious balcony,
the broken panes of the enormous window,
and the sun-bleached, rain-worn wood of the stair,
built for the little man from the Ukraine
who liked to sing in Russian and in Yiddish,
because, we are told, he enjoyed the view there.
Jared Carter
RING OF GYGES
“Justice in the State and in the Individual.” A scholar decides this would be a good subheading for the passage of classic Greek he is beginning to translate. The phrase is not in the original text. He does not write it down but fixes it in his mind.
One can imagine him sitting in a study paneled with oak and filled with books—with a bay of leaded-glass windows giving out onto an inner quadrangle—and thinking about the words with which to translate the story.
He may be provided with a curved briar pipe, to fill with tobacco. Slowly, carefully, he tamps the grains with his thumb, then takes a wooden match and strikes it, and holds it for a moment. Its pale flame becomes almost motionless in the late-morning light.
We may guess, from the look of the young men coming and going across the quadrangle below, that the year is 1939—their trousers are baggy, they part their hair to one side, they look as though they had just removed their motorcycle goggles, or only recently arrived on campus by dirigible.
It is early autumn. The wind picks up a bit, devils of dust spin back and forth across the courtyard. We may guess that everyone—scholars, masters, dons, charwomen—has a good idea of what has been happening in other countries. Places like Ethiopia. Czechoslovakia. Poland. And just this morning, France. But this is a university, and there are tutorials to conduct, seminars to teach, books to write, texts to be translated.
The passage of Greek on which this man is working is found in Book II of Plato’s Republic. The subject is the nature and origin of justice. Socrates’ friend, Glaucon, believes that the just man and the unjust man would behave in different ways, if each were given complete liberty of action.
To illustrate his point, Glaucon tells the story of the shepherd Gyges, who finds—far underground, in a secret chamber—a gold ring set with a mysterious stone. He discovers that if he turns the ring so that his hand cups the stone, he becomes invisible. His fellow shepherds cannot see him. They speak as though he has risen and left their circle. When he turns the stone outward, they can see him as before.
Such magic would be, Glaucon imagines, equal to the liberty of being able to do whatever one liked. To go about among men, he explains, with the powers of a god. In the story, Gyges arranges to be sent to court as a messenger. As soon as he arrives, using the ring of invisibility, he seduces the queen. With her help he murders the king, then seizes the throne.
The old scholar remembers the matchstick with which he had intended to light his pipe. The flame having come almost too close to his fingers, he shakes it out suddenly. He gazes at the burnt, blackened stick as though seeing it for the first time.
THE LEGACY
Clearly incorporated in his will, of which I was chief executor, were instructions for publishing his remaining manuscripts. A packet of holograph letters, contained in a shoebox, sent to him by a childhood sweetheart, was to be destroyed immediately.
His public correspondence was to be turned over to scholars at the university. During his lifetime they had already microfilmed, cataloged, and digitalized a considerable selection of material taken from his pocket notebooks and commonplace books.
A number of unfinished or partially completed manuscripts on politics and economics were consigned to his publishers, who a few days later announced their intention of issuing these documents in twenty to twenty-five volumes. These in turn would be archived digitally, with access limited to subscribers. Added to the books already published, they would bring the total of his extant works to a hundred and five.
His private correspondence, which dwarfed the public collection, was to be sealed for fifty years. When that interval had elapsed, those letters could be made public which did not refer to anyone still living.
There was a third correspondence, of considerable bulk, which he had maintained with numerous artists and musicians. These letters were to be released after seventy-five years. Three manuscripts of correspondence involving matters of philosophy, art, and religion were not to be printed for twenty-five years.
The largest file was his personal journal, which presented an editorial challenge that might require decades to bring to completion. Work was to begin immediately on this mass of papers, but to proceed according to a schedule outlined in the will, so that the project could not possibly be finished in less than a century. The academic authorities immediately set about creating a digital archive of these writings, one that would offer original pages faced by scrupulously edited text.
When every stipulation had been met, and the manuscripts crated up and shipped to their appointed recipients, a workman clearing the attic of the house discovered a large wooden trunk, which proved to contain a journal he had kept during his youth and later abandoned. A subsequent search revealed, on a shelf in the basement above the laundry tubs, a large quantity of hitherto unknown poems, a sheaf of sketches in charcoal, impressions of his travels in the Caucasus, additional correspondence with a Brazilian astronomical society, and a description of a journey to Atlantis, carefully written out in his almost microscopic hand in five hundred quarto pages.
Impressed by this find, I reasoned that perhaps his earlier residences might yield similar treasures. I was not long in searching through his summer house in Bridgehampton when I discovered a valuable set of letters written to his stepson, who had died in the previous century. A colleague of mine, hurrying to the cottage to join me, soon uncovered, in the clutter of the master bathroom, a thick notebook containing a draft of a treatise on the phenomenology of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, with which he had apparently occupied himself while performing his morning ablutions.
According to our records, during a long career he inhabited at least seventy different houses or apartments in seventeen countries and on four continents. Much as I would like to investigate each of these sites, this would not, at my age, be feasible, and I have already delegated such tasks to others. I am more than content with my role in initiating these important projects, and do not regret that I will not live to see them brought to completion.
A VISIT
It is Nietzsche, living in a boardinghouse in Turin, and on the verge of madness. Only hours before the authorities come to take him away, he receives a letter explaining that Schopenhauer is not really dead.
Thus he learns from a reliable source that years before, his great predecessor circulated the story of his own demise, so that he might live out his remaining years in anonymity and peace.
Schopenhauer, now a mere husk, is in fact residing in a villa on the outskirts of Milan, only a few hours’ journey from Turin. Nietzsche immediately calls for a cab to the train station and sets out for the address he has been given.
It is an unassuming house on a country road. Patches of stucco have fallen from the white-washed walls. Two mules browse in a nearby field. In the courtyard, beneath a willow tree, water gurgles in a stone fountain.
Schopenhauer cannot afford servants. He comes to the door and recognizes Nietzsche although they have never met until this moment.
“You were a fool to come here,” he says “And besides, you look terrible. You should be in bed. Or better yet, in a hospital.”
“I must speak with you,” Nietzsche says, pushing into the corridor. He tosses his hat on the hall table. “I haven’t much time.” He barges into Schopenhauer’s study.
“In your present state,” Schopenhauer says, following after him, “you could have visited anyone, anyone at all. Socrates, Aristotle, Herder, Kant. Any one of them would have been happy to see you.”
Nietzsche goes to the sideboard and seizes a decanter of spirits. With shaking hands he fills a large drinking glass.
Schopenhauer comes over and takes the decanter away from him and puts it inside the cupboard. “Come to visit me, have you?” Schopenhauer says. “You should know better. I gave up philosophy long ago. I am an old man now. Do you know how old I am?”
Nietzsche shakes his head and continues to gulp down the contents of the glass.
“I am a hundred and one years old. Imagine that! Who would have believed I would live that long? It’s preposterous!”
“Help me,” Nietzsche says. “I have witnessed a coachman in the Piazza Carlo Alberto flogging his horse until it drops to the pavement. I can no longer endure such savagery. I cannot even bear the thought of it.”
“Forget about the horse,” Schopenhauer says, “and the coachman, too.” He dissolves into the thinnest of vapors. Everything else in the room begins to turn dark. “It’s that sister of yours who bears watching,” he whispers.
Joseph S. Salemi
SATIRE: AN ORPHAN
Satire was invented by the Romans, and perfected by them. The first-century writer Quintilian says Satura tota nostra est, which can mean “Satire is completely our own,” or “Nobody can beat us at satire.” The Romans were proud of this native genre.
And true to its origin, satire has a broad streak of savagery in it. The Romans were a robust and bloodthirsty bunch. The sanguinary spectacles in the arena, the crucifixions, the genocidal wars, the brutal attitude towards sex... all of these were typical of the ancient Roman temperament. The sons of Romulus weren’t pussies.
This sort of ferocity is encoded in the DNA of satire. If your satire doesn’t get under someone’s skin, like the hooked tip of a Roman flagellum, then you’ve failed as a satirist. Satire is the .50 caliber machine gun of the world of letters. It doesn’t have any “socially redeeming” or “uplifting” purpose. It is designed simply to kill and to maim.
That’s why satire is unpopular today. The general public no longer reads very much, so they get their fill of savagery from violent films and reality TV shows. Of those who do still read, many of them slake their blood-lust by consuming garish novels about murder or rape or generalized mayhem. That’s why Mickey Spillane was rich in the 1950s, and Stephen King is now.
Who’s left? Well, there’s the self-styled intelligentsia. They’re the only remaining readers of LITT-ra-choor, as Ezra Pound would have put it. And at the present time they are essentially hostile to satire.
Why is that? It’s easy enough to answer. Satire doesn’t give a damn whom it hurts. In fact, satire enjoys hurting its targets. But the intelligentsia today is largely composed of teachers, editors, journalists, publishers, researchers, novelists, and poets, with many of those categories overlapping each other. They are all members of the “verbalist” professions. A great number of them are attached to academia in some way.
These little nerds have been raised on the gospel of sensitivity and caring. They live in a stifling atmosphere of faculty meetings, editorial conferences, corporate policy sessions, seminars, tea parties, commencement addresses, and pious lectures on the demands of race, class, and gender. Like high officials in the Third Reich, their livelihoods depend on rigid adherence to an ideology.
Every one of these verbalists is oh-so-anxious to be thought of as a good little liberal. Naturally, such people are skittish about saying—or reading—anything that might conceivably be “offensive” to some aggrieved group of victims. Add to all this the congenital squeamishness of those whom Dana Gioia has called “the trinominate blue-haired ladies” of our various state poetry societies, and the matter is clinched. These twerps react to the robust Roman violence of satire the same way that vampires react to the cross.
As a result, satire is an orphan. Few people have a taste for it, and even fewer can produce it. If you’re trained to be fair and tolerant and understanding and kind (as most poltroonish Americans are these days), you’ll never have the stomach for real satire.
I once had a satiric poem rejected by a female editor who said that the piece was “unjust.” Try to imagine the mentality of such a woman, who thinks that literary works have to be composed by the rules of a children’s playground. And yet hers is the typical mentality of most persons in the literary world today. They can’t deal with satire, which is as unfair as a land mine or a sniper’s bullet.
It wasn’t always this way. America used to be a ferociously satirical country. H.L. Mencken, Douglas Woodruff, Ambrose Bierce, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain—these men were world-class satirists whose achievements are right up there with those of Swift and Juvenal. But something happened after the death of Mencken. Satire drowned in a sea of feminized niceness. You can’t even teach Byron anymore without some dumb coed complaining to the Dean.
But that’s OK. A few of us will continue sniping just for the sheer hell of it. Try not to get caught in our crosshairs. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Contributors’ Notes
Joseph Aimone’s work has been published in a variety of literary magazines, most recently in The Mississippi Review. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Callaloo. He is professor of English at the University of Houston Downtown.Michael Battram is a self-taught poet and lifelong resident of Southern Indiana. Although a little lazy about sending work out, he has managed to place over 100 poems over the years in a wide variety of styles and publications, from academic to alternative to "ashcan," including Abbey, The Formalist, Free Lunch, Iambs & Trochees, Nerve Cowboy, and Wormwood Review.
Malachi Black is literary editor of The New York Quarterly. He lives in New York City.
Jared Carter’s poems and stories have appeared online in Astropoetica, Boheme Magazine, Eclectica, Melic Review, Plum Ruby Review, Red River Review, The Scream Online, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. His fourth collection of poetry, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, is available from Wind Publications in Kentucky.
Michael Curtis is a classical sculptor, painter, and architect working in Alexandria, Virginia. His poems have appeared in Pivot, The Lyric, Blue Unicorn, Neo-Victorian/Cochlea, Expansive Poetry and Music Online, Candelabrum, and American Arts Quarterly Online.
Anna Evans has had over 100 poems published in various journals including The Formalist, The Lyric, The Evansville Review, The Edge City Review, Raintown Review and Light Quarterly. She lives in New Jersey, where she is raising two daughters.
T.S. Kerrigan’s poetry has appeared in Southern Review, International Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, the Pacific Review, and scores of others. The Scienter Press has published a collection of his poems entitled The Shadow Sonnets and Other Poems.
David W. Landrum, teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Cornerstone University, a small liberal arts college in Western Michigan. He has published poetry in many magazines and journals, including The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Small Brushes, riverrun, Driftwood Review, Hellas, The Formalist, and many others.
Richard Moore has ten published volumes of poetry, one of which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His newest collection, The Naked Scarecrow, was published by Truman State University Press, New Odyssey Editions, in the spring of 2000.
Richard O’Connell lives in Hillsboro Beach, Florida. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Margie, National Review, The Texas Review, Acumen, The Formalist, Light, etc. His most recent collections are American Obits, Fractals and Dawn Crossing.
Tom Riley has published well over 700 poems in venues ranging from The Lyric to Light to Anglican Theological Review. He teaches Classical languages and English literature in Napa, California.
Joseph S. Salemi teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University, and in the Classics Department of both Hunter College and Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. His work has appeared in over fifty journals and literary magazines in the United States and in Britain.
Leo Yankevich’s poems have recently appeared in Chronicles, Blue Unicorn, Iambs & Trochees and Ship of Fools. He lives with his wife and three sons in Gliwice, Poland.