For my birthday, father bought me a copy of John Ashberry’s The Tennis Court Oath.

I had asked for that book because I was trying to get into Ashberry. I liked him, I’m influenced by him, but I also knew there was something that was missing.

The Tennis Court Oath was not his first book (I believe it was his second), but it was the one that exploded him onto the national poetic consciousness (whatever that is).

While it still has his trademark speed of thought, his fast directional changes, and intensely urban feel, it is also different from his later works.

Among other things, it is surprisingly romantic – something that he is not known for (though his most recent book of original poetry was praised for containing some rare love poems; but The Tennis Court Oath doesn’t contain ‘love poems,’ but is merely touched by romantic love) – as well as political, again not what you expect from Ashberry.

And yes, you can see why he and the other New York School poets flipped things upside down when they broke out.

Great book.

Something a little nifty, current events described in verse.

Sort of connects to what I was saying about the decline of satirical, political verse as a phenomenon (though this, of course, would be an effort to bring it back).

I read Scarriet merely for the occasional pleasures of being outraged by the writing of ideologues. Consequently, I don’t go there too often. I live near our nation’s Capitol,  so I get exposed to enough Republican rhetoric to satisfy whatever desire I might have to expose myself to the gamma rays of ideological bulls–t. But sometimes I’m a glutton for punishment.

Anyway, Scarriet published this little gem of poem recently.

Silliman’s Lament
by Marcus Bales

For Ron Silliman, who posted on FB how far he’d driven.

I’m a poet and critic, a serious man –
The School of Quietude’s my famous phrase –
From right around the Chatterley ban
Til now I’ve followed my poetry plan:
To argue that poetry ought not scan.
I’ve driven for 1200 miles in the last three days.

There isn’t a city where I won’t go –
My revolution important and potent as Che’s –
To see that no more arts are beau
So quietudeness doesn’t grow,
And maybe make a little dough:
I’ve driven for 1200 miles in the last three days.

I also write my famous blog
Where only I may speak, but all may gaze,
No meter, only prose’s slog
Should leave the po-biz crowd agog
And that’s the lang-po creed I flog:
I’ve driven for 1200 miles in the last three days.

With postmodernism’s new malaise –
Not just wrong, but wrong in the wrong maze –
I must redouble my drive to raze
Your art so our art may amaze
As all that’s left us after the blaze.
I’ve driven for 1200 miles in the last three days.

Envoi

Armantrout! Mix your final muddle
Uninspired enough for me to praise!
Then join me in a pure Platonic cuddle:
I’ve driven for 1200 miles in the last three days.

It’s not my cup of tea, but it did make me think about satirical poetry.

Satire used to be one of the prominent uses of poetry, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Kings and princes treated satirical poems as serious matters. The original coffeehouses in the seventeenth century – the ones that Samuel Pepys patronized – were considered potential hotbeds of insurrection for the satirical poems distributed with the polemical pamphlets.

You don’t see that too often anymore.

And perhaps this is an argument for poetry having become too self-important for its own good and that political and personal satires of this sort were once the key to poetry’s prominent place in letters.

But it should also be noted that 99.95% of those kinds of satirical poem were absolute crap (Alexander Pope excepted).