Best Poets

[Louise Gluck at the White House in 2015 to receive her National Humanities Medal (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)]

Technically Sound

Prone to all sorts of injuries 
At every moment, each man needs 
A competent Jewish lawyer, even if 
He himself is a half assed Joo shark. 

Though lying from birth, you’re still 
A rank babe, compared to, what else,
Any Hebraic shyster. “Bullshit,” you bark,
Jews ain’t exceptional liars. Just look
At how crude Netanyahu is!” Results
Are all that matter, dumbshit, so arm

Yourself with a Levy, Cohen or Schwarz.

With “Technically Sound,” I launch my campaign for next year’s Nobel Prize in literature. With that million bucks, I’ll remove the PayPal donate button from my lightly trafficked blog. All my SubStack articles will also be free. Sounds good?

Notice my masterful echoing of “shyster” with “bullshit” and “dumbshit,” my awesome rhyming of “shark,” “bark” and “Schwarz,” so natural they feel inevitable, and my internal rhyming of “Netanyahu” with “crude.” Flexing poetic chops, I’m proving to the Nobel Committee—surely they’re reading this now—I’m equal to Louise Glück. My modesty won’t allow me to say I’m kicking her white ass.

Is “white” incorrect if not gratuitous and offensive? Fuck, no! This adjective concretizes a figurative phrase, makes you see her ghostly buns, now suddenly weighting a ton, due to one hell of a felicitous insertion. Bet you didn’t see what I just did? Glück and felicity both mean happiness. Feliz Navidad!

With Christ verboten, I shouldn’t have wished anyone Merry Christmas, so Happy Hanukkah!

Exiled to poetry Mars, I hadn’t thought about Glück, Gerald Stern, Kenny Goldsmith, Ron Silliman, Hai-Dang Phan, Charles Bernstein, Clayton Eshleman or Leslie Scalapino in years. Going over Miles Mathis’ articles, I read his take on Louise Glück, so discovered this poem:

Mock Orange

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

Mathis, “This isn’t equality feminism, which few of us have any quarrel with, this is man-hating nastiness posing as feminism.” There’s certainly a revulsion towards men here, but it’s more than that.

In the first 25 words, Glück says “hate” three times, so it’s not some blushing love poem or an ode to lovemaking. Sex with a man is revolting. Her mouth is “sealed” by his. His body paralyzes hers. This premise is so low and humiliating, she can’t help but cry out. The “always” implies she’s suffered this howling horror many times. Though it’s possible Glück had an infinity of one nigh stands hoping for that one man who didn’t turn her stomach, we’re looking at marital sex.

When “Mock Orange” was published in 1985, Glück had been married to John Dranow for eight years. Somehow, they endured 4,000 more nights of antagonistic mountings before finally splitting. (I just multiplied 11 by 365.) Unlike Dranow, Glück never married again. Dranow’s second wife must not have read “Mock Orange” before declaring, “I do.” Most likely, she had never cared for contemporary poetry.

How can anyone not?! Louise Glück is an American icon who’s been awarded the National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer and Nobel. She’s the best of the USA. Bob Dylan won a Nobel in 2016. Two Jewish American poets in four years is an unprecedented achievement.

So what if Dylan’s most famous song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” was written by a New Jersey high school student, Lorre Wyatt? As Miles Mathis points out, Columbia Records didn’t dare to sue Newsweek when it made this charge in 1963. Instead, Wyatt appeared in 1974 to deny her authorship. It took a while to buy this utterance. Analyzing the cadence and vocabulary of “Shelter from the Storm,” Mathis also suggests Leonard Cohen is the true author. Already in the same studio, Cohen was paid to help out a much lesser Jew. Jewish Ginsberg, “Dylan blew everybody’s mind, except Leonard’s.”

Since my best friend in high school, Brian Robertson, was a Dylan freak, I heard every song Robert Zimmerman of Minnesota ever recorded, including all the bootlegs, until 1982. Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully” of 1983 I only discovered around 2015. Here are the first three stanzas:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully.

So Jews are criticized and condemned for nothing but being alive! How many times have we heard this sick tune? It’s especially nauseating in light of the ongoing Gaza genocide. As song or poetry, this Dylan composition is as bad as it gets. Has he sunk so far from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde? There are actually many embarrassingly bad Dylan songs.

“Neighborhood Bully” didn’t hurt Dylan’s Nobel chance. Mine is great also. I can just feel it! Since it’s gone to so many with a huge or hook nose, we’re way overdue for a slew of flat nose winners. Since none is as bridgeless as mine, I’m a shoo-in.

Dear Nobel Committee, the last photo here is surely your man! The New Testament he’s holding was the only book he could find in this café, so don’t hold that against him. All his poems are technically sound.

[Louis Glück in 1978 (photo by Lois Shelton)]

[Vietnamese poet Bùi Giáng (1926-1998) in Saigon in the 90’s]

[poet Nguyễn Quốc Chánh in Saigon in 2011]

[Vung Tau, 10/21/24]