Writer's Lament

One of the pitfalls of a personal blog is to slip into some bombastic superlative and then run with it. It might start with a situation like getting lost in unfamiliar town and having lunch in the only restaurant that was open. Suddenly you're an impromptu food critic, in the blog you write -My Father's Igloo is the world's best Inuit restaurant, the whale blubber platter is to die for.

The next three or four paragraphs  describe the meal in minute detail but it's also in very careful and diplomatic language. You don't want to give the management any reason to hitch up the huskies to the sled and come hunt you down. To add some feeling of authority you add some factoids like the Native Americans who live above the Arctic Circle don't like being called Eskimo. Eskimo is a pejorative term that translates to -eater of raw fish. Only somebody who is too stupid or lazy to make a cook fire would have to eat raw fish. I wonder if feuding Inuit pass each other and shout -your Mother is an Eskimo.

I wanted to start this blog post by saying Russell Bittner is the best poet in Brooklyn New York. That might not be true but it's always fun to ruffle feathers of the chronically hip in the Williamsburg. Williamsburg is that section of Brooklyn where everything part of the kabuki theater of irony and artistic expression.     

Hipsters love poetry because poetry is personal and it's so difficult to honestly rate one poem better than another. Really good and really bad poetry is obvious but all the stuff in the middle lends its self to endless subjective discussions where even an average mind can be bumped up to the level of a pseudo-intellectual.

Russell Bittner is a published author and award winning poet. I like to compare his work to the French poet Ballade. Both have dark undertones though Ballade poems seemed to have a narrower scope in subject and style. I'm the kind of person who tried to read James Joyce's Ulysses but only got to page three. Both Ballade and Bittner are a lot more accessible.

With Valentine's Day coming up poetry is an excellent gift to include with the roses and chocolates.

Be hip buy poetry.

During World War Two there was a movie Why We Fight, it was an explanation of why sacrifice was so important obviously poetry is not as dramatic as war but still comes the question of why we write.

Hung over from last night’s praise

Of himself, the young poet

Suffering from the euphemism

Of young, not as in youth

But as in undiscovered

Yet to be published

He opens his apartment door

To the homeless man

Who believes he is Walt Whitman

Living rough on the building stoop

Ragged and gap toothed

He bows to the aspiring writer

The young poet shivers in fear

The dread of a problematic future

A vision of his probable fate

That shakes him to the core

The old man knows the unspoken

Fear not, fear not, oh pioneer

Look at me, poetry has been my all

My blanket on the coldest nights

And bread when my stomach grumbles

The poet stands in tortured silence

Midway between all extremes

He knows he can go down every street

In Brooklyn –or any town on the map

And find no shortage of sad stories

Every step a reminder, close at hand

Failure walks a half pace behind

The world panders the Devil’s deal

Your life for the trinkets of success

And just when the deal seems struck

The young poet breathes deep

And as normally as exhaling

The first lines of his next poem

Comes to him, ready to be written