National Poetry Month Winner

The public library in Missoula has poem dispenser in honor of National Poetry Month (the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.) I love the concept!

But the poem it gave me was a dud. Gawd, I hate praise for contemporary writing that has nothing to say. All tacky bells and whistles disguised as literary culture. SAT analogy solution: This poem is to literature as  Taylor Swift  is to  music .

I coulda wrote this poem better in two lines:

I thought he loved me, but I was an idjit.
Sorry for wasting your time.

Here's my reaction to the Pulitzer Prize representative.

"(some phony modern poem that was said
In English Lit to be a document
"Engazhay and compelling"--what this meant
Nobody cared)"

- Pale Fire poem by Vladimir Nabokov

Material Ode

O tulle, O taffeta, O grossgrain - [O shutdafuq up, please]

I call upon you now, girls,

of fabrics and the woman I sing. My husband [you're comparing yourself to Aeneas?* conceited much?]

had said he was probably going to leave me - not [these line break enjambments are so forced, obvious, and annoying]

for sure, but likely, maybe - and no, it did not

have to do with her. O satin, O [really? enjambment on 'O'?? LOL. can you be any more tryhard?]

sateen, O velvet, O fucking velveeta - [real classy pasta right there]

the day of the doctors' dress-up dance,

the annual folderol, the lace,

the net, he said it would be hard for her

to see me there, dancing with him,

would I mind not going. And since I'd been

for thirty years enarming him,

I enarmed him further - Arma, Virumque, [at least allude to Dido on the pyre, if you want yourself to actually have anything to do with the Aeneid...]

sackcloth, ashen embroidery! As he

put on his tux, I saw his slight

smirk into the mirror, as he did his bow tie,

but after more than three decades, you have some

affection for each other's little faults,

and it suited me to cherish the belief [you wanted to believe a convenient fiction that required nothing of you]

no meanness could happen between us. Fifty-

fifty-fifty its demise. And when he came

home and shed his skin, Reader, [wtf, WHY? u do dis? 'Reader' Y so pretentious. Gawddammit.]

I slept with him, thinking it meant [how heroic of you. *rolls eyes*]

he was back, his body was speaking for him, [honey, shut the fuck up. you invented an excuse for yourself to sleep with him.]

and as it spoke, its familiar sang

from the floor, the old-boy tie. O silk,

O slub, O cocoon stolen. It is something

our species does, isn't it, [make up self-serving excuses then feel sorry for ourselves? yeah.]

we take what we can. Or else there'd be grubs [blaming the whole of humanity for your sleeping with a man. good luck on your jury selection.]

who kept people, in rooms, to produce

placentas for the larvae's use, there would be [so it's not our species that exploits - as you describe it's common to every life on this planet! so your original assertion is invalidated by your supporting reasoning!]

a cow who would draw from our wombs our unborn

offspring, to make of them shoes for a calf.

O bunny-pajamas of children! Love

where loved. O babies' flannel sleeper

with a slice of cherry pie on it. [O fucking Walmart. O rows of trashy romance paperbacks.]

Love only where loved! O newborn suit [take the easy road to life, then complain when things don't work out. K.]

with a smiling worm over the heart, it is

forbidden to love where we are not loved. [world revolves around you, woman. get outside your little world and get over yourself.]

By Sharon Olds

From Stag's Leap, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize

*Appendix:

arma virumque cano 

of arms [weapons] and a man, I sing

first line of the Aeneid by Virgil