Lost Poets of the 70s: The Anthology

Yup, the time has arrived. I've drawn this out long enough, I'm sure you'll agree, and now it's time to reveal the name of the "Lost Poets of the 70s" anthology. In a way, this is the book that started Poetry Snark. The original idea came when I saw some of these photos and thought it would be amusing to post them to a blog with commentary. I came up with the name "Poetry Snark" and was shocked that no one had taken it. A phone call to a friend (Trochee) provided me with enough enthusiasm to try it, and the day after the site went up, Foetry linked to us -- how they found us so soon, I have no idea. I'm uneasy about the Foetry crowd, who have sometimes tried to turn this site into Foetry 2.0. But Barron and others have said some pretty hilarious shit, and the hits that link provided really started the site. Now dozens of sites link to us and even now, in semi-hiatus, we still get hundreds of hits a day, totaling around 17,000. In about three months we've had 8,157 unique visitors and 3,532 of you keep coming back for more. I get about an even amount of hate and fan mail. I would like to keep going, and I would like more snarkers on board, so please email me with your comments. Is it worth it? Is it funny? Should I keep snarking on? It's more work than I thought, continuing to come up with snark and keep up with the rest of my life. Let me know what you think in this thread.

But you wanted to know the name of the anthology, not the history of Poetry Snark. It's called New Voices in American Poetry, edited by David Allan Evans and published by Winthrop Press. You may recognize Evans' name from this post, where we snarked his magnum opus "Ford Pickup." Yes, mistuh Evans is one of those editors who feels fit to include himself in his own anthology, which might be forgivable if he was a good editor and poet. As the "Lost Poets" posts have amply demonstrated, he's not. At all. Not even a little bit. Perhaps I owe Todd Swift an apology. This anthology -- and not his Short Fuse: A Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry -- is probably the worst poetry anthology ever.

Would you like to be the proud new owner of the "Lost Poets" anthology?

Send me your snark. You can post it to this thread, or email it to me directly at poetrysnark@gmail.com. Whoever comes up with the funniest snark, gets the anthology -- I'll even pay for the postage. Any snark received is subject to front page posting. C'mon, snarkers, there's got to be some deserving targets you'd like to nail. Bring out the hammer.

Hiatus

update: MWB reminds me that I've promised to reveal the name of the anthology for the Lost Poets of the 70s. I will keep that promise in the next day or two, when I return to my apartment and my books.

I'm going on a temporary hiatus to catch up with work and take care of some personal business. I'm not sure what our other posters are up to (we live in different cities), but they're welcome to post and indeed I hope they keep things going. I may check back in from time to time, and if anything really snarkworthy comes my way, I'll be on it. Meanwhile, if anyone cares to, you can use this as an open thread to say whatever you want. Viva Poetry Snark!

Where Are They Now? Lost Poets of the 70's: J.D. Whitney's Bad Ass Handlebars

Well, this may be it, folks. There are some unsnarked photos in the anthology still, but I don't know if any of them fit the bill for our "Lost Poets" series. I've been loathing posting the last of these, because it's by far our most popular feature here at the Snark, and I have no idea what I'll replace it with. Lost poets of the 80s? Anybody got an anthology with some good pictures? Anyway, on to today's bard: J.D. Whitney.

J.D. is short for Jack Daniels Whitney. He was kicked out of the Hell's Angels for tatooing a crown of sonnets onto a fellow Angel's back while he slept. They would have let it slide, but the sonnets employed too many metrical exceptions and didn't even rhyme (most bikers are "New Formalists"). Downtrodden, J.D. took a job with the cast of Lavern and Shirley as Lenny's stunt double. But the job didn't allow enough creative freedom, and Squiggy was a real dick. So Whitey quit and took to the road on his chopper with a knapsack full of verse and a bad attitude. Arrested in Boise for ripping off a liquor store while reciting Keats, J.D. wrote this poem from prision, where he languishes, reliving those halcyon days of hot poetry groupies and the long open road.

I'm counting on all our fearless snarkers to chip in on this one. Please explicate J.D.'s masterpiece for us, and while you're at it, what do you think was on his mind when this photo was taken? Or when he decided to use is as his author photo in the anthology?

Title Snark: Mark Levine Responds

You produce quality snark so that I don’t have to. From the comments section of our “title snark” post. Enjoy!

How about ENOLA GAY?

It has a sort of lyrical fingering underscoring its tragic occasion.

I wanted to get across the inherent minty pellet of the apocalypse and I think I really scored. You should read this book, I broke a lot of ground, and, not to be to, well, full of myself-- but fucking EVERYONE started ripping me and MY post-nuclear holocaust poem-flavorings off.

I mean ENOLA GAY was someone's mom And ALOT of my poems are mommy poems-- dear mommy-wommy tommy ate a tomato wire and tried and tried to sing with his mouth but his mouth wouldn't open and his shirt was sewn around his army-warmies and then for the seventh night I tried to fuck a mommy-smelling girl who luvy-wuvied me-we.

My next book will be great.

It's called: THE WILDS.

Because I go wild with my poems.

Just like the title says.

WILD,
Mark Levine

Title Snark: A Brief Taxonomy

I'm at a couple of friends' apartment right now, and boy do these two have a lot of poetry on their shelves. I wanted to try to sneak in some quick snark while I'm on the road, but since I don't have time to actually read some of these (almost certainly awful) books of poetry, I thought that I would engage in some of that ever-popular past-time--judging books by their cover (or at least their titles). So I've composed this list for your snarking pleasure. Check it out, and then add your own "title snark" to the list in the comments section.

The pretentious one-word title. Everybody's favorite poetry-Diva, J.G., is the great abuser of this type of title. Examples: Materialism, Swarm, Never, etc... But it's a very popular mode of poetry titling: think of a vague, one-word abstraction and let it ride! Worst example on the bookshelf here? John Ciardi's Echoes.

The unintentionally honest title. Plenty of example for this one, like Distracted by Jalal Toufic. But the best by far is the title of this anthology, edited by Libbie Rifkin: Career Moves.

The title of the ungrammatical adjective. Nothing seems to delight poets more than titling a poem with a freshly-construed pseudo-adjective. Why this is so, I haven't the slightest clue. But there are several here: The To Sound by Eric Baus, Regarding Wave by Gary Snyder, Monkey Time by Philip Nikolayev. But the worst one has got to be The Heat Bird by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge.

The title as instruction to the reader. Relatively rare, this species of title nevertheless offers some particularly egregious examples of badness. Worst example on the bookshelf? Hugh Prather's Wipe Your Face, You Just Swallowed My Soul.

Finally, I offer the "title that makes use of unusual punctuation marks." Although not as bad about this as po-mo academics, there have been some poets who've succumbed. This one is also the worst title overall, the grand prize winner, the lamest, most laughable title I can find right now: (W)holes by Cynthia MacDonald.

Can you top it?

Coming soon...

Sorry about the lack of posts. I've been traveling--will be back with some fresh snark soon.

Albert Goldbarth's Bad Hair Decade

"Maybe if I sit here long enough, someone will mistake me for 'The Thinker.'"

You know what to do, fearless snarkophiles--what was Albert Goldbarth pondering when this photo was taken?