1) This Old Poem/Yeats/Dan Schneider    With this essay I am inaugurating a new essay series. Those familiar with the long-running PBS tv series This Old House may be able to discern where I am going with this series of essays. Basically, I seek to rehabilitate (by rewriting) well-known poems....

Thus, a legend is born!

2) This Old Poem/Eliot/Dan Schneider   Doubtless 1 of the paragons of Dead White Maledom, as well as a bit of a headcase, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) has got to be 1 of the most grossly overrated writers in the history of the world, & the English language. It’s not that he did not write 5 or 6 great & influential poems. He did- & that’s 5 or 6 more brushes with greatness than the vast majority of artists ever come within sniffing distance of....

Taking on Tommy, or it to Tommy?

3) This Old Poem/Jordan/Dan Schneider   In this 3^rd installment I am gonna be ripping into 1 of the premier poetasters of the last 3 or 4 decades: June Jordan. Less than a month ago JJ gifted the world of poetry with her death....

Ripping in to 1 of the most sinister figures in contemporary poetry!

4) These Old Poems/Joyce/Dan Schneider   Okay, so this time I’m bending the rules & giving you an old fashioned 2-fer. The reason is because this ‘poet’ is not really a poet- rather a very poetic prosist- James Joyce. You know, the guy credited as the most influential prosist of the 20^th Century....

Okay- blind in 1 eye, & Irish. Let the fun begin!

5) This Old Poem/Plath/Jessica Schneider   Recently I was reading a book of poems by a Swedish poet named Karin Boye. She was a new poet for me, one of which who also suffered from depression & committed suicide like so many others: Tsvetaeva, Plath, Sexton, & Teasdale. Boye had most in common with Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva: both were bisexual, depressed & killed themselves in the same year: 1941.  I bring this all up because as I was reading Boye, I came across a poem called “Morning Song”. Reminded by Plath’s poem of the same title....

Jess proves there's no getting away from Sylvia for young female poets!

6) This Old Poem/Hardy/Dan Schneider   A few years ago, in Harper’s magazine, revered doggerelist Donald Hall declared Thomas Hardy his favorite poet, the best poet in English in the last century, & the following poem as the greatest this language has yet produced. Go ahead, read it....

Death, regret, simplemindedness- calling Professor Hall....

7) This Old Poem/O'Hara/Dan Schneider   In an earlier essay I tackled much about poet Frank O’Hara’s talent & influence on a concurrent & posthumous generation of American literata. This piece will be a piece of cake, by comparison. FO has about 10-12 poems a person could legitimately cite as his best known work. The selected poem is among them. It’s not a bad poem as much as it is a good poem with greater potential. Why isn’t it a better poem? Simple, FO was a very lazy poet. ...

Tackling Modern Poetry's biggest giver- or taker?

8) This Old Poem/Palmer/Dan Schneider   Proemists always hope their excesses of lingo will be justified by the proem form. With that admonition in mind let us look at this proem by 1 of the most hailed proemists/’Experimental Poets’ of the last 35 years: Michael Palmer. MP is not the worst of this lot, although he is the most well-known. Vaguely associated, in a fringe way, with the horrid L+A+N+G+U+A+G+E poetasters, he is generally better. That said, he is guilty of incredible vacuity, excessive overwriting, & just plain boring work....

If you were expecting Robert Palmer, well....

9) This Old Poem/Bukowski/Dan Schneider   Charles Bukowski would have long faded from the poetic scene had there not been such a perverse attraction, by poets, toward dereliction- in all its forms. CB- or Chuck Buk, as he was known in literary circles- was 1 of the last’s century’s premier vagrants. The film Barfly was his own self-absorbed & self-obsessed opus on the grandeur of inebriation. But none of that would matter if the man were capable of effectively conveying thoughts & emotions via the written word. His prose is largely generic & forgettable- although it inspired legions of wannabe losers in the 1960s & 70s....

Including 1 ass who gets enraged every time I denude old Chuck Buk.

10) This Old Poem/Carruth/Dan Schneider   Hayden Carruth is 1 of those poets whose life story is infinitely more interesting than his verse- that is if being a mental patient fascinates you. Of course, in the wake of Confessionalism’s myriad horrors loosed upon the poetry world, self-pity of the worst sort is the rage- hopefully dying....

Hayden Carruth- Dead or Canadian?

11) This Old Poem/Ammons/Dan Schneider  1 of the ballsiest things to occur in the published world of poetry was the release of a book length poem by the recently-deceased A.R. Ammons called Garbage. It’s too easy to go where you know I can. That the same title would be apropos for his inevitable Collected Poems should, likewise, be obvious....

Also known as 'The Other Archie' in poetry circles.

12) This Old Poem/Graham/Dan Schneider   1 would be hard-pressed to find a more stereotypical example of current PC Elitist Academia than poetessaster (poet-disaster?) Jorie Graham. She’s white, she’s female, she’s middle-aged, she has no real writing talent, yet her poetry is the sine qua non of the workshop poem- it does not offend nor inspire, it just sort of lays there. Her poems generally deal with little things- she’ll take on personae, flutter about in wind. Is she a terrible poet? No. Is she a good poet? Not even remotely....

But she do rake in that grant $, don't she?

13) This Old Poem/Rogers/Dan Schneider   Pattiann Rogers is a poet who has used science better than just about any other published poet. Her poems have had very Stevensian titles like The Importance of the Whale in the Field of Iris- easily her best poem- 1 that is great & important. She has, however, proven that she is not immune to the senescence that accompanies most poets on the down side of middle age....

The mellifluity of prolixity in a patch of Academica.

14) This Old Poem/Merwin/Dan Schneider   W.S. Merwin is about as prototypical a Dead White Male as 1 can get. Yes, he’s male. Yes, he’s white. Yes, he’s been creatively dead for the last 25-30 years. But it goes even beyond that. He once had great potential. His 1^st 4 books, released in the 1960s, seemed to show him as an American Ted Hughes, with talent....

Of course, he never got to saddle up Sylvia's pony. Or did he?

15) This Old Poem/Holman/Dan Schneider   Let me get the conflict of interest out of the way 1^st with a full disclosure. I used to know Bob Holman, back in the 1980s, at the Nuyorican Café. I must say I never liked him personally. Not that he was not a nice person. But he was as phony as they come....

If Chuck Barris had reproduced with Marianne Moore....Hmmm....

16) This Old Poem/Coleman/Dan Schneider   Let us all breathe a sigh of relief that Black Sparrow Press has bitten the dust. For 30+ years it has mostly foisted a gaggle of terrible poetasters upon us. But 2 have stood out above, or below, the rest- at least in terms of keeping BSP afloat financially. The 1^st was the ridiculously bad Charles Bukowski- a man of little talent, & less ambition....

This just in from L.A.: Wanda still resents sweet, young, white thangs! Details at 11....

17) This Old Poem/Harper/Dan Schneider   Michael Harper is 1 of those poets I hate to include in a series like TOP; the reason being he’s a very ambitious poet- in a # of ways he’s the black equivalent of Hart Crane, save for documenting the- ahem- dark side of the America he loves. Unfortunately he lacks HC’s lyricism, & while some of his longer poems, like Debridement, work pretty well- it falls far short of The Bridge or even Voyages. He simply has a clunky ear....

Get out of here, Mike- go FULFILL that potential!

18) This Old Poem/Wilde/Dan Schneider   Oscar Wilde is 1 of those few artists it seems almost inconceivable to believe could have written anything badly. But he did. Like Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Homer, etc., he too penned a goodly amount of the mediocre- & outright shit. Yes, his plays & stories are full of wit, & alot of his poetry is, too. Yet, he is as guilty of poor writing as the next poet....

Bosie, Bosie, Bosie...

19) These Old Poems/Glück/Jessica Schneider   Louise Gluck is one of those poets who could be likeable, but on no intellectual grounds. I say this because she is, in fact, probably the only MFA styled poet I’ve read that I’ve ever liked (sometimes). She has some good lines. She has some nice imagery. Her line breaks are competent in her best work. But does this mean that she’s a good poet? No....

Jess takes on the fluff that LG propounds.

20) This Old Poem/Lux/Dan Schneider   Thomas Lux is 1 of those smugly annoying poetasters who believes that by claiming to be a ‘humorist’ it absolves him of all necessity to write competent poetry. No, this isn’t 100 years ago where a Bret Harte or a Robert Service could claim such & actually be telling the truth. No, this is in the same vein as a Kenneth Koch writing dull passages which have 1 or 2 things askew from reality, then claiming it Surreal, or humorous. Or, worse, a John Ashbery’s recent diarrhea, where he writes nothing of nothing, does so with a slight ‘tude, & declaims it poetry. Yes, TL is in that range- but worse....

There's an Internet rumor about TL starring in Flesh Gordon. I don't believe it.

21) This Old Poem/Bryant/Dan Schneider   Dana Bryant was, a few years back, perhaps the hottest spoken wordist to emerge from the early 1990s MTV infatuation with spoken word. Unlike Wanda Coleman- she was young & sexy &- black, & unlike Maggie Estep she actually had a good speaking voice & presence. In fact, she probably had the most long term potential to actually develop in to a real poet, & put the spoken word crap behind her as a mere stepping stone to publication. Unfortunately that did not happen....

Shake it, Foxy Lady!

22) This Old Poem/Wright/Dan Schneider   I recently argued with a deluded Brit over the worth of Chucky-Bob Wright’s poetry. Astonishingly enough, the daft UKer preferred the farina verse of CW over that of his home-grown Glyn Maxwell & Jeremy Reed. Needless to say I could not dissuade the wacky Saxon from the error of his ways....

Those wacky Brits defend our worst!

23) This Old Poem/Cisneros/Dan Schneider   Sandra Cisneros is a novelist, & poet who decries stereotypes even as she perpetuates them. She is an attractive woman who, for some reason, feels a need to play up the Hot Latina stereotype. She was poetry’s J. Lo before Jennifer Lopez: San Ro. Unfortunately, there is not a touch of irony in any of San Ro’s work. Nor is there a self-awareness in her attempts at humor. In other words- she bitches & moans, & does little else....

Just a little tighter, Mamasita!

24) This Old Poem/Giovanni/Dan Schneider   Nikki Giovanni is 1 of those poets who should never have deluded herself in to thinking she could write. What little (& I mean little) talent she had in her youth has given way to a near infantilistic regression in her writing. Most of the ‘poems’ she’s written in her 50s & 60s are things that even most 16 year old diaristic teenyboppers would find pathetic....

Nikki Giovanni: Is it all just a 40 year inside joke?

25) This Old Poem/Frost/Dan Schneider   1 of the great errors artists & critics make is conflating their ‘likes & dislikes’ for objective criteria regarding a work of art. That is, too often they will give a thumbs up to crap simply because it appeals to their political, personal, religious, or aesthetic beliefs. Whether it is well-done is irrelevant, because they ‘like’ it, or the attempt. Often this conflation occurs in pop art- especially film. People like the crap of a Steven Spielberg....

Fire? Ice? Lukewarm slush? Read on....

26) This Old Poem/Clampitt/Dan Schneider   Amy Clampitt is the quintessential ‘style over substance’ poet. STOP! Before you think me heartless let me say that in the 1980s, when I 1^st started writing poetry, AC was 1 of the few published poets I wrote to who actually wrote back, & NICELY. She was a very classy lady. A few years later I met her....

Don't be fooled by this intro- I rip in to da bitch!

27) This Old Poem/Browne/Dan Schneider   I’ve had the misfortune of watching Michael Dennis Browne bumble & stumble his way through a (at best) mediocre literary career. MDB is the senior literatista at the local University of Minnesota. He has therefore been responsible for warping more young literary minds than anyone else in the state. Don’t get me wrong- he’s not really a bad person, per se, as much as he is a bad poet & terrible critic. Yes, he’s your typical arrogant professor, guilty of all the myriad sins a prof can be accused of with his students....

This is a man who once claimed Don Moss's poetry was bad!

28) This Old Poem/Keats/Dan Schneider   For those readers of TOP who have complained that I have unfairly singled out modern poets & left the past Masters untouched, consider this poem’s dissection just desserts. For, not only is this poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, considered to be 1 of John Keats’s best, but JK is consistently named in the top rank of poets of all time....

How dare I rip Keats? Nanananana!

29) This Old Poem/Ashbery/Dan Schneider  READ THIS BLURB!: John Ashbery is the author of sixteen books of poetry, most recently Can You Hear, Bird, a volume of art criticism and A Nest of Ninnies, a novel co-authored with James Schuyler, published by the Ecco Press. His 1975 collection, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award....

 In truth JA has written only 1 poem in his life. It's just so long you think it does not end.

30) This Old Poem/Kumin/Dan Schneider    Perhaps I should have titled this essay Propinquity To Something, for Maxine Kumin has always seemed to be 1 of those people that is close to something really good, but not quite it. Her poetry is like that- not really BAD, per se, but rather average....

Never let it be said I'm not a man of staggering generosity.

31) This Old Poem/Blackman/Dan Schneider   I was familiar with the name Nicole Blackman, www.nicole-blackman.com, nicoleblackman@aol.com, from the infamously bad early 1990s spoken word anthology Aloud: Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Café. Of course, NB ain’t Puerto Rican- but then few of the Nuyoricans are. Then I ran across her 1^st published book of poetry in Half Price Books a few weeks back & had to buy it. It was classic young person’s stuff in writing & presentation....

I swear you can see her nipples on the cover photo. Come to me in the night, you Gothic Tigress....

32) This Old Poem/Hall/Dan Schneider   You know I’ve tackled this dummy before. I’m gonna do my best lazy DH impression & not even bother to provide you with a link to my prior ruminations on what DH views as his literary contributions. Just go to the Cosmoetica home page, use the Google feature for this site only, type in what’shisname & you will see it all....

Next.

33) This Old Poem/Bly/Dan Schneider   HE’S BACK!!!! Poetry’s own court jester- Robert Bly. What more can be said about him that has not already been debunked & destroyed in my previous essays? The talent the man once had has been squandered for the quick fillip of fame. I’ve detailed his slide from the dubious post as Deep Image poet to bad translator to Dean of Tambourining to unwitting self-parody....

Hold me, closely.

34) This Old Poem/Strand/Dan Schneider   1 of the best poets I have ever personally known, Greg Clark, once summed up Mark Strand’s corpus in 1 word: dull. GC thought MS had nothing to offer & was 1 of the worst poets out there. Personally, I don’t have as low an opinion of the Canadian (YES, he is Canadian- not American!) poet as GC did. But he is not a good poet. & he is very dull. Perhaps this is a consequence of being a typical Academic. Nonetheless his poems are sort of watered down Wallace Stevens....

OK. Canadian. When cometh death?

35) This Old Poem/Sexton/Jessica Schneider  Anne Sexton was a very good poet who basically wasted the latter half of her literary career once she got famous. In other words, her poems sagged as she became more and more a lazy writer. Her first few books, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, All My Pretty Ones, and Transformations contain most of her best work. She is a poet who proves that it’s not what you say, but how it is said in poetry that matters most....

Ah, poetry & fellatio- who could ask for anything more? Thanks, Honey.

36) This Old Poem/Angelou/Dan Schneider   You knew it hadda happen, didn’t you? Sooner or later I would have to take on the horror that is Maya Angelou- poet, persona, & premier poetaster of the day! Note to those thin-skinned readers like a certain angry, obese poetaster who recently threatened me & had their own recent brouhaha with MA: I emphasize the word ‘persona’ because I am sure MA is a decent, nice, & lovable woman. BUT, as a writer &, especially, poet MA is 1 of the 7 Horrors of the Modern World....

Taking the unwitting self-parody deal just a tad too far, in my book.

37) This Old Poem/Clifton/Dan Schneider   Lucille Clifton is a bad poet who had the faintest shimmers of talent back when she decided to pick up a pen in the 1960s. Her 1^st few books were not egregiously bad. Then, in the wake of the 1970s raft of Confessionalism, LC fused that with black & feminist clichés to produce poems which- in W.S. Merwin fashion, lacked punctuation & any sense of structural integrity within the poem itself. That is to say her free verse ‘form’ became willy-nilly....

Boom-shaka-laka!

38) This Old Poem/Collins/Dan Schneider   Billy Collins is the current American Poet Laureate- assuming that title last year. Unlike the other recent PL’s BC’s appointment was a bit of a shock, since he is not even highly regarded in the faux manner that Academics fete each other with. Part of this is resentment, because BC is a regular guest on National Public Radio & other outlets for poetry. Another reason is because he is primarily perceived as a humorist. He does not take himself seriously. Great....

April Fools!

39) This Old Poem/Pinsky/Dan Schneider   Sometimes 1 can only sit agog in helplessness when bad things happen. No, I’m not talking about the tragedies that occurred on 9/11/01, but the horrors that occur at the confluence of a bad poet & a trite theme. Such it is with the titular poet & poem. Robert Pinsky is a bad poet who rose through the Academic mills....

But he has a beautiful singing voice. I swear- just ask Jim Lehrer.

40) This Old Poem/Mura/Dan Schneider  Contemporary poetasters hate it when they are called on how they use their own perceived victimhood to foster literary careers that their actual literature cannot. It’s OK for a Wanda Coleman to call herself a victim because Madison Avenue only cares about young, attractive, pale-skinned, & pencil-thin females, & she’s none of those things. But don’t you call her those things, especially not without mentioning she’s a victim. It’s OK for Donald Hall to literally weep on stage when he foists his dead wife’s doggerel on a cringing audience. But don’t you call him exploitive of the dead....

The Il Duce of PC Elitists gets his due! Say it: 'Moo-Rah!'

41) This Old Poem/Hass/Dan Schneider  In a prior essay I described the rapier of Don Moss’s wit forever defining Robert Hass’s place in poetry in this fashion: ‘As a poet, he makes a good next door neighbor.’ Some people emailed me after that quote appeared & decried my attacking such a nice, sweet fellow- or rather for letting Mr. Moss do so. My reply- fuck you, I can do worse! While I’m sure RH would make a pleasant neighbor 1 gets the sense, from reading his poems, & -even more so- his online interviews that RH is making a strong bid to be known as the Forrest Gump of the poetry world....

This ain't no box o'chocolates!

42) This Old Poem/Codrescu/Dan Schneider  Andrei Codrescu is 1 of those terrible poets whose whole ‘brand name’ is dependent upon things with no real connection to poetry. In his case it has been his years of shilling his & others’ bad poems on National Public Radio- itself 1 of the least worthy causes a sane person can imagine. He also tries to do monologues, essays, travel journals, & prose fiction- both on NPR & in print. He fails at all these endeavors with such frequency you gotta wonder if he has something on someone. Case in point is his incredibly bad on- & offline magazine Exquisite Corpse- part surrealist wannabe, part pseudo-Beatnik- the magazine is a near-incoherent mishmash of literary dreck....

Doesn't he really sound like Lurch from The Addams Family tv show?

43) This Old Poem/Ted Hughes/Dan Schneider  There is an ironclad rule when approaching the poetry of Edward J. ‘Ted’ Hughes- &, no, it is not DO NOT FOLLOW HIM TO THE ALTAR! Smartasses! The rule is this- if the poem is under 10 lines long it might be a passable poem. If the poem is over 10 lines- forget it; it’s likely a disaster. This is because TH never wrote a poem over 10 lines long that was any good. He simply lacked the musical skill to keep a poem felicitous, & his intellect was too lacking to come up with any scenario worthy of taking past the 10 line limit. TH was a bad poet, overall. I could go on to show how he relentlessly tried to capture elements of his 1^st wife’s poetry in his own, despite the long debunked mythos that it was TH that taught what’shername how to be a great poet....

Some call him a talented murderer- how dare they impute talent upon him!

44) This Old Poem/Kenyon/Dan Schneider  If there were a real life archetype of the Dead White Female poetaster there could be no better choice than the atrocious Jane Kenyon. She contributed nothing of note to American letters in her lifetime, died tragically of cancer before her 50^th birthday, played the Academic game to perfection, even marrying her former English Professor- the equally horrid Donald Hall, so- you just know what had to happen. Yes, she has been feted endlessly as a martyr for women’s rights- despite there seeming to be a logical need for her to have lost her life in that cause, rather than withering away to run-amok cells, as well as getting a # of poetry contests (aka scams) named in her dishonor. Despite all this praise, when 1 really looks at her corpus, 1 can only wonder the level of contempt future generations will heap on this current generation which held up her amateurish workshoppy crap....

Let the forgetting begin!

45) This Old Poem/Wilbur/Dan Schneider    ‘Will-Bur!’ was the sound often heard in the old TV sitcom Mr. Ed, bellowing from the titular horse toward his owner, especially when the equus was peeved at him. Of course, Wilbur was a smiling idiot- not too unlike the hero of this opining. Yes, Richard Wilbur was American Poet Laureate from 1987-1988. So what? In the 1950s he gained fame as 1 of the leading neo-fos of Modern Poetry. What’s a neo-fo? These are the folk who believe that ‘real poetry’ must adhere to classical dictates & have a formal structure & thema. Unfortunately this has often meant style over substance- this being true of both RW’s corpus & that of the neo-fos in general....

But he has a beautiful singing voice, I swear!- Haven't we heard that before?

46) This Old Poem/Dove/Dan Schneider  There has probably never been a TOP poem I’ve criticized that has had a more apropos title. Rita Dove was Poet Laureate from 1993-1995, & won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her 1986 book Thomas and Beulah. It was 1 of the rare instances in the last 50 years where a major poetry prize was given to a good book of poems. Not only was it a good book, but it was the height of RD’s poetic powers, & augured that her great potential was on its way to being fulfilled. But, after that, & the subsequent fame, RD nosedove like few other poets of quality ever have. Her early good phrasing & interesting approaches to topics, as well as her insistence on avoiding banal racial clichés (RD is black), almost instantaneously- in her subsequent books- gave way to lax, poorly constructed, & trite pieces of doggerel....

She really did have potential-            once.

47) This Old Poem/Lee/Dan Schneider  Li-Young Lee is 1 of those modern PC Elitist poetasters for whom it is almost verboten to say anything against. If you do you are a racist- this Asian-American Poet is not cast as a pathetic nor despicable figure like fellow AAP David Mura, who has engendered large pockets of hostility for his supposedly misogynistic porno-addiction. LYL is a modern day martyr- someone, not unlike a Mary Oliver, to whom the PC Elitist term of spiritual is attached oh-so-delicately to- as if he is a modern monk. Being spiritual also entails being called lyrical & musical, whether or not the poems plod. MO’s best poems have music. LYL’s are merely distorted prose....

Kind of makes the Yellow Peril intriguing- eh?

48) This Old Poem/Hamill/Dan Schneider  At the end of Steven Spielberg’s awful schlock epic Saving Private Ryan the aging titular character is standing in Arlington National Cemetery, turns to his wife, & -after 2+ hours of ever war film cliché imaginable filmed anew- asks her ‘Tell me I’m a good man!’ While SPR glorified war as inane self-sacrifice by addled stereotypes with no sense of individuality, most current artists, in all media, try to damn war as being without redemptive qualities. Somewhere in between lies the actual truth, however, like Spielberg’s dull hero, even artists on the other end of the political spectrum use their political beliefs to wave the flag for self-promotion....

Little Sambo really REALLY wants you to know he's been very VERY good!

49) This Old Poem/Lloyd/Dan Schneider  Fairness prompts me to tell the reader up front that I have known Roseann Lloyd & her terrible poetry personally for about a decade now. She’s 1 of the terrible cabal of small-time Minnesota college professors who delude themselves in to thinking they have writing talent, & spread their poison out in to the community at large by teaching at workshops & such. As penance for such dastardly deeds she, as so many others have, has spent time going to 3^rd World countries to teach art. The theory being that if she can help dumb down a foreign culture as much as her own she is not really a negative influence....

Sex Abuse as a cottage industry, or The Pathetic as raison d'etre. Only in America!

50) This Old Poem/Gilbert/Dan Schneider  Sandra Gilbert is 1 of those people who seems to be a walking advertisement for euthanasia. Not that she has any real physical ailments to speak of- she’s not a hunchback, nor midget, nor suffering from elephantiasis. But, she has got to be 1 of the most pathetic & self-centered whiney Confessional poets to ever write. Never mind that Confessionalism’s been passé for nearly 30 years now, it has not stopped SG from whining about her ‘supposedly’ real life problems to any reader or interviewer willing to tolerate her....

Pass the pillow!

51)  This Old Poem/McClatchy/Dan Schneider  J.D. McClatchy is 1 of those poets who is not a ‘big’ name, nor is he considered a poet of any reckoning. Instead, he’s 1 of those people who’s really a critic who longs to be a poet. How does JDM accomplish this? Simple- all a no-talent has to do is claim to be a ‘Neo-Formalist’. Neo-Fos are usually horrid poets who simply break their prose doggerel into rhymed poetry & exceedingly obvious & clapped out ‘metrics’- usually in bad couplets....

Poem is spelled P-O-E-M!

52) This Old Poem/Hecht/Dan Schneider  Anyone familiar with Anthony Hecht’s poetry will not be taken aback by the title of the poem I’ve decided to focus this essay on. AH is the consummate Gentleman’s Gentleman of poetry- always nattily attired for ‘events’ in a bowtie & looking every bit the avuncular, if dim, professor. AH is just that- his poetry is relentlessly formal, rarely good, but he takes great pleasure in carping that he does not get ‘recognition’ from the Academic establishment. Of course, this is nonsense. AH has been feted with Pulitzers & Bollingens. What he means in his plaintive wail is that the free verse doggerelists make sly fun of his formal doggerel, & he is seen as a bit backward. This would be a good thing if he ever said a singular original thing in his poems- he does not....

That smirk is not confidence, but gas.

53) This Old Poem/Miller/Dan Schneider  Ever met someone who just cannot stop talking? Ever wonder what that person is called? Here’s the word- a logorrhetic; they suffer from logorrhea- aka diarrhea of the mouth. Many poets nowadays suffer from this affliction & sobriquet. Rather, I should say many ‘poets’ suffer from this. True poets know that concision is the essence of poetry. But, throw some clichés together, break some prose into lines at an odd place, & you- too- can call yourself a ‘poet’. Such is the fate of Leslie Adrienne Miller- a mediocre wordsmith who has no real clue....

I'm Leslie, Fly Me!

54) This Old Poem/Nemerov/Dan Schneider  When Howard Nemerov 1^st hit the poetic scene he was- truly- something different. In those post-Poundian, post-New Critical times he was a formalist, but not a Neo-Formalist (Neo-Fo), & pretty damned good at it. The 1960s saw him as the premier sonneteer of the time. But, something occurred along the way- he got old, dull, & bad. HN strayed from what was probably his 1^st love, poetry, & did the trite thing of writing prose (short stories & novels), essays, & criticism. Yet, as his poetry suffered his accolades grew....

The death of an artist².

55) This Old Poem/Brodsky/Dan Schneider  Joseph Brodsky is a perfect example of a mediocrity that got acclaim elsewhere who cruised to American renown. His poems in English are utter doggerel, while his ‘translations’ of his own Russian poems, while slightly better, show no original thoughts nor experimentation with form, sound, nor idea. In short he is a cardboard cutout of what a poet should be....

Pass the mucilage!

56) This Old Poem/Taylor/Dan Schneider  Henry Taylor is not a bad poet- but not a particularly good 1 either. He’s also a bit of an odd duck. If you check out his home page you’ll see what I mean: http://www.american.edu/academic.depts/cas/lit/lit-fac/htaypage.htm. Note the HUGE photo. Go Google the man as well- there is his photo again & again. If narcissism were not enough there’s also his lone contact with me- wherein the man posited the death-defying query- ‘Why do you spell the word alot as 1 word & not a lot?’ You see, to 1 as rote-minded & gray as HT such a thing as personal preference is not an option. Thus the word generic can be applied to HT in a guilt-free manner....

The man, the profile....

57) These Old Poems/Fox & Colburn/Dan Schneider  Another TOP 1^st- this time I topple a husband & wife doggerelist duo: John Colburn & Sarah Fox are noted Twin Cities denizens of the open-palmed grant-receiving queue. He’s an ex-standup comic-cum-poetaster & she’s an MFA-soaked concubine of the horrid literary orgs The Loft & SASE: The Write Place. In truth, so is JC- except he slunk in to that world via wifey-pooh. I 1^st met JC back in the mid-90s as he bounced around the then-ubiquitous open mic scene. In 1995 he started hosting 1 of the better reading series....

The Donny & Marie of poetry- brrrr....

58) This Old Poem/Williams/Dan Schneider  OK, we all know the influence of William Carlos Williams- basically he was the granddaddy of the prosaification of verse. He gave way to assorted minimalists like Robert Creeley, bill bissett, & 1000s of other lesser lights who did not comprehend that even the mighty WCW wrote 99% banal poems. All that is what makes up the serious rep of WCW is anywhere from 1-2 dozen poems under 20 (& usually 10) lines. The major difference is that in those few dozen good & memorable poems WCW utterly undermines the idea that the poetry is plain spoken....

Who to point the finger at?

59) This Old Poem/Kaufman/Dan Schneider  2 of the great poetic fraud movements of the last century were those of Surrealism & Jazz poetry. Surrealism was a masturbatory excuse to strip a poem of form, content, purpose, &- well- poetry. Jazz poetry has about as much to do with jazz as French Fries have to do with France. Worse, it has even less to do with poetry itself. Only 3 poets who have been published have ever shown a facility with ‘jazz’- Langston Hughes, who did not invent the genre but- ala Shakespeare- midwifed it....

Can you tell if he's dead yet?

60) This Old Poem/Doty/Dan Schneider  AIDS. Death. Suffering. Homosexuality. What’s not to love about Mark Doty’s bathetic, overwrought, &- ultimately- lightweight- poems? At least if you’re a PC Elitist & want a poem/poet to drape fluttering praise over like the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima....

Giving homosexuality a bad name.

61) This Old Poem/Lehman/Dan Schneider  Recipe for becoming a Dead White Male: 1 drastic lack of poetic talent, 3 pinches of total lack of interest in the art, loads of poor critical articles, 2+ decades of promoting talentless hacks in to positions where they can turn around & publish your doggerel, a little (exceedingly little) bit of testosterone, a wholesale lack of melanin, & absolutely no pulse....

The argument for euthanasia is officially WON!

62) This Old Poem/Frieda Hughes/Dan Schneider  Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath spawned. The result of that act (at least 1 of those acts) was the foisting of Frieda Hughes into being. Born of a poetaster & a great poet which side’s talents & traits would she garner? You guessed it- ‘Daddy, daddy, you….’ Actually FH went in to the painting field to express herself. After no real success there she decided to cash in on her brand name & ‘publish’ poetry. I parenthesize ‘publish’ because it’s always amusing how people with connections make it seem so easy....

An argument for retroactive abortion?

63) This Old Poem/Laurie Sheck/Dan Schneider  Laurie Sheck is 1 of those unimaginative poetasters that has spent her life writing utterly banal poems while occasionally trying to ape a greater poet- in her case, Sylvia Plath. Note that this TOP will focus on a poem with the same title as 1 of SP’s most famous poems. Note, too, that the preceding TOP featured that SP poem, as well as her daughter’s take on this subject. Frieda Hughes failed, as does LS....

Was this poet really necessary?

64) This Old Poem/Pound/Dan Schneider  OK, OK, folks have been emailing me over the months that all I ever do are bad poems by bad poets. Say they, Why don’t you ever show how a good poem by a good poet can be improved? Well, I have done a few- but, the time has come for another 1. So I choose every poet’s favorite raving lunatic, Ezra Pound. Or was he so crazy?....

Chewing the scenery up!

65) This Old Poem/Langston Hughes/Dan Schneider  Langston Hughes hit it big in the early 20^th Century by becoming America’s ‘Dark Poet’ Laureate, after being ‘discovered’ by poet Vachel Lindsay. Above all other black poets, even the few who had more talent & accomplishment, LH reigned supreme. In fact, only a ½ dozen, or so, white American poets had greater name recognition....

Overrated, but not overdone.

66) This Old Poem/Diane Di Prima/Dan Schneider  ‘I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet it the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions’ -Diane Di Prima Thus another TOP essay starts- & for the 1^st time, I believe, with an epigraph!....

Oooooooooooommmmmmmm!!!!

67) This Old Poem/W.D. Snodgrass/Dan Schneider  Recently I did an essay critiquing W.D. Snodgrass’s role as poet & critic, boostering him as the former & chiding him as the latter. Well, the worm has reared its ugly head- this time I’m gonna show that even a good poet like WDS can write crap....

It's true, it's true.

68) This Old Poem/Ntozake Shange/Dan Schneider  It’s a measure of the self-consciousness of the artist when they feel an overwhelming desire to ‘explain in detail’ points of fact about themselves that have little or nothing to do with their art. Such is the case with the poetess Paulette Williams who- after getting the ‘black power’ in her soul- decided to change her name to Ntozake Shange....

Shutyomouth!!!!

69) This Old Poem/Blake/Dan Schneider  Critics of the TOP series whine that I never go after Dead White Males. Hmmm….my 1^st 2 TOPs were on W.B. Yeats & T.S. Eliot….& since then I’ve done TOP essays on James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, & John Keats, among others. Nonetheless, I still get annoying nitpickers. OK- here’s another- Billy Blake. & not only is he a true DWM, but he was absolutely nuts! As well as a great poet....

1/2 empty or 1/2 full?

70) This Old Poem/Byron/Dan Schneider  Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) is doubtlessly 1 of the most overrated poets of all-time. He’s been called a humorist- yet (like William Shakespeare) his poems are not funny. He’s been called a satirist- yet little wit abounds. He’s been said to have written epic poems, but that’s fallacious as well. Basically, Byron was a lesser version of the enfant terrible popularized later in the 19^th century by French poet Arthur Rimbaud. In truth, he was to Percy Bysshe Shelley & John Keats what Adrienne Rich was to Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton- a mediocrity....

Ass propped & ready to go!

71) This Old Poem/Kunitz/Dan Schneider  Finally a Poet Laureate that it could actually be argued that deserved the nod. So, why do a TOP on him? Because despite early successes, old- & I mean OLD- Stanley Kunitz has gone the way of almost all poets, by getting worse as he got older....

Still getting it up?

72) This Old Poem/Glancy/Dan Schneider  Diane Glancy is another of Minnesota’s Academic scree. A woman lacking in any real writing talent, she has scraped together a decent teaching career, nonetheless. & she is a nice enough woman, BUT why, oh, why does she feel that makes her a writer? Here’s why....

Watch out for falling banalities!

73) This Old Poem/Oates/Dan Schneider  Joyce Carol Oates is 1 of those writers that feels it’s a necessity for her to append the word ‘poet’ to her c.v.- even if there is no logical reason for it. Yes, technically she has written poetry- & it’s not the worst garbage you’ll ever read- but it is so unremittingly unpoetic that you just wonder why someone so noteworthy in the prose field feels a need to soil her reputation in this manner?....

Boxing, Marilyn Monroe, & (ugh) poetry....

74) This Old Poem/Davison/Dan Schneider  Peter Davison- the name just SCREAMS ‘DEAD WHITE MALE’!- Doesn’t it? It’s hard to believe he’s 75 years old. If you Google him & look for photos all you will see are those from the 1950s, when he was young & virile & stiffing willing poetesses like Sylvia Plath. Next to notching last century’s most famous poetic suicide on his belt PD is most known for the decades he served as poetry editor at the Atlantic Monthly- guiding that venerable magazine’s slide from hotbed of relevant poetry to tar pit of irrelevance....

At least he beat Teddy to the 'tang!

75) This Old Poem/Larkin/Dan Schneider   Philip Larkin is 1 of those poets that was overestimated by Academia & underrated by outré poets. His overestimation stems from trying to conflate him with the all-time greats. He’s not, although he has 5 or 6 poems you could argue as great- including the excellent High Windows- the poem he’s probably most well-known for. On the other hand, he’s not nearly as bad a poet as hipsters who poke fun of his poetry would have you believe....

Counter to the counter....

76) This Old Poem/Dryden/Dan Schneider  John Dryden was the most famed English language poet of the 17^th Century. During his lifetime he was held up as the veritable model of poetic excellence & aspiration. William Shakespeare? A scribbler of quasi-pornographic plays. John Donne? A lust-filled holy man. John Milton? A blind unknown. JD was a legend in his lifetime....

History weigheth in....

77) This Old Poem/Keenan/Dan Schneider  Who is Deborah Keenan? And why does she have a TOP essay? Is she a poet of any stature or rank? Why haven’t you heard of her before? If you have not heard of DK the reasons will be obvious & you will nurse an enmity against me for exposing you to her garbage. If you have heard of DK, & read this essay, you will likely want to reward me with physical pleasuring. The divide is clear. I will take my chances....

Who said incest was not profitable?

78) This Old Poem/Van Duyn/Dan Schneider  Mona Van Duyn is a living fossil- 1 might say she’s poetry’s coelacanth. A decade ago (1992-1993) she reigned as American Poet Laureate- yet, even then (& since), even most poets would be pressed to name anything she wrote. She is America’s answer to Stephen Spender- a famed British poet from last century of whom it was said- ‘He’s the most famous poet from whose work no one can quote a single memorable line.’ Bingo, again, for MVD....

1 Hall past the dinosaurs....

79) This Old Poem/Soto/Dan Schneider  Gary Soto does not know what poetry is. He thinks it is putting one word after another in a bland left-margined column down a sheet of blank paper. Things such as music, interesting turns of phrases, & memorable images mean nothing to GS. He is the Dean of the Left Margin Academy. He’s not the worst poetaster that’s ever written (if we deign to grant him that meager rank), but he’s probably the least adventurous published poet that ever lived. You lie, Dan! Drop dead, then take a look- or do that in the reverse order!....

Rev up the Workshop Marching Band!

80) This Old Poem/Gioia/Dan Schneider  Dana ‘Sugar Daddy’ Gioia has a website: http://www.danagioia.net/. DG is also the head of America’s NEA (National Endowment for the Arts). He’s also a crass, materialistic Republican who supports wasting tax dollars on the arts. Something’s wrong here. Let me start again….Dana Gioia is a bad poet....

When the Godfather speaks....

81) This Old Poem/Dent/Dan Schneider  Perhaps I should have subtitled this TOP essay ‘Tory Dent: French Kissing Death’ because more than any poetess since the Plath/Sexton heyday TD is obsessed with dying. Presumptively this comes from her claim of being infected with HIV. Not that it matters to her poetry- which is so prosaic & dull (even as she versically screams at the reader) but I believe I read somewhere that TD got the virus from a transfusion, rather than her sexual past. I only add this tidbit because this is 1 of those factoids that is supposed to engender more ‘sympathy’ from a reader. At least we know she’s ‘not 1 of those folks (queer or a drug abuser!)’. Yet, I don’t care 1 whit of TD’s malady....

AIDS-chic. Oy!

82) This Old Poem/Ping/Dan Schneider  Everybody have fun tonight, /everybody Wang Ping tonight.... Back in the day, this old poet never hit the dance floors when that song hit it big….

Sooky, sooky- sucks!

83) These Old Poems/Dead White Davids/Dan Schneider  The term Dead White Male came in to vogue in the mid 1980s when disaffected PC Elitists (mostly of the capital F Feminist & capital O Oppressed Minority bent) decided to rail against the good old boys network that ruled access to publication in this country. Unfortunately the brain dead PCEs squandered their potential political leverage by NOT going after the ruling White Male Elitists (technically, still Live), rather attacking truly dead Dead White Males like Billy Shakespeare, John Milton, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, etc. Not a good move....

Deader than most!

84) This Old Poem/Lorde/Dan Schneider  Black female poets seem to be cursed. Not a 1- no matter how talented- seems able to complete a successful poetic career- at least not yet. True talents like Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, & Rita Dove either fall to obscurity, sell out to political nonsense, or waste their talents away....

Fightin' fo' nothin'!

85) This Old Poem/Song/Dan Schneider  Cathy Song is 1 of those poetasters that- in her soul- knows she’s not good. Do I know this with metaphysical certitude? No. But the fact that she’s not 1 of these annoying PC Elitists that ceaselessly preach says to me that she was probably a stereotypical MFAer who- because of her sex & race- was urged by some well-meaning professorial dope to ‘tell her tale’ for the benefit of recording her ‘struggles....

Macramé rocks!

86) This Old Poem/Whitman/Dan Schneider  OK, anyone who’s ever researched me know I credit old Good & Gray with being the poet whose work actually kept me being a poet, rather than just another short-term wannabe. His stature as most influential poet in world history is really indisputable....

The Good, The Gray, The Mediocre....

87) This Old Poem/Amen/Dan Schneider  A few months ago a fan of Cosmoetica’s emailed me that he had found an interesting website that people could review other sites on. It also gave relative rankings of sites that your browser would be on. I was delighted to find out that 1) Cosmoetica has made its way into the top 150,000 sites out there....

Watch the mind rot....

88) This Old Poem/Thomas/Dan Schneider  Dylan Thomas is doubtlessly 1 of the most overrated poets of all time. Don’t get me wrong, he wrote a handful of arguably great poems. But, ala T.S. Eliot, that’s it- the bulk of the rest of his poetry ranges from the mediocre down to the great....

The bells- who smells?

89) This Old Poem/Valentine/Dan Schneider  Sometimes a poet or a poem become so intertwined with an event or thing in someone’s life that the person cannot separate the quality of the poet/poem from that event/thing that they represent, or remind 1 of. Such is the case with poet Jean Valentine. Not with me, but with an artist pal of mine named Art Durkee....

The nitty-gritty ain't so pretty!

90) This Old Poem/Ai/Dan Schneider  Florence Anthony is yet another of the PC Elitist black poets who chose to reject their birth name in favor of a name of their own choosing. Unlike Ntozake Shange’s name change, however, Flo’s nominal switch was not due to puerile political political posturing- love that alliterative beat, man!- but to personal trauma....

Why not just A?

91) This Old Poem/Nye/Dan Schneider  Naomi Shihab Nye is about as Arab as I am, which nowadays could be dangerous- but given the blood I have means that both she & I are relatively safe. In truth NSN is 1 of the premier hausfrau poets of our times. Along with the deadly dull Carolyn Forché....

Cut the Lawrence Of Arabia schtick!

92) This Old Poem/Baraka/Dan Schneider  Amiri Baraka is 1 of those writers who should have died years ago. Had he died in about 1970, he would not have become the laughingstock he is today- pilloried for being a rabid Anti-Semite & racist in the Louis Farrakhan mold. Yes, he came to prominence as ‘The Negro’ of the Beatniks....

Black ain't always beautiful, blood!

93) This Old Poem/Kerouac/Dan Schneider  There is an irony to this TOP’s title because the ‘poet’ in question never displayed a hint of the titular quality- neither in life nor in art. But I won’t delve in to the manifest reasons that Jack Kerouac is a mediocre prosist since it is his terrible poetry that’s the issue here....

Beat as all hell!

94) This Old Poem/Gunn/Dan Schneider  Thom Gunn is 1 of those odd literary characters that is hard to fit into a group- save that he’s an at best mediocre poet. He’s gay, but has not much in common with a lot of the hardcore ‘gay’ poets of his era- Ginsberg, O’Hara, Ashbery, etc....

Gunn Ho?

95) This Old Poem/Koch/Dan Schneider  Have you ever wondered why contemporary poetry is so bad? In these series of brief essays (or exposés) I have shown you many of the most common reasons- cliché overload, pointless enjambment that heightens nothing & has no sonic nor dramatic reason, dull tropes, or just plain have nothing new to say. But 1 of the most underrated things that poetry lacks is humor....

David Lehman says....

96) This Old Poem/Heaney/Dan Schneider  Seamus Heaney is 1 of those poets that every 1 thinks is good merely because he was given a Nobel Prize. The truth is that SH is merely ok. He’s not really a doggerelist but sort of occupies the Stephen Spender role in contemporary poetry- that of a very famous poet that no 1- not even most poets- can recall a single memorable line that he’s written....

Bogtrotting in place....

97) This Old Poem/Markham/Dan Schneider  Edwin Markham is 1 of those poets who just accidentally happened to write a great poem- his famed The Man With The Hoe, based on the famed painting by Jean-François Millet. You know how it starts: Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans....

Drawing the circle?

98) This Old Poem/Forché/Dan Schneider  Carolyn Forché: even the name makes the non-congenitally PC want to vomit. A few years ago I 1^st pointed out this abysmal writer’s lack of accomplishment, her hypocrisy in dealing with fellow poetasters, & general all-around misunderstanding of the very purpose of art....

Queen of the babushkas!

99) This Old Poem/McClure/Dan Schneider  Michael McClure is a poet who can be very good. His Selected Poems is an excellent book- the problem is that the book has a dozen or so long poems, & they are the only poems really worth reading in his oeuvre. He has a very limited range. That he is good at he is very good at, but he repeats himself far too much. His poems are more like odd incantations....

Over & Over!

100) This Old Poem/Simpson/Dan Schneider  What can 1 say about Louis Simpson that his ubiquitous bios do not? Louis Simpson was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1923, the son of a lawyer of Scottish descent.... 

Background character.

101) This Old Poem/Milton/Dan Schneider  OK, you PC Elitist scum, I’m taking on 1 of the Deadest Whitest Males of all time. Go ahead, I’ll wait till you plug in your vibrators….

Blindness or vision?

102) This Old Poem/Ginsberg/Dan Schneider  Allen Ginsberg was a liar, pederast, child abuser, hypocrite, & thoroughly despicable person by most accounts. BUT, he was at his best, 12-15 poems, a great poet. No, he was not a visionary poet....

Don't tie your shoelaces around him!

103) This Old Poem/Warren/Dan Schneider  Robert Penn Warren may be just about the most feted writer to ever appear in the TOP series. He won 2 Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, another for fiction, dozens of others back when such awards actually, occasionally, went to good writers- + he also served as the American Poet Laureate from 1986-1987....

Song of the South?

104) This Old Poem/Kooser/Dan Schneider  Recently Nebraskan Ted Kooser was named US Poet Laureate. Why? No 1 really knows. The Brits, at least, let their Laureates reign till death, ensuring that no more than a handful of Laureates reign in a century. In the US a new Laureate is selected every year or 2. This urge to demoticism, of course, cannot be sustained by the dearth of quality writing these PLs produce. At any given time, even in the best of times, only a handful of great published poets have been around. In the last few decades not a single great new poet has been published....

Plainly mediocre.

105) This Old Poem/Stevie Smith/Dan Schneider  In many ways Stevie Smith was just about all any lover of poetry could want from a poet who was good but made no claims to true greatness. She was a fine poet, whose innovations & unpretentious comic style led her to both critical & popular acclaim. Best of all it was her very lack of affectations & delusions to grandeur that allowed her to niche into a role as a poetic ‘perennial’- a poet who will be read again & again through the generations....

So close, yet....

106) This Old Poem/Kate Light/Dan Schneider  Kate Light is a very talented poet who has a shot to be a poet that is read in a century or 2 from now. She is a classical love poet whose modernity puts her in a direct line from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Christina Rossetti to Edna St. Vincent Millay to herself. She is 1 of the few published poets that seems to have fun with wordplay & at her best her poetry is infectious- especially when she confines it to the strictures of form....

Can you feel the heat?

107) This Old Poem/bill bissett/Dan Schneider  bill bissett is 1 of those poets that is not really easy to define. Is he a great poet? No. Is he an innovative poet? No- not in light of antecedents like e.e. cummings & fellow Canadian poet Wilfred Watson. That said, he has been 1 of the best humorist- aka ‘light’ poets to emerge in the late 20^th Centrury....

love those lower cases!

108) This Old Poem/Gregory Corso/Dan Schneider  Gregory Corso is 1 of the most disappointing ‘name’ poets in history. He is a man who could have been a great poet but chose to throw it all away because he was 1) lazy & 2) psychotic. The fact is that the ‘Beat Generation’, i.e.- the Beatniks- really just consisted of 2 real poetic talents & a lot of hangers-on....

Boozer, loser, or both?

109) This Old Poem/Charles Simic/Dan Schneider  Charles Simic is 1 of those niche-poets whose niche is not something really worth defending. He is primarily known as a proem writer, rather than a poet, for his proems, while nowhere near the class of a Georg Trakl or Rainer Maria Rilke, are still several cuts above his actual poesy. Even a poet pal of mine named Cindra Halm, notoriously silent on criticizing others, admits she detests Simic’s poems but finds his proems engaging....

Poem or proem: the word is bad!

110) This Old Poem/Robert Graves/Dan Schneider  Robert Graves, like Thomas Hardy & DH Lawrence, was really a prosist masquing as a poet. His ‘poetry’ is formulaic & formal. At least in poetry, RG is about as off-the-rack a poet as 1 can imagine for the early 20^th Century. He’s best known as author of historical novels (I, Claudius and Claudius the God), & a Great War poet- along with Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, & Edward Thomas. Where WO was dynamic, SS impudent, & ET Classical, RG was merely flat & pedestrian....

PBS bound?

111) This Old Poem/Marilyn Hacker/Dan Schneider  Marilyn Hacker is noted for 3 things, in no particular order- 1) being a formalist poet, 2) being a lesbian, & 3) being political. Notably absent from that tercet is her being a good poet. She’s not. A close examination of her work shows that while a formalist in vague terms, she’s really not. Her poetry is more or less free verse with a hint of formalism- rhyme, known patterns, about the edges....

The name says it all.

112) This Old Poem/Theodore Roethke/Dan Schneider  Theodore Roethke is a poet who is often cited by other poets as being a major influence. In a sense he’s a nature poet, yet there are no great landscapes that leap out at a reader like in the best of Robinson Jeffers. He is lauded as a formalist but no rhythms nor images retain themselves in the memory like a Robert Frost poem....

So-so.

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