THE POETRY PROBLEM

Poetry is not a problem. There's a lot of terrible poetry. There's a lot of mediocre poetry. There's a lot of self-indulgent poetry. Occasionally there is poetry so good it knocks you flat on your ass. This is rare. The poetry problem is this. A poet writes a poetry collection, it gets some attention. The poet stands in front of a microphone with their face buried in the book or with an iPhone in their hand and reads poems from the book. There's no magic there's no fire there's just a human being reading words. People show up for poetry readings. They sit there and watch a poet read the poems into the microphone. And it's nothing. There's no danger no fire no blinding light. I don't go to poetry readings. I've been to a few. But I never made a habit of attending poetry readings. I never felt great about reading my poems into microphones. I always felt like something was missing. I'll be reading into a microphone in November but for the first time ever I'll be playing a guitar as I read. The guitar will add something, maybe. Distortion. Loud distortion that may induce nausea and headaches. You have to have noise. You have to dress slutty. Otherwise. What's the fucking point?