avant-garde freshman comp

My class was doing peer response today, which means they wrote the whole time and I sat there. This felt very much like "exam time," which crowned me tyrant, enlaboring them with no shot at entertainment salvation. All semester I've promised and forgotten to bring "background music." Oops. Today I thought this: "what's more entertaining for disaffected middle class American youth than me?" I didn't actually think this sentence. It was more abstract. I was a "vessel for the greater good," much like a Baptist choir or the guy in charge of the Dr. Pepper recipe. I decided ("elected") to think entertaining thoughts and record them. Those of you who know me will recognize that I think about the same fifteen things over and over again, which you've always suspected but which (until now) you've never been able to prove at my arraignment. After peer response was over, I read these thoughts out loud. My students giggled. Problem solved. Hands washed. Eat your dodgeball. Don't talk to captives.

THINGS I THOUGHT ABOUT WHILE YOU DID PEER REVIEW

Ugg boots, bourgeois canteens, Dimitri Nabokov, Vitamin C pills, productive eye contact, imitation RayBan's, anxiety plus or minus codeine, fashionable Yeti, I want to reincarnate as a terrible song by Bright Eyes; the same people will like me or not like me, Tao Lin throwing a banana at Kendra Grant Malone, the ethics of the in-joke, a hitchhiking bee, the bus driver who wanted to be God, what if Tom Waits were my grandfather, how sure I am that I can't be friends with anyone who doesn't know who Tom Waits is and how that makes me sad but only a little sad, less sad than an old man in a NASCAR cap, more sad than a stale muffin, less sad than the Pacific Ocean, more sad than a drunk 3AM IM from my ex-girlfriend in a tiny Dutch town in Washington, the Dutch invasion of Washington, vintage cardigans, the troubling amount of times I suddenly remember that the author of Fight Club is actually gay, a soccer match between neutral facial expressions and the so-called "shit eating grin," the three maps of the Planet Earth in this classroom which you hadn't thought about until now (*points*), why tonic water is so "important," how I feel about scales of 1-10 on a scale of 1-10, Minnie Driver, Kurt Russell, Usher, signs of prohibition ("NO SMOKING," "DON'T FEED THE CHILDREN") versus signs of ambivalence ("NOTE: DUCKS PRESENT. YEAH. WHATEVER.") this quote from Andy Warhol: "I'm bored after I do it once unless I do it every day," and life as a vehicle for one task, such as designing the employee uniforms of a local doughnut store with franchise ambitions.

sorry poetry we're kicking you off the island

I just realized we don't need poetry anymore. To wit:




So Nice, So Smart
--Kimya Dawson

i was quiet as a mouse
when i snuck into your house
and took roofies with your spouse
in a nit and out a louse
and lice are lousy all the time
they suck your blood drink your wine
say shut up and quit your crying
give it time and you'll be fine

you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart

i like boys with strong convictions
and convicts with perfect diction
underdogs with good intentions
amputees with stamp collections
plywood skinboards ride the ocean
salty noses suntan lotion
always seriously joking
and rambunctiously soft-spoken
i like boys that like their mothers
and i have a thing for brothers
but they always wait til we're under the covers
to say i'm sure glad we're not lovers

you're so nice and you're so smart
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart
tell you that i love you then i'll tear your world apart
just pretend i didn't tear your world apart

i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
i like my new bunnysuit
when i wear it i feel cute

i'm coping with peak oil right now leave me alone

INSTEAD OF TAKING A SHOWER

I

I have two moods: cruel or nervous.
And a vial of infectious ha-ha-ha.
They printed all the riddles without
reward money. Affection last seen
clamped or camp. I'm a gully in the
steam of your sidewalk accordion.
If that's hard to follow, I'm right
behind you. Time's got a top-notch
immune system. Just now, I grew my
beard toward a show of support.
Sure, you have your own life's blue
deed, but I have a satellite's habit.

II

Look! All those ideas wanted tailors.
Which means I am programmed to omit
cannoli, Elvis, a flashlight in a boot,
shipwrights, the two breasts on the
matchbook Nicole drew for me (breasts
not the matchbook) the glory morning
train (the song not the train)--well,
shit, it's all an idea, I guess. You
are a combination impossible to press
in chorus. Both the peekaboo and long
kinds of need. This is your medal.
This is also a heretofore uncharted
mood named Kitten in a Cedar, named
Chicory and Whiskey. Three moods, I
guess: cruel, nervous, and love poem.

the secret mission of this blog is "music videos of girls in forests"

napowrimo #30

I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU IF YOU WILL

Nothing I write will ever give
back Monty Hensley. Fuck you
I'm crying. But I won't make
you. The more we agree to cling at
clever intricacies of conniption,
the less we have to monitor this
spleen. Fuck you "sad poem."
Fuck you balloon in the woods.
All I want to do is make a lot of
jokes and what about Monty Hensley.

napowrimo #29

CALL TO RETARDED ARMS

Is there good advice here?
Take things one at a time,
sleep with one at a time,
fine. I heard you the first
time. Listen to the swallow
lark. Aim at the reap. Grind
past your blink at this mercy.

napwrimo #28

BRYAN COFFELT ON MIKE YOUNG: "Mike Young's poetry is heavily rooted in zoroastro-colonialism and sanguine video adapters. The comic enjambment in his poems stems from a love of knives. In "Make It Rain," Young utilizes comic enjambment to load the reader with possibility.

Yeah im in this business of terror
Got a handful of stacks better
grab an umbrella.

Mike Young's poetry offers readers a whiff of Wordsworth and his involvement with the feminist slam poetry scene is widely praised. Well known poetry critic Brett Favre said of Young's poetry, "Makes me wanna do jumping jacks." Young's poetry has been translated into more than 2 languages, including American Sign Language and English."

MIKE YOUNG ON BRYAN COFFELT: "Coffelt was born in Hailey, Idaho Territory, to Homer Loomis and Isabel Weston Treacle Tits. As a young drag racer, he often replaced local tourist attractions with large graphite asterisks. He earned a BA in Hammerhead Skullfucking from the University of I Think Wait No Let Me Call My Mom, but found the local art scene "orange." So he worked for seventeen years as a day laborer, mostly in the fields of soothsaying, fire extinguisher mending, and Mussolini's fascist regime. During these years he learned the violin skills that he'd later leave in the sink without washing at all. When Coffelt's uncle, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Coffelt, died of a self-inflicted helicopter wound, Coffelt inherited the family catgut factory. Coffelt sold the factory to the third Olsen twin and entered the MFA program deep inside Alan Greenspan's gall bladder. Like the many famous graduates of that program, Coffelt spun homegrown buckwheat conjugal poems for the back of racist cereal boxes, which he called "the Ideogrammic Method." To pay the bills, Coffelt translated popular "no hands" toilets. In Greenspan, Coffelt befriended Ashton Kushner (author of YAKS ARE FOOD IF YOU'RE TALL ENOUGH and world-renowned authority on "cunt marmalade"). Kushner later remarked "I was never able to teach him to throw a left hook." Kusher later confabulated. Kushner later unsabered. After Greenspan, Coffelt moved to Nashville, where conditions in the local ménage à trois ranches inspired him to quit his job as a shinguard and write his epic YINZER SHAKE RIB AQUALUNG DOROTHY JINGLE HAMFISTED DECIPHER PLEA AVARICE MOTZ ET SONS ARMONIA CONUTERFEIT FUCK YOU FRANCOIS VILLION FUCK YOU FRANCOIS VILLON IN YOUR JOY NUB, which translated into Canadian as TED KOOSER. With TED KOOSER, Coffelt had a massive hit on his hands, on his hands, a duck-shaped and gooey pustule. Unfortunately, Coffelt squandered his cut of the movie rights pursuing his only love up a broken escalator. After tossing off the hackneyed and (critics agree) "Jew-savvy" sequel, TED KOOSER ESCAPES FROM WHITE CASTLE, Coffelt entered a seven year seclusion of radar prayer and dandelion farming. He returned to briefly host the game show version of Peak Oil, but one day fled the set in a fit of rage, spewing instructions on how to parallel park without "invoking Hiroshima." His hotel room was found empty save for an oven full of checkbooks, a water heater full of nuns, and a shower full of emails from one "Dorothy Shakespear." To this day, Coffelt's whereabouts remain a mystery: some say he teaches competitive panic induction at the University of Slut Get Out of There That's Not For Sluts. Others say he's taken on the identity of one Agnes Burford and regularly composes violin arrangements of Dante's sestinas for Dunkin Donut radio commercials. One truth swims up: the brilliance of TED KOOSER and the piebald elasticity of the kinkfest behind it. Long will serious art fans remember TED KOOSER for its anklebiting heat, its instructions regarding human bones, and the sheer inability of us to even read it unless we're hiding in the cake."

napowrimo #27

DANIEL BAILEY ON MIKE YOUNG: "mike young's poems read like a a cultural critique written by an alien living inside a radio station that plays nothing but a tribe called quest and songwriters influenced by bob dylan. his comic enjambment brings to mind shakespeare, if shakespeare had been part wookie and wanted nothing more than to be part android, part biodome, part human genome project, part mfa student that knows what documents were invented for framing and what documents were invented for feeding to iguanas. i would let mike young have sex with my sister, if i had a sister. mike, stay away from my mother."

MIKE YOUNG ON DANIEL BAILEY: "Ever since God created the Pop-Tart Scansion, critics have argued over whether Daniel Bailey's work represents an homage or appropriation of John Cusack's tribal straw trundle or "plastic poetics." We all know the two camps: Anamorphic Neo-Trotsky Big Money Hoodlum Wasabi Canadians, and Shaq's Free Throw Percentage. But all critics since 1932 have agreed that Bailey ingeniously reintroduced Hawaiian sonnets to bellwether curves. Even though his most recent books spin fruitless reiterations of the "Dick Cheney slept there don't touch that" meme, Bailey is still a go-to waffle laureate for scores of "wishful thinkers" currently in the process of signing a Miley Cyrus donkey sex petition."

napowrimo #26

JUSTIN TAYLOR ON MIKE YOUNG: "In the Family Double Dare of the heart, Mike Young's comic enjambment demands no less than that we confront our father and sisters (off-camera, before taping starts) and work out our issues so that the whole family can rely on each other and function as a team. Only in this way, Young's comic enjambment suggests, do we stand a chance at completing the Physical Challenges and making it to the final Obstacle Course, where, of course, after two rounds of trial we are immediately to be tried again. As Kierkegaard has it in _Fear and Trembling_: "The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher..." To put this in terms of Mike Young's comic enjambment, we must think not just *of witness* but of *what is witnessed.* The closest analog comes to us from W.G. Sebald in the "All'estero" chapter of _Vertigo_. I am, obviously, thinking of the episode where the narrator is suddenly overtaken by a fear of assassination and flees Verona on the night train to Innsbruck. Delayed at a stop along the route, the narrator notes that "[t]he rain turned to snow. And a heavy silence lay upon the place, broken only by the bellowing of some nameless animals waiting in a siding to be transported onwards." This describes not only the interior logic and executive process of Mike Young's comic enjambment, but also, in a roundabout way (Kierkegaard again: "Faith *is* this paradox" [emphasis mine]) it describes the way in which first-time reader's of Mike Young's comic enjambment both receive and internalize the text as an extension of the poetic device, and vice versa, maybe."

MIKE YOUNG ON JUSTIN TAYLOR: "Since his recruit days in the Winnipeg Jets fantasy camp, Justin Taylor has studiously strove to undermine the market through a deft 4-5-6 double play of Vaudevillian proportions. Though wily mermaids have called him "a young Moses" and "the black George Foreman," Taylor has consistently identified and defied expectations by logging off before you can rape his allegory. His breakout show, GYPSIES ARE MADE OF FART BRICKS, had some critics comparing him to Edna St. Vincent Millay inside a Ziploc bag. But since retreating into a blowfish culvert, Taylor has dismissed his previous aesthetics and embarked on a new project tentatively entitled BRICKS ARE MADE OF GYPSY FARTS. Ever the literary "cunt balloon," Taylor's work promises to buy a new food processor, eat a piano, and make everyone forget about how Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school until at least 2026."

napowrimo #25

JOSH MADAY ON MIKE YOUNG: "Mike Young's words dig into the mind with their pointy-sharp chin. Bleeding becomes a matter of comic enjambment, and one's external uterus swells with milkweed and ragweed and fetusweed, swimming in the othernight, lying still at the bottom, encased in the swaggering current, hair floating, sliding back and forth. Mike Young's words ritualize and thrust violently, a wild chimp wielding dagger and penis and classic Darwinian phallic accuracy, impregnating, inseminating, joining elements together in a tissue of meaning, creating a sticky context embedded with tumors of absence, abstractions of life and death and the sex that brings them together. Obscene sanctity: an old woman with one saggy tit exposed as though to breastfeed the public. Her name: Joyce. Her other tit: missing in action. Nipple incarcerated in a glass jar filled with dish soap. Along with screws and tires and TV trays. And, finally, a praying mantis trying in vain to extract a drop of milk. Mike Young's words do this. Mike Young's words are hungry. Comic enjambment. Comic enjambment."

MIKE YOUNG ON JOSH MADAY: "Live from a dwarf's cabin in a forest of glass trees on Europa, NBC is proud to present the world's first human tortilla chip, the man who grafted Tom Brady's left testicle onto a hawk, the only respected Pynchon scholar sponsored by Tide, the two time winner of the CATULLUS AIR GUITAR 500, the uninstantiated swig siren, the oldest living toothbrush cobbler, the NHL record-holder for "most fingernail sculptures in March," the moral equivalent of a fake Ringpop, the first soldier ever to occupy six Middle-Eastern ice rinks at once, the standard by which all future coincidences will be measured, the father of all magnolia graves, the ant who wanted to be a crop circle, a root canal among fullers, a hinterfotzig among tourists, a shirtless linguist fresh from hiding in the sweatervest closets of Natalie Portman: JOSH MADAY!"

napowrimo #24 (see my "i like suttree" post for details; send me more!)

ALEX BURFORD ON MIKE YOUNG: "Mike Young's poetry, although a suitable front for his West Indian Wife Swap, is not a suitable container for a child. Or children for that matter. His comic enjambment, its tiny little fingers getting in the pores of your lung, does not account for the hurried tone and the insistence that you are the misunderstood one. As a master of rhetoric hump-dump, we know Mike Young not really for his poetry but rather for his critical work on the mating positions of Tenor Flies and the mess that follows. Yum! THAT IS WHY HE IS DEN MOTHER; TAKE HIS CHILDREN AND/OR BOY SCOUTS FROM HIM WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME. But in retrospect we can appreciate his appearance in the film 360's Over Alabama, the way, although he is twenty one years old, he appears to have the body of an eleven year old trapeze singer. So fuck that shit."

MIKE YOUNG ON ALEX BURFORD: "When Alex Burford first entered the Cincinnati literary scene as a flagon of apricot jelly, few thought that his aping of Apollinaire, Clark Coolidge, and a warm towel would result in the catastrophic yurt his contribution to the literary canon has become. Burford's mastery of the trochee often ends up in the reader's ass without the cops or the landlord. Even after Burford achieved popular acclaim as an outspoken critic of javelin factories, he stayed true to literature and stayed mostly in the shower, ten hours a day, wearing the skin of Elton John. When the 29th century ends and space cowboys are forced to reinvent the parentheses, today's literary scholars have no doubt that they will turn to the recursive models of Alex Burford's fake knee."