Why did Richard Brautigan stop getting invited to parties? We’re guessing it had to do with his penchant for brandishing a revolver.
I read the poem I wrote for his wedding to this man who I need to never lose faith in me: my brother, who has played an unimaginable role in the person I am attempting to become. The poem had to claw from my mouth as we held each other sobbing on the couch.
David Orr investigates the day jobs of some modern poets, and notes “the university job is a relatively recent development in Anglo-American poetry.” Indeed, as this playful illustration from Incidental Comics makes clear, poets have engaged in a wide array of salaried jobs – from pediatricians to bank clerks to diplomats. Previously, we took a look at writers and their day jobs, too.
Now we’re all ‘friends,’ there is no love but Like,
A semi-demi goddess, something like
A reality-TV star look-alike,
Named Simile or Me Two. So we like
In order to be liked. It isn’t like
There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain ‘dislike’
Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like
Is something you can quantify: each ‘like’
You gather’s almost something money-like,
Token of virtual support. ‘Please like
This page to stamp out hunger.’
"How I wish he’d stuck to being himself. Instead, he chose to be me."
How it feels to be the victim of a serial plagiarist.
In the early 1950s, Muriel Spark revived Mary Shelley’s reputation.
There was a time, believe it or not, when poets made appearances on widely-seen American talk shows. That time was the fifties and sixties, when Carl Sandburg appeared on The Today Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now. (He also gave a speech before Congress and competed on What’s My Line?)
I once had a real-life encounter with a poet at four a.m. in a Las Vegas Denny’s. He leaned over the back of his booth, made some awkward introduction, and began reciting lines from a wrinkled paper about the haunting sound wind makes or some nonsense. This encounter gave me an acute poet-phobia that lasted for years.
