While Reading Today's Papers

On Poetry

Slate is in the midst of an attack against the poetry published in The New Yorker. They are crappy and a total rot, says the all-too knowing critics. I think, hell, if I could just publish a poem in the The New Yorker and be dissed for it, I’d spend a week celebrating.

Of course it’s always a matter of perspective. People who are spoiled with good poetry can come across as assholes who think they can write off poets just because the poems sound like something that the brats could’ve made themselves. Yes, even in poetry there is a pedestal, One must write simply enough to be understood by morons like me but should have that “difficult to replicate” feel to it. Secretly, I think all poetry is subjective, and all judgements on poetry are personal.

Because I am a nitwit and cannot, no matter how I try, make good enough poems for the workshop I’ve been eyeing for years, I usually fill that frustration with reading poems (partly with faith that reading enough poems can somehow fire up a deeply buried flair for the craft). I am faithful to the first few poets I fell in love with , some of whom are often criticized for their styles – Louise Gluck, Naomi Shihab Nye, Raymond Carver, Billy Collins, Rainier Maria Rilke, Anna Ahkmatova and most recently, Claudia Emerson. These are poets I’ve loved the moment I came across their first poems, poets whose books I’ve bought and scrounged for (an especially hard task if like me you live in Korea and the Philippines where poetry books are scarce). And yes, they are of a certain style – fluid, somehow confessional and written in simple phrases. Which is why some critics diss them while some devotees, like me, treat their poems as elixirs, juices which dilute and drain the polluted airs of one’s worries and misfortunes.

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Basically, It’s Over

Now I think this will do for a great break-up line *Big Grin * But no, the essay with the same title is actually a parable written by one of Warren Buffet’s henchmen about the fall of a once promising economy. It’s a good read actually and coming from a poor country I do wonder why we never even came to the point where we can say, Basically, it’s over haha. Because reading the parable, especially the first part, it does seem to describe the Philippines. Here, loans are offered only to those who have some collateral of equal value (usually farmlands, real estate properties, or time deposit/insurance), the system basically safeguards against bad loans. One wonders though why still we don’t seem to get any benefits from such a conservative economic system…..Oh, yeah, right! We forgot to factor in the one big reasons why people go into Philippine politics, the unimaginable perks from the business of corruption.


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