SpokenVerse | Fight Song by Deborah Garrison (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded April 2013 | Updated October 2024, 8 hours ago.
It seems that somebody really pissed this lady off. I could be an Intellectual Snob and say that this kind of poem is popular because it's a succession of cliches delivered with all the vehemence of a cheated fat lady on the Jerry Springer show. It deserves robust criticism.
One way of getting to be a poet is the intellectual equivalent of becoming a stripper, showing your boobs - in the other sense of that word - while you're still pert and saucy. Pert means impudent, not what you're thinking. Actually, that's exactly why I like it.
I like Jerry Springer, too, and his tolerant attitude towards pond life. We're all members of the same animal kingdom, let's not put on airs. Like Shylock, we're fed with the same food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If this poem makes you feel intellectually superior, let me point out how effective it is in communicating emotion. Doesn't it make you feel like the bishop who spilled boiling-hot tea into his lap and exclaimed in anguish "Is there any layman here who can express my feelings?"
Most poets never bridge the Great Intellectual Divide to reach those who like it Gangnam Style. Nevertheless as Milton said, fame is the spur, they're all seeking Immortality - yet what use is Immortality if you only get it after you're dead? If a poet gets lucky their talent will be recognised while they're still alive. Then, if their luck holds out, they're granted guru status and, if they can be trusted not to behave too disgracefully in public, invited to appear on TV chat shows. Then they go on to make a comfortable living as celebrities, albeit minor ones, paid for the occasional appearance, famous for being famous, a familiar face whose name and specialty most people can't quite recall. It's one way of crossing The Great Intellectual Divide.
There's more money to be made from talking about poetry than there is from writing and selling it.. Poets, if they are not sustained by the popular media, can cherish the hope of being offered tenure as Professor of Literature at some venerable seat of learning. After that everything they write, no matter how trivial, unworthy and embarrassing to their friends and relations, will be recorded and handed down to posterity. Casual words that fall from their lips will be taken as pearls before swine, gathered up and treasured by their ardent followers. Ah, then it's too late to twirl your tassels, singing - is this what I want, what I really,really want?
The poet's worst fear is to end up on the lecture tour, giving readings to audiences which in the main are devoid of any appreciation of poetry, but who know how to clorange when they hear other people laughing and clap when they notice others applauding. Fortunately, the world has an inexhaustible supply of people like that. You can be rich if you figure out a way of getting every one of them to give you sixpence.
If a poet does manage to cross the Great Intellectual Divide, after that they're not to be trusted to tell it like it is. They have to keep up the act and feed the monster they've created, Look what happened to Bukowski. Do you want that? Then, when you're safely dead, people who hardly knew you will write a pack of lies about the meaningful relationship you had with them. A movie will be made in which you're played by last generation's heart-throb who claims he had to put on 20 pounds to get the role, the lying bastard.
Here's an article about Deborah:
nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/06Rpoet.html
And here she is reading four of her poems:
youtube.com/watch?v=nPM3X8f8NdY
The stills from movies. The first three are from Office Space, the last two from Working Girl.
Sometimes you have to say it:
Fuck them all.
Yes fuck them all--
the artsy posers,
the office blowhards
and brown-nosers;
Fuck the type who gets the job done
and the type who stands on principle;
the down-to-earth and understated;
the overhyped and underrated;
Project director?
Get a bullshit detector.
Client's mum?
Up your bum.
You can't be nice to everyone.
When your back is to the wall
When they don't return your call
When you're sick of saving face
When you're screwed in any case
Fuck culture scanners, contest winners,
subtle thinkers and the hacks who offend them;
people who give catered dinners
and (saddest of sinners)
the sheep who attend them-
which is to say fuck yourself
and the person you were: polite and mature,
a trooper for good. The beauty is
they'll soon forget you
and if they don't
they probably should.
It seems that somebody really pissed this lady off. I could be an Intellectual Snob and say that this kind of poem is popular because it's a succession of cliches delivered with all the vehemence of a cheated fat lady on the Jerry Springer show. It deserves robust criticism.
One way of getting to be a poet is the intellectual equivalent of becoming a stripper, showing your boobs - in the other sense of that word - while you're still pert and saucy. Pert means impudent, not what you're thinking. Actually, that's exactly why I like it.
I like Jerry Springer, too, and his tolerant attitude towards pond life. We're all members of the same animal kingdom, let's not put on airs. Like Shylock, we're fed with the same food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If this poem makes you feel intellectually superior, let me point out how effective it is in communicating emotion. Doesn't it make you feel like the bishop who spilled boiling-hot tea into his lap and exclaimed in anguish "Is there any layman here who can express my feelings?"
Most poets never bridge the Great Intellectual Divide to reach those who like it Gangnam Style. Nevertheless as Milton said, fame is the spur, they're all seeking Immortality - yet what use is Immortality if you only get it after you're dead? If a poet gets lucky their talent will be recognised while they're still alive. Then, if their luck holds out, they're granted guru status and, if they can be trusted not to behave too disgracefully in public, invited to appear on TV chat shows. Then they go on to make a comfortable living as celebrities, albeit minor ones, paid for the occasional appearance, famous for being famous, a familiar face whose name and specialty most people can't quite recall. It's one way of crossing The Great Intellectual Divide.
There's more money to be made from talking about poetry than there is from writing and selling it.. Poets, if they are not sustained by the popular media, can cherish the hope of being offered tenure as Professor of Literature at some venerable seat of learning. After that everything they write, no matter how trivial, unworthy and embarrassing to their friends and relations, will be recorded and handed down to posterity. Casual words that fall from their lips will be taken as pearls before swine, gathered up and treasured by their ardent followers. Ah, then it's too late to twirl your tassels, singing - is this what I want, what I really,really want?
The poet's worst fear is to end up on the lecture tour, giving readings to audiences which in the main are devoid of any appreciation of poetry, but who know how to clorange when they hear other people laughing and clap when they notice others applauding. Fortunately, the world has an inexhaustible supply of people like that. You can be rich if you figure out a way of getting every one of them to give you sixpence.
If a poet does manage to cross the Great Intellectual Divide, after that they're not to be trusted to tell it like it is. They have to keep up the act and feed the monster they've created, Look what happened to Bukowski. Do you want that? Then, when you're safely dead, people who hardly knew you will write a pack of lies about the meaningful relationship you had with them. A movie will be made in which you're played by last generation's heart-throb who claims he had to put on 20 pounds to get the role, the lying bastard.
Here's an article about Deborah:
nytimes.com/2007/05/06/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/06Rpoet.html
And here she is reading four of her poems:
youtube.com/watch?v=nPM3X8f8NdY
The stills from movies. The first three are from Office Space, the last two from Working Girl.
Sometimes you have to say it:
Fuck them all.
Yes fuck them all--
the artsy posers,
the office blowhards
and brown-nosers;
Fuck the type who gets the job done
and the type who stands on principle;
the down-to-earth and understated;
the overhyped and underrated;
Project director?
Get a bullshit detector.
Client's mum?
Up your bum.
You can't be nice to everyone.
When your back is to the wall
When they don't return your call
When you're sick of saving face
When you're screwed in any case
Fuck culture scanners, contest winners,
subtle thinkers and the hacks who offend them;
people who give catered dinners
and (saddest of sinners)
the sheep who attend them-
which is to say fuck yourself
and the person you were: polite and mature,
a trooper for good. The beauty is
they'll soon forget you
and if they don't
they probably should.
