Welcome, all of my nonexistent readers, to the second installment of my interview with Erac Saz, author of the poem in the August 4th, 2004, entry of this journal. The many of you who did not read the first installment may have noticed that it was marred by our not actually discussing the poem, an oversight that I hope to rectify here:
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ERAC SAZ INTERVIEW: PART II
FatD: So, Erac, about your poem ...
ES: Hold on. I just wanted to say that I was surprised when you didn't run with that "Bruce Wayne" comment I made in the last bit. I figured you'd go on a big long Batman riff ... that'd be the kind of thing you'd think was funny.
FatD: Yes. Well, actually I was surprised that I didn't run with it when you wrote: I work under a 400+ pound guy with an 8th-grade reading level who's name, I shit you not, is Cletus. I must be mellowing as I approach my dotage. Still, working under Cletus has got to be better than your last gig: fucking ponies in the floorshow of a Tijuana brothel.
ES: Ah, so! So how's about that poem, eh?
FatD: Yes, let us get to the "poem". I do not see that it is a poem: the lines don't scan, there's no rhyme-scheme, and so forth. By what standards would it qualify as a poem?
ES: Generally accepted standards.
FatD: But ...
ES: Listen: over the course of the last 200 years, there's been a lot of experimentation involving the formal elements of poetry. In fact, I'd say that not long after the publication of Waley's Translations from the Chinese and its subsequent adoption as a model by the Imagist school, formal and structural constraints disappeared from poetry. By the 1950s or 60s, even academic poets had largely dropped meter and rhyme as necessary elements of poetry. See, for example, the poems in James Wright's The Green Wall versus the poems in his volume The Branch Will Not Break.
FatD: If that's the case, then why are there line breaks in your "poem"?
ES: So that people know it's a poem and not just a bunch of prose.
FatD: Aren't line breaks a formal/structural element? I thought they'd been dropped.
ES: No, I think they're the only one left. They're the one structural element that all people recognize as belonging solely to poetry (and perhaps to greeting cards), so you have to have them if you're going to write a poem that doesn't have any of the other formal or structural elements, like stanzas or rhyme or meter. Otherwise, no one'd know your poem's a poem.
FatD: So despite my misgivings, your "poem" is a poem?
ES: I guess so. I think of it as more of a prose poem.
FatD: "Prose poem"? Isn't the choice one or the other?
ES: No, the prose poem is a recognized form. It's generally accepted to have been fathered by Baudelaire. I'd maybe suggest that Poe was its grandfather and perhaps Villiers De L'Isle-Adam, with his collection Cruel Tales, is the form's first uncle. W. S. Merwin and, more recently, Barry Yourgrau have ...
FatD: Baudelaire? You mean the guy from Saturday Night Live?
ES: What?
FatD: You know ... ACTING!
ES: That was John Lovitz, jackass, playing the role of Master Thespian ... I guess he always did begin the sketches by writing a letter to Baudelaire, but still, Jesus, what in hell were you doing all of those years you were in school?
FatD: Bonking all of the frisky girls I could.
ES: Oh, yeah ... me, too. Good choice.
____________________________________
Well, that seems as good a place as any to end this, the second installment of my interview with the irascible Mr. Saz. Perhaps I will be able to cobble together a third and final installment from our e-mail exchange and bring this nonsense to a cathartic end; then again, perhaps not. Regardless, I hope that the none of you who are reading these entries have enjoyed them as much as I have.
Rest assured, I'll be certain to respond to all of your comments just as soon as I am able.
Haaa haaa haaa haaa! Hooo, boy!
________________________________
ERAC SAZ INTERVIEW: PART II
FatD: So, Erac, about your poem ...
ES: Hold on. I just wanted to say that I was surprised when you didn't run with that "Bruce Wayne" comment I made in the last bit. I figured you'd go on a big long Batman riff ... that'd be the kind of thing you'd think was funny.
FatD: Yes. Well, actually I was surprised that I didn't run with it when you wrote: I work under a 400+ pound guy with an 8th-grade reading level who's name, I shit you not, is Cletus. I must be mellowing as I approach my dotage. Still, working under Cletus has got to be better than your last gig: fucking ponies in the floorshow of a Tijuana brothel.
ES: Ah, so! So how's about that poem, eh?
FatD: Yes, let us get to the "poem". I do not see that it is a poem: the lines don't scan, there's no rhyme-scheme, and so forth. By what standards would it qualify as a poem?
ES: Generally accepted standards.
FatD: But ...
ES: Listen: over the course of the last 200 years, there's been a lot of experimentation involving the formal elements of poetry. In fact, I'd say that not long after the publication of Waley's Translations from the Chinese and its subsequent adoption as a model by the Imagist school, formal and structural constraints disappeared from poetry. By the 1950s or 60s, even academic poets had largely dropped meter and rhyme as necessary elements of poetry. See, for example, the poems in James Wright's The Green Wall versus the poems in his volume The Branch Will Not Break.
FatD: If that's the case, then why are there line breaks in your "poem"?
ES: So that people know it's a poem and not just a bunch of prose.
FatD: Aren't line breaks a formal/structural element? I thought they'd been dropped.
ES: No, I think they're the only one left. They're the one structural element that all people recognize as belonging solely to poetry (and perhaps to greeting cards), so you have to have them if you're going to write a poem that doesn't have any of the other formal or structural elements, like stanzas or rhyme or meter. Otherwise, no one'd know your poem's a poem.
FatD: So despite my misgivings, your "poem" is a poem?
ES: I guess so. I think of it as more of a prose poem.
FatD: "Prose poem"? Isn't the choice one or the other?
ES: No, the prose poem is a recognized form. It's generally accepted to have been fathered by Baudelaire. I'd maybe suggest that Poe was its grandfather and perhaps Villiers De L'Isle-Adam, with his collection Cruel Tales, is the form's first uncle. W. S. Merwin and, more recently, Barry Yourgrau have ...
FatD: Baudelaire? You mean the guy from Saturday Night Live?
ES: What?
FatD: You know ... ACTING!
ES: That was John Lovitz, jackass, playing the role of Master Thespian ... I guess he always did begin the sketches by writing a letter to Baudelaire, but still, Jesus, what in hell were you doing all of those years you were in school?
FatD: Bonking all of the frisky girls I could.
ES: Oh, yeah ... me, too. Good choice.
____________________________________
Well, that seems as good a place as any to end this, the second installment of my interview with the irascible Mr. Saz. Perhaps I will be able to cobble together a third and final installment from our e-mail exchange and bring this nonsense to a cathartic end; then again, perhaps not. Regardless, I hope that the none of you who are reading these entries have enjoyed them as much as I have.
Rest assured, I'll be certain to respond to all of your comments just as soon as I am able.
Haaa haaa haaa haaa! Hooo, boy!
http://www.scene360.com/xtra/StoryBites/poetry_004_katherine.html