Kent Johnson: How to Write an Avant-Garde Poem

by Stephen Bett

All you have to do is look around you
at other poets . . . and see what unkind, impolite,
and self–involved people they are, the poets, mainly out
for themselves and their ‘poetry careers’, and the bigger /their vitas . . .

Poetry Will Save Your Life — Kent Johnson (with gracias nods to da notes at the foot)

All you have to do is look around you
You like the writers in my class / The way they kiss each other’s ass” 1
beathe lilty frilly breeze thru PoEms a’loud in camp
so sigh, my PoVoice did this to me & my vo’cabs 2

at other poets . . . and see what unkind, impolite
killer kitsch they loves to huh–8, dis hologram hoaxter
dis provocateur, plagiarist, poetomachia dispatch forger 3
infamy clang his name egg–shell walking PoWorld

and self–involved people they are, the poets, mainly out
’n abt revolving doors’ PoFound . . . float cash BigPharmaDough
dems preening pretty peevish, dems hipper–than–thou

for themselves and their ‘poetry careers’, and the bigger /their . . .
All Because of Poetry I have a Big House on the Oceans (Both),3
fuckin Cars, Piles of MooLa, and Really mucho much sex! 4 My third
ex–wife once asked me, “How to Write an Avant–Garde Poem.
No shit.” 5

__________________

1 From KJ’s poem “The Discs of Snow” (Big House ); & much phrasing throughout here owing to illuminating articles on KJ’s Big House, by Sharon Thesen, Miriam Nichols, Joshua Weiner, Adan Lehrer, Paul Nelson, & Burt Kimmelman

2 The odiously fluffed up & all too familiar “Poetry Voice” at public readings; &, with respect, repurposing Spicer’s final line

3 Johnson & Boughn’s Dispatches from the Poetry Wars; & KJ’s “Emily Post– Avant” co–opt good as beat down our gone–done hippie–domes

4 The most excellent full title of the present KJ book of poems

5 First part of line, from this present, glossed KJ poem; the quote is from Joshua Weiner’s “Antidisestablishmentarianism: A Too Personal Thunk on Kent Johnson’s Big House,” referencing the title of a summer program course “taught by a radically chic poet . . . in Provincetown,” circa 2000: the avant–garde co–opted & mainstreamed (yet again) to pointlessness