Chekhov’s Mistess

Why Don Rickles Never Became a Poet

“I wouldn’t think of him as a bad boy” is the insult lodged by John Ashbery in regards to August Kleinzahler in a brief NY Times article (In Addition to His Pugnacity and Charm, He Can Write Poetry 2-Aug-2005). I say insult jokingly, because being a bad boy seems to be Mr. Kleinzahler’s calling card, particularly if you recall his pointed opinions against the mainstream in Poetry Magazine not long ago. Here’s an excerpt from today’s Times article:

“I don’t like to call myself a poet,” Mr. Kleinzahler said with characteristic bluntness. “Most poets are shiftless, no-account fools.”

image: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Mr. Kleinzahler, who was born in Fort Lee but now lives in San Francisco, is a throwback to earlier generations of poets, who wore their nonconformity as a badge and delighted in shocking the public. That tradition, he says, fell away once poets began accepting university teaching posts.

“If you’re a poet, you’ve earned the right to blow off whoever you want,” he said. “There used to be dozens of cranks and scolds, but there aren’t any anymore.”

But as much as he plays what he calls the “apostate poet” and brushes off the work of better-known contemporaries – “very few famous poets are interesting to me” – Mr. Kleinzahler’s colleagues praise his poetry, if not always him.

Billy Collins, the former poet laureate of the United States, has been on the receiving end of many of Mr. Kleinzahler’s jabs but says that he respects his work. “Apart from him personally, I really like his poetry,” said Mr. Collins, who teaches English at Lehman College in the Bronx.

And speaking of Billy Collins, the latest issue Poetry Magazine is devoted to humor (appropriately perhaps, it has a skunk on the cover) – Collins is often subtly funny and those of his poems that are, tend to be the ones I like best. I found the “Letters to the Editor” and “News Notes” the funniest part though, because the poems in the issue might be more appropriately called “light” instead of funny.

Here’s a sample from the News Notes section:

The program has been released for next year’s AWP Conference in Celebration, Florida. Featured Speakers and topics include:


John Ashbery: Getting Over the Hump: The Four Hundredth Book

Louis Glück: Glück, Glück, Glück: It’s an Umlaut, You Stupid Fucks

William Logan: Kill Your Inner Child: Reviewing as Therapy

Geoffrey Hill: Squeezing the Telos: Why I watch “The bachelor”

Billy Collins: How to Write a Book of Poems While Playing Golf

Jorie Graham: Toward a Long View of Art, or This Will All Make Sense When You’re Dead

Eavan Boland: Women and Ireland and Poetry and Ireland and Women and Poetry and Women and Poetry and Ireland and Women and Ireland and Poetry!!!

Adrienne Rich: Jiving Into the Wreck: Shakin’ the Groove Thang in Your Golden Years

Sharon Olds: Licking the Eggplant: Staying Creative in the Kitchen

Robert Pinsky: Why I should be Chairman of the Divine Endowment of All Art of All Kinds Everywhere in the World Amen

or this from the Letters section:

Dear Editor,


I have subscribed to Poetry from the beginning of my high school career. I have done so with the belief that, from time in memoriam [sic] poetry has been the food of love. But recently I have found very few poems to use for wooing. So many of the poems in any given issue have to be discarded right away because they were written by women, gays, or Europeans (i.e., gays who don’t speak English). I might be the only guy to park a spick-and-span yellow Camaro outside my local Seattle’s Best, then stride in flashing the latest copy of Poetry. But I’m sure I’m not alone in the country at large. I think you should be more in touch with your customer base.


Dave Haggles

Terre Haute, Indiana

Writing this out, none of it seems quite as funny as when I read it, so my wife would probably characterize it as geeky – maybe something like economist jokes, but I a good effort.

Read widely, think well, and write often

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 02, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:0
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