Nasty Poets Write the Best Poetry
Why is it that the nastiest poets write the best poetry? I noticed this first while reading through biographies of many top classical poets: Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Lewis Carroll, and William Wordsworth to name a few.
The grossness ranges from orgies to pedophilia to incest. Obviously, not all poets indulge themselves in the life of strange sexuality, but the numbers seem overwhelmingly disturbing.
I know what you’re thinking, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou are normal, but indeed they aren’t. Langston Hughes spent many months at sea and is a known homosexual. You can’t tell me some crazy, funky stuff didn’t go on during that period of his life. And Maya Angelou? Perhaps she isn’t nasty, but the amount of trauma in her life had to create at least a period of weirdness, like the five years she refused to speak.
Maybe it is just my luck at finding these individuals or, just maybe, there is something to this theory.
We, as poets, need to create nastiness parties across the world. At these parties we will throw ourselves at each other and wear the weirdest, most uncomfortable costumes possible. Only after having sex with a kangaroo ninja will we truly, truly be masters of word.
LuckyGirl
October 7, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
During the years I spent working in book production we handled a fair number of poetry books. I have vivid memories of the grossness level of many of the poems. Sitting on a stranger’s sofa, finding fingernail clippings, and chewing on them. Can’t remember who wrote that one, but it was one of many written to evoke an eeeeewwwwww.
netta
October 9, 2008 @ 10:06 am
I think most artists (of any kind) are just a little bit left of center, and that’s okay. Right??
I know a lot of writers that are “weird” (to include myself) but I will say I don’t know anyone that admits to chewing on fingernail clippings found in a stranger’s sofa.
GACK.