The New Self by Steve Gehrke (reprinted without permission)

Are you or are you not of brain, matter's boss/ or its crevasse, are you the body itself,/ or more than that, immortal you, crouched/ in flesh, like a vampire packed into a bat?

The entire poem is too long to replicate here, but everything I love about this poem is in this first stanza: the music, beautiful end rhyme and interior rhyme driving the poem into unexpected places; the thought, complex without being pretentious (love crouched instead of couched).  Just great.  One of many fine poems in the latest issue of Poetry.

It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. William Carlos Williams. (tip to Peter Case)

I try to read a poem each day.  Mr. Keillor can be of assistance here.  For me, sadly, it's often more of a professional stance, like a daily rhythm vitamin. If I can't keep my hand in, I've got to keep my ear to the ground at least, so to speak.  What is the good doctor talking about above?  I think the key word is miserably.  Men die every day.  You don't have to be a doctor or a poet to know that.  Is poetry a hand into the unknown?  It certainly is that.  Ha! But, is it that in such a practical sense as a narcotic might be?  Do those who don't read poetry die more miserably than those who do?  I am avoiding the implication that poetry could have a broader effect, i.e., make the world a better place, so that some of the miserable deaths that we inflict on each other might be reduced, although I'm not sure why I should skirt this issue.  I would say that every poem is political, of course.  Making poetry in the current climate is an act of resistance, for sure.  But, does that make poets freedom fighters?  Ha again!  It is anti-materialist (and, therefore, presumably, anti-capitalist).  I think the greatest error of our age is the assumption that the only thing that motivates people is greed.  Poetry proves that fallacy. Ha again and again! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the beach with my friend, the devastationalist, Philip Shelley, talking about a recent discussion I had with my wife about poetry.  It is my wife's position that poetry is peculiarly subjective, and that, as a result, the range of what passes for poetry in poetry world is completely unpredictable and wide open (or, at least, for the purposes of this post, that is what I think my wife's position is).  This bothers me a little because she is my wife, and rightly or wrongly, it feels as though what she is saying is that the thing you pour your heart, intelligence, and considerable effort into is a flighty and somehow insubstantial thing because it has no standards.  I don't really think that is what she is saying. That's my most insecure interpretation of what she is saying. I counter that by saying no, I think there are objective standards of measurement that set one poem higher or lower against another.  I agree that there are editors and writers of poetry who have closed minds, who, consciously or unconsciously, have intense predilections for one "type" of poetry over another and whose work and publications are ruled by these subjective criteria, sometimes publishing worse poems because they align with what one thinks the subject matter, diction, look and feel of a poem should be, and ignore better poems because they don't conform to one's prejudices, but that doesn't mean that there aren't poems that engage in cliche or whose music is ham-fisted or whose diction is overwrought or mere jargon, etc., or that there are not poems whose thought is startling and creative, whose music accords beautifully with the thought, and whose word choices are made not for some silly conformist reason, but to bring the music and thought together in this magical way.  What do you think?