Put the Poem Down Sir or We’ll be Forced to Subdue You
Few things are more chilling than the prospect of reading other people’s poetry. This is especially true for graduates of important colleges where poetry fairly leaps out of the ground. I attended college in an office building in Lower Manhattan, not far from Wall Street and the Fulton Fish Market. Even actuaries write poetry, my friends. English Lit was a required course at this fine institution. One of the courses was Introduction to Poetry, a class a lot of actuaries and insurance accountants signed for in the hopes of catching up on much needed sleep. My classmates and I would gather at the picnic tables at Sloppy Louie’s to discuss The Belljar. We completed poetry assignments under the FDR Drive, long before the Seaport was gentrified into its current state of urban splendor. A few of the guys in the class became desperate enough to offer me money if only I’d write a poem they could turn in. The money went into a jar to be lost to the only professional card player in school. One guy got an A behind one of my poems, another guy got a D. Young Herbert Lay Dancing was voted the poem mostly likely to drive others into insurance accounting by a jury of fish brokers on a cigarette break. Fortunately I don’t know where the hell the poem is, or I’d publish it, right here and now. Yeah. The blogosphere offers total freedom.