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girl in tight place,
nestled, snuggled, firmly ensconced
or, on some (ummm, many?) days, tightly wedged
& stuck
in the crevice of the bourgeousie
& in a place
where the college loans, credit card debt,
mortgage payment, lawn care, house renovation mania (in which i refuse/am unable to participate),
& the hoards of seemingly perfect children
who are neatly groomed & consistently do all their homework
close in on me
like the walls of the giant garbage compactor in
star wars episode IV: a new hope
that almost crushes luke, leia, han solo, and chewy.
like last night,
around 2 a.m.
i'm lying on the couch
wide awake
alternating between plans
to become a more fit citizen of such a neighborhood
& a way to get a jet pack to blast the hell outta here.
call it schadenfruede, call it cold comfort, but it makes me
feel a little better to know there were (& are) poets who were even worse
than i at managing the details of life, who screwed up &
acted like bigger douchebags than me--as if my floundering
& haplessness might be a sign of genius,
as if majorly screwing up, as if profligacy, could make one
a poetic genius
(fallacy:
ad hoc, ergo propter hoc).
as in: it could be worse. as if, through juxtaposition,
i could look real good.
check these folks out, and congratulate yourself for your good behavior or
decide that maybe your bad behavior can be forgiven (unless otherwise noted, the link on the
poet's name will take you to the website the italicized quote is taken from):
1.
christopher smart
In spite of having a wife and family to support, Smart continued as
thriftless as ever in the 1750s, spending freely on clothes and
entertainment and borrowing from Newbery when he got into difficulties.
Hunter describes him as "friendly, affectionate, and liberal to
excess," but so regardless of practicalities that according to his wife
he often invited company to dinner when there was not enough in the
house to provide a meal even for themselves.
2.
anne sexton
one of my favorite poets, i'm hesitant to say that mental illness is bad behavior, but who knows where on the continuum of drug abuse, personal betrayal, & instablility the responsibility for her actions lies. here's a an exceprt from
her bio at modern poetry that's a little salacious:
Estranged from many of her former friends, Sexton became difficult for her maturing
daughters to deal with. Aware that many of her readers did not like the religious poetry
that she had recently begun writing with her more personal themes, Sexton became nervous
about her poetry. Readings had always terrified her, but now she employed a rock group to
back up her performances. She forced herself to be an entertainer, while her poems grew
more and more privately sacral. In 1972 she published The Book of Folly and, in
1974, the ominously titled The Death Notebooks. Later that year, she completed The
Awful Rowing toward God, published posthumously in 1975. Divorced and living by
herself, Sexton was lonely and seemed to be searching for compassion through love affairs.
She continued to be in psychotherapy, from which she evidently gained little solace. In
October 1974, after having lunched with Maxine Kumin, Sexton asphyxiated herself with
carbon monoxide in her garage in Boston.
3.
allen ginsberg
so obvious i hardly need to put him on the list, but here's a tidbit i didn't know before today, when i began seeking information on the foibles of others in order to soothe myself:
Known for their unconventional views, and frequently rambunctious
behavior, Ginsberg and his friends also experimented with drugs. On one
occasion, Ginsberg used his college dorm room to store stolen goods
acquired by an acquaintance. Faced with prosecution, Ginsberg decided
to plead insanity and subsequently spent several months in a mental
institution.
4.
ezra pound
duh.
the
new york times puts it mildly in
this article about
poetry magazine & pound's relationship with the editor of
poetry, harriet monroe:
Pound kept badgering Monroe over the years, while she indulged his bad
temper and seemingly limitless capacity for self-pity. Before long, he
was living in Rapallo and praising Fascists, and his letters appear
less frequently and then vanish as he disappeared into propaganda and
madness. But before he turned political, Pound was poetry's No. 1 nut,
and when he leaves the pages of ''Dear Editor,'' much of the fun does,
too.
5.
derek walcott
i wanted to study with him as an undergraduate. the gossip pegs him as a philanderer, and in my own investigation, a playwright friend of mine who studied with him apparently did not get sexually harrassed by him, but did tell me the following, "he was always drunk. and he has a.d.d. so i learned a lot from him because i had to work so hard to keep his attention. the minute he got bored he would quit reading your work and giving you feedback."
remember the 2002 scandal about him, wherein two poets behaved badly, the little "contretemps" between ruth padel and derek walcott? here's a little excerpt from
the guardian article:
There is something a bit grubby and commercial in Walcott's behaviour,
certainly according to the claims made against him, in the 80s and 90s,
that the grades he gave reflected the fact he'd been sexually rejected,
in the first instance, and in the second, that he wanted sex in return
for help producing a play. You'd want a poet to have more soul,
wouldn't you? Sure, fall in love with a student, the heart wants what
it wants – the poet's heart (I guess) doubly so. But don't measure out
your love in half-hours and end-of-term grades. What would TS Eliot say?
6.
lord byron
In June 1813 Byron began an affair with his twenty-nine-year-old half
sister, Augusta. Married since 1807 to her spendthrift cousin, Colonel
George Leigh, she had three daughters and lived at Six Mile Bottom,
near Cambridge. With his mother’s death in 1811, Augusta became Byron’s
sole remaining close relative, a situation which doubtless increased
his sense of identity with her. While no legal proof exists, the
circumstantial evidence in Byron’s letters dating from August 1813 to
his horrified confidante Lady Melbourne strongly suggests an incestuous
connection with Augusta.
In the midst of this relationship,
Byron received a letter from Annabella Milbanke, who confessed her
mistake in rejecting his proposal and cautiously sought to renew their
friendship. Correspondence ensued. He later wrote Lady Melbourne that
Augusta wished him "much to marry—because it was the only chance of
redemption for two persons."
7.
samuel taylor coleridge
from wikipedia
Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return.
From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in
Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would
improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of
opium. Thomas de Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets
that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium
addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and
creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however, that this
reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.
His opium addiction (he was using as much as two quarts of laudanum
a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife
Sarah in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his
annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814.
8.
sylvia plath
i can scarce bring myself to add her to the list as her behavior is not so much "bad" as the behavior of one severely, fatally afflicted by mental illness. her suicide during her children's nap time leads one to believe that the woman had truly run out of hope, options, and her last ounce of strength.
nonetheless, i think about her when times get tough. a troubled life can also contain transcendent goodness and beauty. the exploration of darkness can also guide us to the light.
9.
charles bukowski
from
the poetry foundation:
Ending up near death in Los Angeles, Bukowski started writing again,
though he would continue to drink and cultivate his reputation as a
hard-living poet.
&
“Published by small, underground presses and ephemeral mimeographed little magazines,” described Jay Dougherty in Contemporary Novelists,
“Bukowski has gained popularity, in a sense, through word of mouth.”
“The main character in his poems and short stories, which are largely
autobiographical, is usually a down-and-out writer [Henry Chinaski] who
spends his time working at marginal jobs (and getting fired from them),
getting drunk and making love with a succession of bimbos and
floozies,” related Ciotti. “Otherwise, he hangs out with fellow
losers—whores, pimps, alcoholics, drifters.”
10.
George Crabbe
from wikipedia
He continued to rack up debts that he had no way of paying, and his creditors pressed him. He later told Walter Scott and John Gibson Lockhart
that "during many months when he was toiling in early life in London he
hardly ever tasted butchermeat except on a Sunday, when he dined
usually with a tradesman's family, and thought their leg of mutton,
baked in the pan, the perfection of luxury." In early 1781 he wrote a
letter to Edmund Burke
asking for help, in which he included samples of his poetry. Burke was
swayed by Crabbe's letter and a subsequent meeting with him, giving him
a gift of money to relieve his immediate wants, and assuring him that
he would do all in his power to further Crabbe's literary career. Among
the samples that Crabbe had sent to Burke were pieces of his poems The Library and The Village.[15][16]
A short time after their first meeting Burke told his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds
that he had "the mind and feelings of a gentleman." Burke gave Crabbe
the footing of a friend, admitting him to his family circle at Beaconsfield.
There he was given an apartment, supplied with books, and made a member
of the family. The time he spent with Burke and his family helped in
enlarging his knowledge and ideas, and introducing him to many new and
valuable friends including Charles James Fox and Samuel Johnson. He completed his unfinished poems and revised others with the help Burke's criticism. Burke helped him have his poem, The Library, published anonymously in June 1781, by a publisher that had previously refused some of his work. The Library was greeted with a small amount of praise from critics, and only slight public appreciation.[17]
a few questions arise from the very preliminary research i did today for this post, thinking about the poets who were gamblers, addicts, insane, philanderers, divas, narcissists, & fools:
1) where are all the bad girl poets?
2) why do the biographers of more than half of the ten poets listed attribute the emotional instability of the poet's mother as a factor in that poet's subsequent bad behavior? (plath's problems are famously attributed to her father, but ultimately rest on her mother who was too weak to protect her.)
3) i know this question is sort of passé, but does the poet seek trouble as artistic material or does the troubled being seek art as transcendence from a troubled life?
4) there must be a million other cool, badly behavaed poets out there. who are they, and what did they do?
legwear: black lace leggings à la madonna circa 1983 (see picture above)
inspired by: poetic output in the midst of starvation, abuse, depression, and illness
looking forward to: performance with
lalage at muse music tonight
