Gene Twaronite's Blog, page 2

Dissed by the People’s Poet

It was the third time I had come to hear him read at the Tucson Festival of Books. As always, Billy Collins was charming and funny as he shared his poems and reflections on the art of poetry. For good reason he’s been called the People’s Poet. I suspect many in the packed auditorium were poets like me, inspired by his accessible, light-hearted poems that didn’t need to be decoded. And he taught us that it’s OK to use humor. We laughed and applauded this living hero of poetry. Little did I suspect that we would be dissed.

When he put on his hat as a former Distinguished Professor of the City University of New York, he revealed an imperious side of himself I had never suspected. 83% of poems published today are not worth reading, he pontificated. Or maybe 82%, he added, as if to soften the blow with a tired attempt at levity. And there are just too many poems, he went on to say, and too many MFA programs pumping out new poets and poems. Then he rattled off some of his favorite big-name poets, many from the New York School, of course.

I thought about all the excellent regional, local, and so-called minor poets I’ve read, whose work never made it to the top, or Billy’s exalted 17%. I thought about all the beautiful as yet unpublished poems I’ve been privileged to read in workshops and critique groups. And I wondered what he might think of the 60,000 books freely available in aisle after aisle of the University of Arizona Poetry Center Library, said to be one of the finest and largest print/digital collections of contemporary poetry in America. Would he think there were too many?

I doubt if Founder Ruth Walgreen Stephan would have agreed with Billy’s 83%. Her vision was to create a place and a collection where people could freely choose “to encounter poetry without intermediaries,” and not be told by some snobby critic or professor what to read or not to read.

This is not to say that all poems are created equal. We each have different tastes in poetry, but there are some poems that truly stand out from the rest. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, if you read a poem and it makes you feel physically as if the top of your head were taken off, you know, now that is a poem. A poem that can sustain you.

But then there are the others. These are the poems considered at least good enough to be published in a collection alongside the gems. Some are quite good, even though they may not take your head off and you may never read them again. And some you will stop reading after the first line or stanza. And some, truth be told, are obvious fillers. They are the poems you pass over on the way to the good stuff. While I would totally disagree with Billy’s arrogant and dismissive 83% (which almost made me stand up and shout at him, I am the 83%!), it is true that with all the good and great poems in the world, some poems just aren’t worth our time. But as Ruth would remind us, it is a personal choice between you and the poet, and no one else.

While I’ve been hard on old Billy here, I should point out that I have always been a big fan, and frequently dip into his books for inspiration (I currently have thirteen different collections of his, all signed). He is arguably the most popular living poet in the U.S. today, and has produced a substantial body of work that has touched the lives of readers around the world. Though not everyone is a fan of his easy-going, free verse style, I think even his critics will agree that most of his poems are well-crafted and worth reading. I suspect that people will still be reading some of his more famous poems long after he’s gone. Some of my own favorites include “Aristotle,” “Forgetfulness,” and “Cosmology,” in which he envisions “the earth/with its entire population of people and things/resting on the head of Keith Richards.” And how could I forget his frequently anthologized “Introduction to Poetry,” with its suggestion to “drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out,” while all his students want to do is beat with a hose “ to find out what it really means.”

One thing I’ve noticed is that Billy rarely if ever writes political poetry or gets dark or depressed in his poems, usually managing to inject levity into even the most serious themes. An  exception is “Building with Its Face Blown Off,” which I’ve always loved for its bare-boned emotion in the face of a scene increasingly all too common in these war-torn times.

How suddenly the private
is revealed in a bombed-out city,
how the blue and white striped wallpaper

of a second-story bedroom is now
exposed to the lightly falling snow
as if the room had answered the explosion

But there are times when Billy has really let me down. Take his poem “Looking for a Friend in a Crowd of Arriving Passengers: A Sonnet,” which begins with the first line “Not John Whalen” and then repeats it for twelve more lines until his last line “John Whalen.” Worth reading? I think not. Only someone as famous as Billy Collins could get away with that. And yes, Billy, we all know that these days the only remaining rule for a sonnet is that it has fourteen lines.

When the reading was over, I grabbed my copy of his latest book and got in line for him to sign it. “Thanks for coming today,” I told him, then added as an afterthought, “and thank you for inspiring so many of us poets to write and contribute to the glut of poems you describe.” He quietly signed my book and gave me a nervous smile.   

Read more about Billy Collins here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/billy-collins

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Forever 21

In light of the fact that Forever 21 has just declared bankruptcy, here’s the poem I wrote inspired by the store. It’s part of my fourth collection Shopping Cart Dreams published by Kelsay Books.

All the dresses
in the store look
made for people who
never have to worry
if they’ll fit.

To be twenty-one again,
with firm body
and all parts working
and the world
in front of me,
to feel the power
and daily glow of lust.

But there’s a catch
to freezing time.
No longer is it
merely a moment
to forget or recall,
but a vise
that holds me fast
in eternal replay,

like that time I got wasted
and tried making love
with a girl I had finally
wooed into bed
but missed
my connection
and I had to go on
missing it
in perpetuity,

like the look on
my father’s face
when he picked me
up at the airport
and I had to keep
on viewing it
as if in a museum
like some portrait
of failure,

like the long train ride
for my physical
when I almost got drafted
to fight in a hopeless war
in a distant jungle
and my pulse rate
remained at 140
for hours until
the doctors finally
sent me home
but instead of going home
I had to sit there
dwelling on what
might have been
as my heart beats
double time forever.

First published in Hawaii Pacific Review.

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Plucked in a Far-off Land

My prose poem “Plucked in a Far-off Land” was just published in NewMyths Online Magazine. You can read it here: https://sites.google.com/newmyths.com/newmyths-com-issue-70/issue-70-stories/plucked-in-a-far-off-land

Tucson Festival of Books

I will be at the Tucson Festival of Books on Sunday, March 16, from 1:30 to 4:30. Look for me at the Indie Authors Pavilion – Adult Fiction and Nonfiction. There’s no booth number, but it’s a big tent in the Exhibitors Section #200-261 on the Main Mall South near the UA Mall tent. Copies of my poetry collections as well as my other adult books will be on display and available for sale. For those of you who live here or visiting, this two-day event is one of the largest book festivals in the country and not to be missed. So many books and so many authors! Hope to see you there.

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A Place You Never Knew

My poem “A Place You Never Knew” was just published in the spring 2025 issue of Innisfree Poetry Journal, their 40th issue https://www.innisfreepoetry.org/innisfree-40/gene-twaronite/

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Reading at Tucson Desert Art Museum

I will be sharing poems from my new collection Death at the Mall at the Tucson Desert Art Museum on Saturday, Feb. 22, at 3:30 pm.

The Tucson Arts Poetry Series (TAPS) was started Feb. 2023. Each 4th Saturday of the month, at 3:30 pm, two Arizona poets are highlighted reading their published work. The event takes place in 25,000 square feet of breathtaking art and artifacts. TAPS is sponsored, in part, by the Arizona State Poetry Society (ASPS).

The public is invited to all monthly readings at the museum free of charge, though a modest donation would be greatly appreciated to help support the museum. Arrive early and browse the gallery before attending the readings.

The Last Fact

This poem is from my second collection, The Museum of Unwearable Shoes. I thought I’d share it today in honor of Mark Zuckerberg, who just announced that Meta is doing away with fact checking. Apparently facts are no longer important in these heady days of shifting reality, and we remember how his empire all started with an app to rate hot girls back in college.

Dedicated to Mark Zuckerberg

You might think it one of those folks
like earth is round or the sky is blue,
but those two died years ago
in a rest home where old facts go
to die in peace.
Everyone knows earth is flat
and the sky any color you want.
Like his parents—death and old age—
he was stubborn till the end,
hiding out in dark taverns of falsehood and innuendo,
drinking absinthe to forget,
but forget he could not, no more than
a forge can forget what it fires,
or a sieve forget what it filters.
Reality police caught up one day
and brought him in for questioning.
They beat the truth out of him till
there was nothing left but skin and bones
and a shiny red stain,
as the sun sank in the east
and the stars shone from the heavens
like distant campfires.

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Credo

Here’s an ABC poem (also known as abecedarian), one of the poems in my latest collection Death at the Mall. The poem gets its name because the first letter of each line begins with the letter A and follows sequentially through the alphabet to Z.

A Sparrow Alone

Found Poem from The Book of Psalms

We spend our years as a tale that is told.
I have considered the days of old,
the years of ancient times.
We see not our signs.

My days are consumed like smoke.
I am weary with my groaning.
For I have eaten ashes like bread,
and mingled my drink with weeping.
I watch, and am as a sparrow
alone upon the house top.
I have seen the wicked in great power,
and spreading himself like a green bay tree.
He sits in the lurking places of the villages:
his eyes are privily set against the poor.
His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud:
under his tongue is mischief and vanity.
The wicked walk on every side,
when the vilest men are exalted.
If the foundations be destroyed,
what can the righteous do?

I was dumb with silence.
My heart was hot within me,
while I was musing the fire burned.
Deep calls unto deep.
Hear this, all ye 
inhabitants of the world:
Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace
have kissed each other.
They go from strength to strength.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

This poem is part of my latest collection Death at the Mall (Kelsay Books)

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Death at the Mall Reading

For those of you in Tucson, just a reminder that I will doing my first reading from my new collection Death at the Mall, at Woods Memorial Library, on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 10:30 am. Here’s a flyer with more information.

G Twaronite Poetry reading Dec 2024Download