The Atlantic
by Mathew Paust
Can't say I'm a poet
I've tried
Doesn't come out right
Sounds affected, pompous
Plus, I haven't read that many poems by acclaimed poets
And too many I've read had for me somewhere within them
A hint of the supercilious
A preemptive smirk, a ho hum if you don't get it
Tone
Intermittently I do
Do verse
A notion seizes my fancy
I play with it, enjoy wordplay surprises
More than merely clever or learned
Connivingly oblique or smugly vague, but words that work in concert
That get it right, the harmonics, the core of an insight, of a moment
With an ingenuous
Tone
The first poems I tried to sell, seven, I recall
Went to The Atlantic
Written during a break from the Watergate hearings
They came back, of course, but with a personal note: “clever, but oblique”
Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote this of them
My sole professional critique
I have the note somewhere, with the poems
The rejection stung, of course, but I cherish her generous
Tone
"The rejection stung, of course, but I cherish her generous
Tone"
Amusing and enjoyable.
Who has read enough of the acclamimed poets? Certainly not moi.**
Thanks, ladies. Nonnie, you, my dear, are one of the acclaimed poets who inspire moi!
Erika B-L is right, of course: the last word really, really makes it. Good ending!
*
FWIW: "Jubilat," out of UMassAmherst and available for $8, is wall-to-wall poetry, and, as far as I'm concerned, where poetry *is* now, given the modern world and all, right down to how people structure their lines on the page. They're all in! Just when you thought poetry got boring, or, like me, wondered if you were getting something (yet again, like Jr. High, like college) ... dig it!
http://www.jubilat.org/jubilat/?
Thanks, Smiley, for the kind words and the link. (I'm unfamiliar with Jubilat)
Good one, Matt!
*
Thanks, Bill. I sent this one to David Barber, current Atlantic poetry editor, which now uses a robo-transom for unsolicited submissions. Might well be a Chaplinesque type door that says Entrance but is really the exit.
This is wonderful, Matt. And Nonniie is certainly an acclaimed poet! Hope you find this treasure.*
Thanks, Tim. In searching for it Wednesday I did find a little bronze dog supposedly made from a melted meteorite. I'd been looking for it for years. Good omen, maybe?
I enjoyed this, Mathew. Nice form. Playfully self-deprecating. I've read several great poems you wrote.
Are you going to write about the meteorite dog?
I wrote about in for NPR's 3-Minute Fiction feature several years ago, Dianne, and may have posted it here. It's fictionalized, and that is when I started looking for the damned thing and started worrying I'd lost it.
Thanks for the kind words.
Here it is, Dianne: http://fictionaut.com/stories/mathew-paust/the-little-dog-from-outer-space
Never received such insight.
Your poems are inciteful, Gary, and they most definitely come from insight. ;) Thanks for the visit.
*
Tks, Sam.
Clever -- and not oblique.
Damn, Roz, I was conniving so hard to oblique it!
*, Mathew. Looks like you a good found one.
Tks, David.