New & Easy Poems to Promote Your Health and Safety
by John Blandly



EXCERPT

Introduction

I never planned on being a poet—never intended to—never wanted to—it just happened.

Although I say I never intended to be a poet, I studied poetry in college. This was no more than a trick at the time. You get a lot of reading in College, but if you take a poetry course, how much can they make you read? If you are told to read four poems, big deal, that's about four pages. I can do that in ten minutes. The best thing was to take contemporary poetry courses. No one knew anything for sure about modern poetry.

I also used to take contemporary literature courses, on the same premise.

As I look back upon the T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings poems I studied, I have to say I got my best education in their poetry in high school, where I was taught by Christian Brothers. I remember the brilliance of these poems, but no longer understand them.

Ezra Pound forever removed Eliot's clarity. Wallace Stevens, and other guys like him, were just inscrutable, though you have to applaud someone making a few bucks off "The Emperor of Ice Cream."

The twentieth century celebrated non-representational art. This spread to fiction, poetry and the lyrics of modern music. Such fashionable nonsense is a trend that, almost a decade in to the twenty-first century, has shown no sign of abating in music. The fad of movies, novels, and poems that you cannot understand is almost over. It was fun while it lasted, although it seems no more worthwhile than experimenting with marijuana.

I'm not criticizing here. I have no right to do that. Actually, as previously babbled about, you have to congratulate someone who can publish stuff like Finnegan's Wake.

I have discovered recently the poems of Billy Collins, an alumnus of my college, Holy Cross, who has proven, against all odds, that a Poet Laureate can be a fantastic poet. You can actually understand what Collins is saying! Though I haven't read as much of him, I have recently read Mark Halliday, and think he is excellent. Sure, I'm a fan of Allen Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas. Sylvia Plath is heavy, as well as many new poets, like Lyn Lifsun and B. Z. Nidich. I hope I've spelled their names right. Perhaps the editor can straighten this out.

I have to thank super poet Mary Panza, a very warm and humorous person, who encouraged a poet named John Blandly when he read his poems at Borders in the 1990's on Wolf Road in Colonie.

I gave road tests to many of the poems in this book at Borders, a bookstore I still am devoted to.

None of the poems in this book come with their introductions, the little soft shoe I liked to give in the hopes of entertaining the audience.

THE GREATEST POEM EVER WRITTEN

There are no carnivorous animals
in Istanbul
and if there were
I wouldn’t recognize them

even in costume.

For these days, ceremonies
are run in no less than
ceremonious fashion.
Like, let us say,
Parliamentary rules.

Etiquette may not exist
and good manners
may not be strong
but garnish a party
with fine elegant ladies
and tall strapping men
and I’ll excuse myself,
par excellence,
this must be the end.

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