Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan - Gawker Comments

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

FORGETITJAKE — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:56:24 EDT

So the life of a lyric poet is 5.6 years shorter than that of "a non-fiction specialist," a phrase presumably coined by a journalist or other non-fiction specialist. But then the poet gets immortality, whereas the journalist gets daily shame throughout life, followed by eternal oblivion.

FORGETITJAKE

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

LadlySack — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:43:55 EDT

All writers are assholes.

LadlySack

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

debord at work — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:52:40 EDT

that being said, does anyone want to buy a copy of my chapbook?

debord at work

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

VirusWithShoes — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:38:50 EDT

@slackerina: I second that. Here's to Gawker from distracting us from an untimely death.

VirusWithShoes

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

GollyG — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:15:27 EDT

So does this mean that if she hadn't written The Bell Jar, Plath would have died even younger?

GollyG

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

slackerina — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:02:48 EDT

Who bothers to fund these studies? The Center for Long-Lived Failed Novelists?

Speaking On Behalf of All Poets, most of us are too busy fiddling with line breaks or reading Gawker to worry about our early deaths.

slackerina

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

famousauthor — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:43:30 EDT

It all has to do with the income.

famousauthor

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

VirusWithShoes — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:41:29 EDT

I've written a shit-load of pretty decent poetry in my time, and I'm a fucking wreck.

There should be health warnings on every rhyming dictionary, and rhymezone.com should be blocked by netnanny etc.

I mean - physically, I'm not bad. But mentally? Sheesh.

VirusWithShoes

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

Koreanish — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:25:25 EDT

I remember a student saying to me I was "really fit for a writer" and I thought it was this whole other thing. You know. And now I can see it was more like this, or...

..actually maybe not.

Koreanish

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

Hamud Ibn Hamud — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:05:27 EDT

Here's a fun and instructive experiment:

The next time you're in a bookstore or library, take a gander at the "complete works" compilations of a few American poets. Notice the size of these books.

Next, saunter over to the fiction and, as best you can, get a feel for the "complete works" of a few not-especially-prolific American writers. Joan Didion, for example. Notice the number and size of these books.

What do we discover?

Poets have an incredible amount of time on their hands!

Over the course of a career, fiction writers compose many, many hundreds more pages of text than do poets.

Is it any wonder that American poets have traditionally needed a twenty-four hour shuttle service to various "clinics" and other assorted loony bins?

I'm not saying that I don't love those guys and value their work. But this country really needs to marshal its resources and put together some sort of national program that will help poets constructively fill the countless hours they'd normally spend alone in a room, staring blankly at the mid-distance, listening to the voices telling them that it's time to drink a lot of cheap vodka and start shaving off that nasty build-up of skin on their wrists.

Hamud Ibn Hamud

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

Hipp — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:00:26 EDT

More or less dangerous than Kurtwood Smith driving you to suicide for wanting to be an actor?

Hipp

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

belltolls — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:58:03 EDT

Fluers du Malnutrition.

belltolls

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

Knucklehead Babylon — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:54:43 EDT

There once was a poet from Canarsie
Who caught a dreadful case of the palsy
He trembled at night
And looked such a fright
And now he is pushing up daisies

Knucklehead Babylon

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

mitchel_stevens — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:54:13 EDT

This survey is so confuddled that it's no wonder Mishima took himself out.

mitchel_stevens

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

IndianSlipper — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:50:04 EDT

Thank God I just write fiction!

IndianSlipper

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

CodePink — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:49:08 EDT

Oh, my God, the biggest goosebump movie moment of my life was when those boys stood up on those desks at the end of DPS. I mean, I was like 13 at the time and hoped that the jocks in my grade would suddenly have a turnaround and invite me to their cave for poetry readings and whiskey.

CodePink

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

riskybusiness — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:44:54 EDT

This is not surprising at all, considering how stabby poets make me feel.

riskybusiness