Barzun claimed what we call free verse to be merely prose that does not reach the
Right side of the page
Frost called it tennis without a net
I know they’re right and I blame the times that we live in an unpoetic age
I refer to the period from 1954 to the present
Which our critic-poets would style the apotheosis of decadence
And I have written approvingly of decadence in these pages
And decadence is a moral category
The carnivalization of history in which norms are overturned or at the least relaxed
And what can be the obscure effect of moral morbidity upon aesthetic deliquescence
No doubt some softening would be salutary when culture becomes hidebound and
Ossified
But you can’t justify the unjustifiable
You can’t give reasons for the unreasonable

Condondu pmisti effrent beliosic
I’ll give you decadence

Stevens was still around and Chaplin and Keaton and Lousie Brooks
Memorials of an earlier age true
But Toni Morrison and Dylan and Ginsburg and James Tate and Melnick
Anne Carson a baby in ‘54
The Beatles the Supremes Coltrane Miles and Aretha
Muddy Wolf and Willie
Dr John and Billy Preston
Otis James Brown and the Wicked Pickett
Scorsese and Campion and the Brothers Coen
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson
Julie Taymor and Rauschenberg Warhol and Jasper Johns
A lot of great poems are lists
I dream of a Borgesian comprehensive list of lists
And dreams are never fully realized alas in the world of causal reality
Horrible beautiful Francis Bacon
Matisse made it to November
I’m still not ready for the later James Baldwin
And Dr King asked when will white liberals ever be ready for the scintillating stars
And Barzun himself nearly a centenarian when he raised his lament
And of course Robert Frost
But then Ezra Pound so there was some putrefaction at the banquet

We seek permission from the greats don’t we
Whitman’s operatic meandering
Dickinson’s slant
But all the persons we know of are human
Every hero some disreputable affiliation

The poets of now with their writing-program credentials
Their university appointments
And universities not exactly bastions of incisive criticism
The chancellor of the University System of Georgia
An arch-Trumpist who stood by the Leader when lots of other rats were jump-
Ing ship
Who ascended to the gubernatorial palace by promising
A referendum on Georgia’s Confederate-spangled banner
A promise he failed to carry out after having achieved his goal
I have a faculty position
But will I survive the next post-tenure review
The next round of show trials

Vladimir Putin has a goal
To return to the halcyon Soviet Empire
All the rest is technical process
Systemic function
Strategy tactics and the will and materiel to carry them out
And the Empire must have its Emperor
Frederick the Great who knew a thing or two about monarchy
Stated that the duties of the prince are two
First self-preservation
And second the extension of territory

The times are always changing
The customs remain the same

That’s the problem isn’t it systems and their goals
And the people who set as their goal to profit from system
To gain the world
And systems collapse and new systems take their place
Poets don’t seek office Václav Havel notwithstanding
And Johann Wolfgang von who never held a witch’s sabbath in the
Halls of Weimar
And the Weimar Republic that gave way to what we dare not say
The unspeakable that must be remembered
And memory grows dimmer unless somebody speaks of it
Technical processes of millions murdered and ballistic missiles
And who used nuclear weapons first

I quite enjoy tennis without net well at any rate badminton
Without a winner
Where there’s only one rule
Keep it moving
A sentiment that would make Alexander Pope cringe
The pope of poet-critics
But Pope didn’t cringe he attacked
But he lisped in numbers and poetry came easy to him
And he scorned the slobs who had to count syllables
And what kind of prose has eleven clauses and nary a period
Poet-critic is redundant or in pedantic parlance a pleonasm
Or more accurately every poet is a critic
But not every critic is
Well you know

A poem is not a goal to be won
You don’t get there by trying real hard
There’s more sense in trying real easy