Lee Patterson

               Lee Patterson is one of the first poets I’m reviewing from my neck of the woods, the tri-state metropolitan area. While he does live in Madison, NJ I won’t hold his NJ roots against him, as some of my favorite people are from New Jersey. In fact, there’s a certain weird charm I feel every time I take NJ transit on one of my many trips to that exotic land.

                What Lee does is quite clear: he delves into regular poetry on his more traditional poetry blog and engages with Flarf poetry (poetry derived partly or entirely from the internet on his larger, more updated blog). I find it interesting how he felt the need to divide the two into two separate blogs as I feel internet writing can often be just as good, if not better, than what counts as ‘officially published’ writing. Besides maintaining these two blogs, he has been published in “The Columbia Review” and “West 10^th”. Having become aware of him through Steve Roggenbuck’s #poetrybyemilydickinson project, something tailor-made for his interests, most of my focus will center on his No Name Key blog which gives me more information.

                Beginning with the “Independence Day Rain” he shows a certain flair for the readymade nature of Flarf poetry. Managing to avoid sounding forced or unnecessarily pointing attention to their origins, he creates the illusion of a relationship between the two characters in the poem. It’s sort of unusual, but I enjoy seeing the language used outside of context to create something more substantial.

                   One of my favorites has to be his only December poem called “Amazing Bundler Opiating”. In this he shows off one of the results of too much Google information. Cobbled together is information about an amazing Christian rock band, dissatisfaction on Obama’s healthcare plan, Opium, and the Taliban. None of that should make sense together, but a reader’s external information about any of those events or ideas is virtually unavoidable. A reader can manage to make sense out of it; much in the same way our brains are wired to understand words without vowels or with slight misspellings. 

                “I can smell your Heirlooms from here” is great for other reasons. He takes all these internet phenomena and creates a situation, a story. Originally starting with a de-friended friend on Facebook, the narrator tells us about how this awful Facebook friend once slipped acid in his beer. As he begins freaking out he thinks of ‘you’, a person never defined. Smelling heirlooms and the description of synesthesia gives it a surreal quality. 

                For his less-internet based poetry, I’d say the title poem of “Anonimo Key” is the best of the bunch. I’ve never been to the Florida Keys but I enjoyed the feel of the words and confusion chosen. Now that I haven’t been on a road trip for such a long time I kind of miss the bizarre nature of getting lost in new places, rather than getting lost in vaguely familiar places, which is far more common with me. 

                Strangely, I like both forms. Obviously I have a focus on here of internet based poetry, but I appreciated the fact he tried to differentiate between the two forms. That way I get a better idea of what the process must be. Having read both, I’d be interested in how one is decided for one or the other blog, what the criteria is for an ‘internet based’ versus ‘writing based’ poem, since so much of what I read and process is mostly through the internet at this point. I guess not knowing makes it more interesting. 

Stacey Teague

                 Whenever I think about the usefulness of twitter (a thought I have a lot) I think about a few people who actually make the experience worth it. These people are precious few, since so many twitter accounts appear to be bots or just shameless promotion. Encountering one of these people is akin to finding a four-leaf clover, you’re very lucky if you do. 

                Stacey Teague happens to be one of those people who make my twitter feed a better place. Thanks to Steve Roggenbuck’s wonderful project (#poetrybyemilydickinson) I noticed she was in on that digital poetry orgasm. Not sure if she was a poet, I checked her blogspot which she shares with her friend Susan. She is. 

                A lot of her poems seem to focus on animals. Perhaps she’s an animal person or enjoys thinking about their perspective on our overburdened life, all of its complications. Yet those animals have no idea how hard we have to work so they can just lollygag around the house, eating and sleeping. Things I should be doing.

                 “Post-Coitus” is the feeling of melancholy after coitus. It is also the name of Stacey’s first poem for NewWaveVomit. The poem’s focus seems to be on one of those low-key, mellow days which are tailor made for reflection. Even the sentence within the poem mentions how she talked about nothing much with her sister, who she loves. 

                “I Remember Everything” recollects a relationship in smeared details. Little bits and pieces of personality are displayed in the strangest of memories, for squishy moles and salts. Her line about “I love you” and how it can mean that or not mean that was particularly enjoyable. It makes me think of the words we say out of obligation rather than actual affection. Or the opposite could be true, where someone knows of the value of the words and refrains from saying it. 

                The last poem “Here are some of my “statement poems” feels like it should have another position, definitely before “I Remember Everything”. Perhaps it was Stacey’s intention to have thoughts on a previous relationship to come before details of the relationship, of making breakfasts and wet skinny jeans. 

                For LetPeoplePoems, she continues these thoughts on relationships. Dinosaurs are involved, actively listening. Since they are only dinosaurs, they don’t have to listen very hard. They only need to say ‘hmm’. “Brachiosaurus” appears to be a kind-hearted leaf-eater, who tries to comfort Stacey as she looks out on the harbor. Plus, she gets to climb on his back and find out about the bands he’s listening to, though we never hear any specific bands mentioned. 

                The other dinosaur poem “Diplodocus” expresses the narrator as a dinosaur. She expresses how we are vegetarians for moral reasons. Humans are aware of our own existence, making us feel a little crummier than the dinosaurs.  Due to this awareness, we feel heavier than several-ton extinct creatures. That is a bummer. 

                Her poems have a few running themes or conditions. I notice for nearly all of them it is raining or the words give an impression of rain. This may be due to her location in general, I’m not sure, and I’ve never been to New Zealand since I’m not a huge Lord of the Rings fan. Umbrellas get a great deal of mention, as do harbors and being wet in general. Animals are revered, particularly dinosaurs. Relationships form the basis of most of her poems. These are shown off in realistic ways, without being too happy or unhappy. It is a rare feat to capture a relationship in poetry without veering too heavily towards positivity or negativity. 

                She’s currently making a poetry anthology and needs submissions from New Zealand and Australia. Anyone from either of those locations should join immediately.

Poetry by Emily Dickinson

               Welcome to the Boykitten’s (or humanity's, take your pick) most collaborative effort ever! Poetry by Emily Dickinson is for all to partake in its many pleasures.  Steve Roggenbuck is the mastermind behind this deceptively simple concept. Multiple levels of collaboration are built into the concept. This allows people the ease to take part in the project in as big or as small of a role as they want. 

                Two roles are available to anyone interested.  You can work as a remix/editor of the material once it has all been compiled. Some material might be usable as-is, but other material might require forms of editing or rephrasing. While this may be wonderful work, going through the process of editing (and you can contact Steve at   steveroggenbuck[at]gmail.com for information on this) there’s a second role to play as well. 

                You can tag your tweets with #poetrybyemilydickinson. Any tweet with this tag will be considered as source material for this poetry project. So instead of using twitter for whatever you’re supposed to use twitter for, you can actually contribute something to literature and society in general. What Steve wants to do is show that Twitter and blogs are not useless for writers, but actually an important instrument in creating new bodies of work.

                Going through the tag, I’ve been introduced to countless new twitter friends and followers, including the 2011 Poet Laureate. I’m not sure if this is one of the desired results of Steve’s project, but it is an additional benefit. If you bother reading all the tweets under the hashtag, you’ll see a vast variety of people and ideas. Somehow, Steve’s managed to create an entire community of poets based off of a single phrase. These people have begun to follow and re-tweet each other. Already I have this as one of my saved searches, and I check up on it to see how people are doing. Personally, I don’t know how Steve is going to deal with re-tweets of the better ones (or more interesting ones).

                Part one involves the creation of this vast body of material. What I’d suggest is for you to do it, in order to create an even better project. The more participation this gets, the better it will be. Additionally, you might gain new followers and discover new online poets at the same time. Or you might become interested in poetry, which would accomplish another one of Steve’s goals. 

                Of course, Steve wants more people to get interested in this art form. Hopefully, by having such an easy way to encourage participation, he’ll be able to attract plenty of new people who otherwise might not have engaged or thought about poetry. That’s one result. Another will be the hope of Google-bombing the phrase “poetry by Emily Dickinson”. 

As I’m writing this, I notice the exact (un-spaced) phrase of ‘poetrybyemilydickinson’ is already the third result on Google search. So perhaps with a few more tweets, this can become the number one result. Steve’s calculations suggest this would hijack roughly 50,000 visitors per month. Instead of people simply finding out more about some dead person, they’ll find out more about an alive and kicking Steve Roggenbuck, a boykitten in the truest sense of the term.  Consider Steve the Santa Claus of online poetry, wrapping up gifts for your brain. 

                I encourage everyone to partake in this fun and interactive collaboration. Join the party. Participate today. Learn how to engage others through the power of poetry!

PS:

 If you would prefer to have poems of over 140 characters, there is another option as well. The fantastic concept is you ask to be added onto the author list. After that, you’ll be approved to publish a poem on there, full-length. Double-posting is not allowed, meaning if you’re the most recent poet, you need to wait until there’s a new submission. Go here "Let People Poems" to learn more about this wonderful site. Thank you.