The Boys Consider Poetry!

A new poet laureate was named this week, and once again none of the boys received this honor. This year it went to Kay Ryan, known for "sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes" (New York Times). The naming of Ryan as poet laureate led the boys to reflect on poetry in general.

Kip: "In my opinion, clever wordplay is the domain of the limerick-writer. Poetry is a place for raw, bare emotions. I generally use it as a means of getting into a woman's pants. If I'm trying to woo a lady, I read her a poem or write her a poem."

Richard: "Does this work for you, Kip?"

Kip: "Once it did. Although I suppose the tequila shots may have played a role as well."

Cl.thier: "As a working poet myself, Kip is indeed onto something. Certain poems, like certain songs, are what we in the music industry refer to as 'panty-droppers.'

Richard: "At parties, I often recite Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the 'Gilligan's Island' theme. It's good for a few laughs. Hasn't gotten me laid though."

Cl.thier: "You should try reciting them to the tune of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

Z-Man: "For me, poetry is a means of exploring an altered consciousness. I know other ways too, but the good thing about poetry is that it's legal."

Richard: "It's legal now. At least until McCain gets elected."

Kip: "In terms of teaching poetry, I'm a big fan of making students memorize poems. It's nice in its own right, but when I make them memorize a work like Housman's "When I Was One-and-Twenty," I'm doing the students a larger service in that I'm introducing them to a life of everlasting sorrow and regret."

Dr. C: "Kip, I fondly remember the poetry-off we held at Quinton's when I pitted my excerpts from the Rubaiyat up against your more Romantic sensibilities while Richard and Brian F.nan competed with their paltry song lyrics."

Kip: "Songs aren't poems! How silly! I remember winning that competition, but that may be a drunken memory. I also won the masturbation contest."

Richard: "It was a competition regarding who masturbated the most!"

Cl.thier: "Let's end this discussion with a line from Kay Ryan: 'Everything contains some silence.'

Kip: " 'Everything contains some silence?' No shit! This is the contribution of a laureate? Let's close with this instead: " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,/ —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' . Now that, my friends, is the kind of line that makes women horny!"