Poems For Poets Iv

POEMS FOR POETS IV PROFESSOR POETS These are poems about professor poets and other wanna-be “intellectuals” who miss the main point of real poetry, which is to connect with readers via pleasing sounds and the communication of emotion as well as meaning. Professor Poets by Michael R. Burch Professor poets remind me of drones chasing the Classical queen's aging bones. With bottle-thick glasses they still see to write — droning on, endlessly buzzing all night. And still in our classrooms their tomes are decreed ... Perhaps they're too busy with buzzing to breed? Come Down by Michael R. Burch for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists Come down, O, come down from your high mountain tower. How coldly the wind blows, how late this chill hour ... and I cannot wait for a meteor shower to show you the time must be now, or not ever. Come down, O, come down from the high mountain heather blown, brittle and brown, as fierce northern gales sever. Come down, or your heart will grow cold as the weather when winter devours and spring returns never. Rant: The Elite by Michael R. Burch When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say: "Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art." ... I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart, isn’t this who *we* are? Aren’t we obviously *better*, and certainly *fairer* and *taller*, than *they* are? Though once I found Ezra Pound perhaps a smidgen too profound, perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito and the advantages of fascism to be taken *ad finem*, like high tea with a pure white spot of intellectualism and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free. I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art And it tempts us so to be *elite*, to stand apart ... but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true, echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you. Of course, politics has nothing to do with art, but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite, with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to fart so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet. "*You had to be there! We were falling apart with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!" Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air, gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair. Keywords/Tags: poet, poets, poems, poetry, poetic expression, rhyme, editor, publisher, mother, readers, recite, recitation, reciting, performance, reading, slam, political