Plain hoss-sense in poetry-writin’
Would jes’ knock sentiment a-kitin’!
Mostly poets is all star-gazin’
And moanin’ and groanin’ and paraphrasin’!

“A Wholly Unscholastic Opinion”
James Whitcomb Riley


These little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be.

“In Memoriam”
Alfred Tennyson


. . . with a puling infant’s force
They sway’d about upon a rocking horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul’d!

“Sleep and Poetry”
John Keats


I have seen eddikated mules in a sirkus.

“The Mule”
Josh Billings

 

I. Writers may write in clear English, without needlessly opaque, spectacular and nonlinear associations. Code obfuscates; poetic code obfuscates utterly.

II. Exclude Italian epigraphy: it adds no weight, but hot air, pretension and enigma by association. Likewise omit recondite and cryptic literary allusions in French, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Kwakiutl and other dead tongues. Do not fall back on hieroglyphics, pictograms, petroglyphs or cuneiform to enhance or bulk out effete or shaky poetry. If your poem is infirm, rewrite in lucid English, or perform euthanasia. There is nothing that can be said in Periclean Greek or Mandarin that cannot be equally well-expressed in English.

III. Rhyme, if you want, at your discretion. Use traditional verse forms; write ballads. It is not essential to have exactly ten or fourteen syllables per line, nor is it essential to make each line of verse scan with scientific precision, unless these are tricks you are trying. Elevate not tricks into principles.

IV. Avoid self-absorption. When all is said and done, who cares whether your mother didn’t give you red ballet slippers when you were a child? Poets may write poetry about topics of current social and political relevance, about issues. Above all, poets should seek to explore matters other than the infinite nuances of the poet’s own remarkable and unique personality and its bitter resentment at the implacable facts of mortality. Personality is the last refuge of the ego.

V. Poets may, without penalty of scorn or deprecation, refrain from cultivating their sensibilities via thorough and systematic derangement of the sensorium by means of gargantuan and compulsive indulgence in alcohol and other drugs. Brain damage has little to recommend it as an adjunct to art.

VI. One may show without embarrassment one’s moral commitment in strong, lucid verse, and not coyly posture dada in surreal dreamsongs. It is axiomatic that poets and barbers and ranchers and shoe clerks are sensitive people. Poetic sensitivity resembles nothing so much as a kind of garrulous petulance, a mannerism. One should be responsible for what one writes, and not pretend the poet simply presides at the birth of the poem, leaving the waif deumbilicized and orphaned, subject only to the care and interpretation of others. The refusal to say what one was “getting at” in a poem may validly lead the reader to infer that very likely the poet was not “getting at” anything at all, but simply rollicking with words, a valid, fun, and trivial use of the language. Some poems are clearly jokes; others are unintentional jokes.

VII. Write nonconfessional poetry. Poets should feel no compulsion to parade countless seductions or repetitious, befuddled drunken binges. A poet may be openly heterosexual and not write about it.

VIII. Write light verse, satire, parody, and other impish forms of humorous poetry. Limericks. Poets need not take themselves so seriously. And since poetry does not automatically deliver Truth, poetry should not stand in need of rabbinical interpretation in order to be understood. Poets should take as one of their chief goals: TO ENTERTAIN.

IX. It shall be OK for poets to live nonsuicidally, nonaddicted, and in a manner consistent with holistic health. This does not mean that the poet must become an ardent promoter of bean sprouts, nor must the poet be enjoined to write lusty paeans to yogurt and stoneground wholewheat flour.

X. Thou shalt write and rewrite; on the other hand, thou shalt not be led into the temptation of writing fast food poems and junk verse, unless thou hast published several novels, gained a cultish following, and it looks like there may be money in it.

This is a shortened version of Mark Worden’s “Lucidist Manifesto,” which first appeared in the Small Press Review (Box 100, Paradise, California, 95969, $12 a year) last year. I liked it so much I asked for permission to reprint it.

— Ed.