Best American Poetry dot Net!!

It's been a confusing week at Behrle Media Properties. But Confusion is Sex and Sex always makes me cry like a monkey. And like Conan, I drink my monkey tears and they make me stronger. I could go into the blah blah of the whole url switcheroo, but it's boring and it involves How Carefully I Manage My Brand and dial-testing and trying to get you the best funny stuff about the state of American Poetry the quickest and the wettest. Let's just move forward together in a Happier State of Utter Confusion.

The Jim Behrle Media Group is dedicated to pointing out that Poets Act Weird and if They Didn't, How much "Better Off" we'd all be. That sentence is parse-proof, so don't even try. Right now you are a tiny piston in the machine of American Poetry, pumping, pumping, pumping so the Academy of American Poetry can afford to have Liev Schreiber read a Wallace Stevens poem at Lincoln Center to rich people who hate poetry. Every move you make as an artist helps them create that kind of nonsense. We're taught to shake down other poets for money and in turn sending that money up the food chain hoping to get grants and books and degrees we can show our parents so they'll understand what we do for a living. But they will never understand. They are too busy watching CBS' "The Good Wife." Being a poet has never been an honorable profession and you should have probably known that before you got started. You have joined a sketchy collective of losers and deadbeats who, throughout history, have tried to work the least and write poems and get laid instead. Poetry is not Work, you should not call your poems Work as I think Catherine Meng said. Being a poet is about Gaming the System, taking their money and teaching your friends' books instead. We should not please our teachers or administrators. Unless they are our lovers. Then spend 5 minutes of your time trying to please them and fall asleep on them.

Should Kenny Goldsmith perform at the White House? Sure. I can't think of a poet whose poems would be better for an audience that hates poetry. If "poets" and "students" have to suffer through his nonsense, shouldn't White House hangers-on? Everyone's a murderer when you really get down to it. If you buy socks at Target or if I finally turn around and take a swat at the gigantic fly that has been following me around and buzzing at me for the last two days. Which I won't, maybe that Fly is a great Fly Poet. Just like our constantly Mewing cat Eve is a Language Poet. And the people who live and die in sock factories are poets and the people who bury sock factory employees are poets. If one does "perform" for the White House, it would be a great opportunity to tell them all off. So *that* might be fun. Maybe Kenny Goldsmith can spend his time on stage typing the New York Times like he said he did but actually had a computer do for him. I hope he wears that little hat, too. To be in the company of such fine poets as pop stars Aimee Mann, Jill Scott and Common is quite an accomplishment for a poet and I'm sure Kenny will be putting all of this on his C.V. Nicki Minaj, Ke$ha and Joshua Clover must have been too busy to attend.

Let what is Best in American Poetry shine through in you. We're not built to be suck-ups and narcs, poets are built to cause trouble and live outside the rules of American Society. I myself would never make much of a revolutionary, I have much too goopy a fondness for cops and soldiers and stuff. And really, who doesn't love uniformed thugs? I'm mad I spent so much of my life watching "Lost" instead of creating a new way to live. I'm mad I spent all these years blogging trying to shame Poets into Behaving Better. It's really just about me feeling superior to your run-of-the-mill careerist professor, which has been a total success. I bet I can create an even better Career out of Making fun of your Career and alienating every poet in America. Meet me at the bottom of public consciousness!

Now I wet my pants every time a helicopter buzzes above my McMansion.

If the Best American Poetry is the Best then you can also be the best. Simply by sucking-up and having the right friends and taking advantage of people. And somehow, while you're doing this, just being above the fray. Let the pawns fight each other in the trenches for the right to be roadkill. You, being the genius poet that you are, can float above it all like some kind of delicious cloud-filled panini. Books are dying, Colleges and Universities will soon be too expensive for anyone to afford. The old ways of being a poet are going Kaput. In the new ways to be a poet, you might write poems and Corporations might write you checks to hang out under trees and dance. If it's a brave new world then you too will have to be brave and step right off the cliff into the abyss. And reading this blog is a great first step.

Should kids really go into debt to find out what you know about poems? Probably not. So quit acting like a professor and go cure something. Careerism and Ambition are diseases in need of a Cure. The cure for Poetic Ambition is reality and marijuana. And the cure for Careerism is failure. Can't you help these poor bastards before they waste too much of their lives as a Piston when they could be a Laker or a Maverick or at least someone who makes the playoffs?