BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2011 CARTOON BLOG

Best American Poetry 2011: The Cartoon!! Denise Duhamel's "My Strip Club"

2011-09-27T20:32:00.001-07:00

Best American Poetry 2011: The Cartoon!! Billy Collins' "Here and There"

2011-09-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

{Last year's dead parents poem}

Best American Poetry 2011: The Cartoon!! {The Back Cover}

2011-09-15T20:03:00.001-07:00

Best American Poetry 2011: The Cartoon!! BEGINS!!

2011-09-14T15:43:00.001-07:00

The Best American Poetry 2011 Cartoon Will Soon Begin

2011-08-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

As soon as I get my copy of the BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2011 from the Strand, the comics will begin. If you have a review copy and want to trade with me for a book, get in touch. Let's Get This On.

2011-05-06T12:28:00.000-07:00

2011-05-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Best American Poetry dot Net!!

2011-05-06T08:06:00.001-07:00

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?

Wasn't this the Best National Poetry Month Ever?

2011-05-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Recent lame scenarios significantly underestimate the kinds of fun I could have with people on the internet if I was motivated to and had the interest in doing something. Look at these poor cartoons for example. Most poets are immune to the cleansing effects of Satire. They cannot tell Ridicule from Praise. I am completely and almost totally self-absorbed. It's always amusing to see that other people think they are on my mind. Are you a taco? Then I am probably not thinking about you. As the saying goes, cluck, I have a boyfriend. And the boyfriend is also me.

Recent events caused me to lose my train of thought, not that I had much of one going on in the first place. National Poetry Month was pretty lame after the first few days. I mean, who is less fun? Guest Bloggers or Guest Twitterers? The Academy of American Poets seems to want to foster poetry, but only if *celebrities* are the ones reading the poetry. Maybe they should change their name to The Academy of American Poems? They don't seem to be so interested in Poets, at least ones that are living. Unless they play guitar.

So now Poetry Marketing can go back into its deep 11 month hibernation while "Poetry Non-Profits" start planning who they will invite to Tweet for them next year. Or if they'll ask Eliza Dushku to read Robert Lowell poems next April. All worthy and attainable goals. But can it be reported back that Poetry is More than a Yearly Meme? That the ball is being moved forward to a day when Poetry is the only Writing Genre left. The Day when our Verse will rule the Literaryverse? And we can all gain the same level of household notoriousness as Household Name Poets Robert Frost and....Emily Dickinson? Walt Whitman? There really aren't that many. We all know what the tallest mountain on earth is. And maybe even the second tallest. But poets have decided to scale like practically the 10th tallest mountain in the world. That won't even get your name on the front page during National Poetry Month.

Believe the paranoid lies if you must. The truth about me and what I can do on the internet is even more scary and more sinister. Thank God I only use my powers for Good, to flush out the crummy intentions just beneath the surface of many poets so that we all might behold and change our ways. I am waiting by the phone for the Vatican to call to say that I've been beatified, just like lame old John Paul. Some saint he was, he wasn't there the night in Boston where I helped the Red Sox win the World Series with ONLY THE POWER OF MY MIND. That was my first miracle. Well, my first miracle was on the night of my prom, but that's seriously another story. I could go on and on about CIA black bag jobs today and USA USA, but really, let's save our tears for when the US starts taking out European Heads of State using only purple lightning. Whose dioxin-poisoning seems pretty lame now? We can invade your Mansion Bunker and not even sprain an ankle.

The problem with National Poetry Month and the "Poetry Non-Profits" who really just want to Foster Poetry is that they not only want to be Rich, they want to be Loved. You gotta pay for love. At least that's what a prostitute once told me when I couldn't find my wallet one night. They also want to be cool! Like, hai kids! We tweet! Kthanxbye! LOL! Really, it is enough to be Rich than be loved or thought of as cool. Cool shrinks faster than parachute pants in the dryer. And Love is always ridiculous. Your body telling you to stay while your mind is like run away! Believe me, your body makes terrible decisions that are only funny for a while. It's better to reign that shit in early before you're living in a trailer park with a douchebag.

If the Academy of American Poets (I spelled that wrong in the cartoon. There's no helpful red line in real life to let me know when I'm misspelling shit) can only gain an audience for poetry by getting Celebrities to read poems, poets are little more than free bloggers to them, ala Huff Post. Patti Smith is a celebrity. She was the only thing resembling a poet at that Celebrities Read Poems at Lincoln Center thing. What does Chip Kidd know about poetry? So zero poets, but lots of B-List celebrities and lots of Poems. That's the kind of bullshit the Academy of American Poets wants to foster. That's what your fundraising dollars go to. Couldn't they have invited the guy who just won the National Book Award or the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn or somebody who was actually a poet to read like one poem between the kid from the Facebook movie and the guy who wrote the book that they made into a movie in which Nicole Kidman had a weird nose and won an Oscar? Pathetic! Shame on anyone who carries their water. Not! One! Poet!

Soon they will find a way to write poems without poets. And you'll be as useless as record store clerks, then, pals. The only way to foster poetry is to foster poets. They'd probably choose to foster boring, interchangeable poets. But if I was a big-name Interchangeable Poet, I'd be mad that they think Fiction Writers are Bigger Celebrities than you. Whose fault is that? Ask your Chancellors. Poets that want to hang out with celebrities for gasp just one magical night! Well, I ain't paying for it. I'd rather flush my money down the toilet than fall for Fundraising Schemes of "Poetry Non-Profits" who are basically poetry.com all over again.

Blogging is Dead Theme Song

2011-05-02T15:18:00.001-07:00

American Poetry Dot Biz in a Coma

2011-05-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

For reasons unrelated to recent squawking I've had to abandon my old url for a time. Sorry if you liked typing that address in. It is for sale for a reasonable amount. Like jimbehrle.com and canwehaveourballback.com it is the perfect place for your next robo-spam blogging. So this will be the place unless I buy billycollins.info which I probably won't but WHO KNOWS What Craziness I'll think of next?? Old stuff is Here for now.