Saturday Suck: (365) Days of Lousy

Steve Almond is an awesome writer. But not his poetry. No, that is some pretty horrible dreck that makes even casual poetry listeners perk up their ears and say, "Am I crazy or is that just plain awful?"


Fortunately, Almond knows it. And will tell everyone within earshot about it, as in this piece about his experience as a short story writer temporarily converting to the Church of Poetry. A sample:


"I was going to be a new kind of poet, not obscure and effete, but gritty and plainspoken."


"I quickly mastered the poet voice, a sonorous patois with precise enunciations and dramatic half pauses that stressed the gravity of each syllable. Years later, I would crack up friends by reading, say, the ingredients on a soda can in my poet voice."


"I completed the manuscript within a few weeks and forced no fewer than four actual poets to read it. Their response was, in retrospect, idiotically generous. There was an awful lot of red ink to be parsed, but in my version of things, these were quick fixes. I was going to be a famous poet, without even committing suicide."




Before you read the sample poem, you really have to listen to this podcast: Poetry Off the Shelf: Seven Essential Dreams Revisited. It's relatively short (fifteen minutes at the most) and pretty hysterical, trust me on this. 


I'll wait.

“I Hate Indian Summer” 

Steve Almond

          I hate Indian Summer, 
with its glib promises like the early hours 
of love before anyone burps or tells the truth. 
I hate Indians for that matter, their spent 
nobility and chirping casinos, the wrongs they drag 
behind them like a doom we must forever heed. 
          You hear so much about the light 
is the annoying part, the coppery light, 
the autumnal light, the hue of dying leaves 
under the full moon. God, I hate the full moon, 
its fat romantic doubletalk and dopey yellow 
winks. Would you believe I’m in love? 
          Fallen hard for some tootsie 
who writes pamphlets about Indian Summer 
and Indians and full moons, who has nothing in common 
with me but an occasional bad mood and a taste 
for chicken mole, who won’t let me be 
even when I plead with her to never leave.




A note from the poet: "You will notice a couple of things. First, the weird indentation. Is there some greater aesthetic purpose? I very much doubt it. Second, that I am a bigot willing to say stupid things about Indians in an effort to sound edgy. Third, that utterly nonsensical final couplet. What can I say? I hate to disappoint my fans."