[Dead American Poets]

If you're like everyone else & me, you're caught up in the dementia that sweeps America this time of year. You've filled out your brackets for the office pool & you're eager to see who'll wear the championship crown of sonnets come National Poetry Month, a.k.a. April. Here are a few observations from last weekend's action:

Not surprisingly, Ginsberg went down early, as top-seeded Whitman administered the lopsided beat down. Ginsberg made the mistake of trying to play Whitman's game & Whitman showed that he was just flat out better.

So much depends upon how far William Carlos Williams' small ball can go in the tourney. A No. 5 seed, he had little difficulty overcoming the size of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow or the run & gun of Charles Bukowski. The true test will come against John Berryman when the two square off Thursday.

T.S. Eliot is the wild card. Love him or hate him, he certainly has the pedigree to advance, but I wouldn't bet my paycheck on him just yet. You never know which Eliot you're going to get--the poet of "Prufrock" or the one that spawned Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats & its litter. Let's see how he fares when he faces Wallace Stevens, whom I see moving on to the Elite Eight.

Fresh off victories against Edgar Allan Poe & Edwin Arlington Robinson, Kenneth Fearing remains as the only Cinderella in this year's dance, though the film noir quality of his game hardly seems to befit a fairytale. In any event, the big clock may strike midnight for this glass slipper story in the late game on Friday when he meets high-octane Kenneth Koch.

Other key match ups include Frank O'Hara versus Emily Dickinson. Can anyone imagine a greater difference between aesthetes? E.E. Cummings takes on Robert Lowell, but you can throw in Amy & James Russell Lowell--Cummings will prove too much. It's your pick who'll survive the Plath-Sexton match up. That's not a game I care to see.

Comments

Riley said…
I gotta give it to Sexton over Plath. First of all, she's hotter. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but let's face it, it does. Also I don't find her nearly as self-indulgent.

TS Eliot is way overrated. His rep got him that high a seed, not any individual work. My money is on Whitman. Even after all these years, he's got a hell of a game!
Matt Morris said…
Chalk! Onion up & pick an upset!
Riley said…
You want a *real* upset? Jewel, fresh off a victory on Dancing with the Stars, will take the crown and storm the floor like Jimmy V. back in the day. Now *that* is an upset. It's making *me* upset anyway, just thinking about it.
Matt Morris said…
Save your Pepto-Bismol. Jewel isn't eligible for the tourney because she is 1)not dead; 2)not American; & 3)not a poet--at least not one whom the selection committee would consider even if she met, however tragically, the first 2 criteria. Perhaps you were thinking of the NIT . . .
Riley said…
Wait, Jewel's not dead, but her career is, doesn't that count?
Matt Morris said…
No, her career is insignificant, if that's what you were asking.