Our Poetics
Ethan McGuire
. . . John Berryman with his still-heavy boredom,
Hart Crane with his grand flights, linguistic fancies,
The lawyer Stevens with his blackbird’s eyes,
Old Eliot with his green eyeshade low,
H.D. with her new cryptic hieroglyphics,
Marianne Moore with her precise syllabics . . .
Like all postmodern poets, careful, careless,
Like metamodern poets, ill-defined,
Like neotraditional poets, newly rebelling
Against rebellions old or aging now—
I take my torch and corny Collins’ ski mask
To raid the castles of the poets in
The recent past (though, see, not too long past)
And carry off the treasures of my betters
To sell in dying markets as my own,
To sell for pennies (since my soul’s been sold).
Forgive me, for I am a young damned-fool:
I never learned the difference between
Jewels or gems and polished-pretty stones.
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Ethan’s notes: “I am not a big fan of explicit ars poeticas. This little blank verse poem is the closest I have allowed myself to come to writing one.”
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Ethan McGuire is a writer, healthcare worker, and computer scientist whose essays, poems, short stories, and translations have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Dispatch, Emerald Coast Review, New Verse News, VoegelinView, and other publications. He is an editor at Tar River Poetry, Literary Matters, and New Verse Review and the author of Songs for Christmas, Apocalypse Dance, and Ozark Son. Ethan lives with his wife and children in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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