Poem by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Poets should be openly willing to explain their overly esoteric poetry.
Overly Esoteric poetry without an explanation is I believe, simply an act of anal retention, or of admission of guilt to the very serious charge of ‘literary onanism’.
Overly Esoteric Poetry is the willing literary creation of a ‘false god’ – The god of ‘stolen mystique’.
The Teleology or Grand Aim of the OEP’ers is to garner ‘false praise’ and ‘unwarranted adulation’.
Some say OEP is a mental illness, but I beg to differ – I believe it to be a ‘serious character flaw’ only.
Many kind people have indeed become victims of the OEP’ers & this must be combatted ‘head on’.
Upon reading Overly Esoteric Poetry & its non-existent explanations, the reader should do one or all of the following:
Rip out & ‘bonfire’ the page immediately (with matches or a lighter), making sure any un-esoteric poems are retained (For best dramatic effect do this to your offending unbought book-store book while in front of a captive audience).
You can stamp on the Guilty Poet’s feet – Stamp twice if they added this comment: “but what does it mean to you – that’s what really counts”
You can write in the margins of the offending passage: “This is far too esoteric, to not have any explanation” (be sure to leave an unhappy face emoji)
You can either write-to or say-to the Poet an equally esoteric verse, explaining or in reality non-explaining, why you did one or all of the above treatments. e.g.
“Dear Un – Sir
Your perfidy-ness was dialectically imprecise. On top of this your topiary inelegance was sparce of any gnosis or incandescence. I can only hope that a kaleidoscopic entree of inexactitude will befall your double entendre of an ontologically reverse pathology, resulting in ‘babyloniously’ duplicitous & mixological results. As such I have had to punish you & don’t come crying to me now that it has rightly happened.”
I re-iterate, ‘Overly Esoteric Poetry’ -OEP must be regaled against in all its forms!
Poetry must be an egalitarian pursuit, where the idea is King – for ideas like all fair-minded Kings must exist in plain sight, for a King who is good to his subjects will not fear scrutiny.
The King should be clearly identifiable – be he fully naked, half clothed or pompously garbed.
There need not be any need to guess what the ‘King” is wearing in flip coin fashion, desperately hoping your audience neighbour agrees with your blind guess – that the King’s is ‘naked’ or ‘dressed’ or half-half.
Judicial Sentences for Poets who are creating careers from ‘false god sentences’, must be harsh & nearly immutable.
We must create a new penal colony island. As no untaken islands currently exist – It can be made in a fashion similar to how the Chinese create islands in the South China Seas, by hoovering up sand & redepositing it until it finally rises as a whale emerges from the ocean to draw breath.
Once The OEP Penal Island is constructed, we can build an adulation hermetically sealed dome, where each OEP can face only those of his OEP brethren – and here they will face the reality that they can no longer fool anyone at all – for a crook knows a crook.
Each OEP will swiftly go mad, as they will be deprived of their life-blood – faux adulation.
This is fair – for what they do is a crime against humanity – and this, oh listener is large understatement.
Once they achieve madness – they can be released, for a madman’s deception is obvious and see-able to the sane.
We can then simply re-christen them each as ‘A 21st Century MAN’.
i.e. Somewhat Mad But Does Not Know It.
Thus, proving the adage “a hardened criminal cannot truly be rehabilitated.”
Woe is the Overly Esoteric Poet, So Hated We Even Made Him Into A Typical 21st Century Man.
One Day We Onlooking & Interfering Overlords Of Justice Will Face Our Own Jailors.
And we surely will face the gallows, for the punishment we dished out, did not befit the crime.
We should have simply stopped at ‘shot over the bow tactics’ of the stamping on their feet or the esoterically veracious retort previously quoted.
We went too far with the Penal Island & the hermetically sealed, adulation-free dome.
We Poets & Poetry Critics – most of which are just ‘tryhards‘ – must know where the line is, and always remember:
A ’21st Century Man’ is infinitely worse than an ‘Overly Esoteric Poet’ will ever be.
So perhaps we should just let them OEP’s be.
And I say this not for a deep inbuilt need for social justice,
But for the very real concern – which of course, may really just be garden variety paranoia,
That I might actually be one of them.
But luckily this lack of confidence soon passes,
As I tell myself the very true fact, that I almost always offer explanations for any bouts of OEP.
Where I have failed in this honorable task, I am always willing to divulge my philosophy to anyone suffering my foolishness.
I vow to never just say to a confused reader or listener “But what does it mean to you – that’s all that really counts”.
To not do so would make me a flake & a hypocrite, which I would hate to be, and there certainly is no need to swell the ranks of the OEP.
Postscript: I Being born in 1978, regard myself essentially as a Late 20th Century Man, as I ‘came of age’ around the years surrounding the Millennium’s turn. I will continue to be fond for this 90’s era, as the 1990’s were a rare golden era in the West – an era we did not recognize as a good one until this dastardly 21st Century bed itself in, so allowing recent History to finally crystalize & be seen for what it was. There is of course one way the first quarter of the 21st Century could be one day also be seen as “a good one” – due to historical relativity – but what this implies is a terrible thought indeed, and I suppose involves a gigantic war, that perhaps we are already in. Now excuse me I must get some rest for my poor frazzled now ‘early middle aged’ brain, & I don’t want to end up like Nietzsche – railroaded by acute burn out in his mid forties.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 