K. Lorraine Graham

"I realized that a writer was something one could be."

Not to be mean spirited about this but it isn't fair to review a book based on a few haphazardly reviewed samples provided by the "usual suspects" aka Ron Silliman, K Silem Mohamed...to name a few and touted by the "usual suspects" and that would be the "young writers" associations of America who play blog master. The young writers movement is as old as the hills on your granny's chest you know. It is sometimes referred to as the "avante guarde" and is oftentimes responsible for great changes in the way we view art, poetry and even life.

I aim to do an in depth analysis of one of these young writers in light of the fact that she is one of the hundreds if not thousands of "young" people today who wish to call themselves poets. Do they wish to assume the responsibility of such a role? I highly doubt it. All the same, they deserve a fair shake. And they also have to be looked at as we look at any "profession" in which there seems to be a relative shortage and then there's this flood of applicants for the job Poet Laureate, Breadloaf prizes and whatnots that certainly cannot feed a family of five but most likely will make it possible for a person to legitimately seek public assistance while waiting for their professorship to arrive. We are just bound to get a few applicants who really don't have the credentials (actual writing skills) but are willing to do the paperwork (writing reviews, hobnobbing with the boss and the bosses wife). So we let them have the job because afterall, it's just poetry...not brain surgery.

I plan on buying Terminal Humming at the soonest possible opportunity but in the meantime, I have embarked on an internet search for previously published work by K. Lorraine Graham.

Let's start with the name, that initial and the notion of M. or L. Susie Smith mentality and we'll move on to photos of the poet. If we can do it to Palin, then it is only fair to treat poets the same way. We'll look at some interviews and try to construct an argument for or against this type of willy nilly self/other promotionalism that goes on in the "young writers" association that to me, seems to want something for nothing. Too often, young poets want what they cannot have and rely heavily on sensationalism...flarfists are a notable example. Comedy and schtick are their tools, philosophy and truth are their enemies or at least, they do not want to lend any credibility to the notion of philosophy and/or truth. They tend to just want to "get away with it" and that would be something new!

http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/graham_lorraine_k.html

Here is a poem from See it Everywhere...or maybe that's the title..who knows! from See It Everywhere. Now, first I'd like to say I have a tremendous amount of respect for Didi Menendez and MiPOesias magazine. A very slick shindig it is. In this case however, I have to wonder what it is I am looking at and/or reading:

The poem begins with a one on one with a French boy who likes basketball. It morphs into...er...a paranormal investigation of some type and one of highly suspect linguistic device by using the er...I'd like to say "unexpected" but it's probably more apt to say "unacceptable" word SPOOKY.

Get out there and say, "I'm spooky." Then you place a photo at the top of the page MiPO style (slick, GQ quality)of the poet that looks like it was taken in a recording studio and ends with this glaringly awful few lines:

"Q: How do you find a treasure?
A: I ask someone
Q: What do you know of ghosts?
A: They are complicated and sometimes spooky, as are people who are serpents.
Q: Really?
A: Worms, flying things, and ants are also complicated.
Q: What do they think about?
A: Myrobalans and terminalia seeds. They think of them and they come to us.
Q: Oh."


Come on now. Is this poetry or I don't know what. It's awful. Simply awful and so awful I might even be led to believe that the poet wanted it to be awful but even then, the irony is lost when the poet spells I-R-O-N-Y out in every sentence for the reader. That's missing the point of irony.

Here's another poem once again, from See It Everywhere:

http://www.flim.com/spareroom/mark-wallace-k-lorraine-graham.html

The UN. Now there's a great topic for a poem and mine was called The UN Sounds Blue. It was published somewhere back "in the day" when my writing skills were most likely at their peak but only Allah remembers where that publication is. I certainly don't.

In Ms. Graham's piece, it opens with this:

swooning—not going to the UN but
never believed anything could be saved still
love seems a good idea: “God willing
you will find a wife” g-d willing in English

OK....well....a bit of the found in there maybe but WHY? Why? Tell me why please. And it ends with the most definitely not fine last line:

what can I do / why go home? in my body are biles—yours, too
track by the track and fences self in everyone


Am I reading a poem or Jay Walking with Leno near the UN headquarters in New York? Hard to tell really...hard to tell. All I know is that the poet cites something about complicated telephone polls. Okay.

Apolitical, dumb, throw in a piece of in'sha'allah memorabilia...and if there's one thing that irks a muslim poet like myself is the borrowing that goes on in non muslim poet's poetry. They ought to be more careful and that g-d part...well...okay. Oy. As she ends in the first piece about the French boyfriend and paranormal skit...Oy.

It isn't tantalizing. Nor lyrical. Nor mentally dazzling except to say that if this is what a "young" writer thinks is good poetry...we are all in for a long and boring decade of miserable, self involved claptrap.

There's a catch though...Ms. Graham also practices what used to be called painting or drawing and calls it "Visual" poetry. Yawn. Someone really needs to tell the young writer's association that poetry cannot sequester other art forms in an attempt to cover for their own lack of ingenuity in their chosen field of "poetry". Because that is what that is.

She draws pretty good. Reminds me vaguely...very vaguely..of one of my favorite artists, Basquiat, Jean-Michel who took the everyday graffiti of life and made wonderful paintings out of scribbles and scrawls. He didn't call it poetry now...did he? And in this case, a spade is a rose by any other name.

There is a sense in the YWA of seeking legitimacy. This is done through 1)choosing a school to which one belongs 2)taking poems to their utmost extremes and even driving in a lane which is not yours to drive in (visual poetry) 3) and then demanding that people take you seriously as a poet. Not in the sense that one throws a temper tantrum every time some careless critic mistakes work of genuine value because the critic is a moron but that also happens too i.e. poet is misunderstood, the poet goes and pouts about it to other YWA members or the members of the Avante Guarde as a whole which is composed of a variety of poet types and subtypes. "I have a book and therefore, I am a poet," and who in the hell does this critic think they are bashing my work up with a sledge hammer!

I still remember the day that I decided to call myself a poet. It wasn't like I hadn't been writing poetry for many years already because I had. I was in the elevator of my building and said to myself...why not call yourself a poet now? I guess I felt that I actually had enough skills by that time to indulge myself the honor of calling myself a poet. The YWA however...is much more audacious in this situation. They fall into a group of poets and voila, I am a poet. I dress like a poet, act like a poet and before you know it, people are calling me a poet.

It doesn't work that way. A poet is special...really special. Yes, they do invent themselves but not out of thin air. In her own words, this poet admits that standards can not or should not or will not apply:

"If someone, anyone, calls it poetry, then it’s poetry. After that we can argue about whether or not it’s interesting or fun or effective or risky…"

Well..that leaves the poor critic in a bit of a conundrum then doesn't it?

The good thing about the internet however is that we can formulate an interview with a poet without the poet even being there by pulling in various comment (found objects) streams and analysing them for indications of poetic prowess, poetics (as in the study of/practice of), and instances where the poet has self disclosed when probably they ought to have remained quiet so that their upcoming book might actually get a fair shake outside of their own self indulgent poetry talk that all poets in the beginning of their "careers" do in the bathroom mirror. Ms. Graham discussing Terminal Humming:

"1) I wanted to write about how much employment and bureaucracy suck and 2) I wanted to write about how women and men interact. 3) I also wanted to really question my own emotional investment in these two cultural institutions--employment and romance--and I wanted to do it in a way that was as honest as possible. Finally, 4) I felt that none of the social and professional discourses I knew were sufficient enough to do this. I knew I'd need to play with everything, with words, sound, images, space, source, syntax, etc."

Careful. This might read:

1. I needed a job and don't like to work 2. I want to write about the only things that do interact in human language i.e. girls and boys 3. I honestly want to combine romance and employment as a poet rather than steal for a living 4. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up and like to use more than just scissors and glue when I actually find out what that (a job) is.

Ms. Graham goes on to describe how she writes poems:

"Making the poem is a process of finding the boundaries of those concerns and edging them in different ways to see what happens."

Nothing like a blindfolded dart thrower you know. Experts might engage in that and call it automatic writing. Novices however that engage in that are just foolish.

"All of that sounds very heady. Oh well. I agree with Yvonne Rainer that "the mind is a muscle." Here's a list of some of my feminist icons: Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Colette, Jean Rhys, Jane Bowles, Yvonne Rainer, Sophie Calle, Yoko Ono, Kathy Acker... "

I'm so glad that Yvonne Rainer believes that the mind is a muscle. Actually, the mind isn't a muscle. Not even close. The mind is a series of complex neural circuits and it functions as a receiver for input from other body parts. The mind is encased in the skull and actually has no literal connection to the world. It is a dark, silent, taste-free, odor free environment that when it is operated on, doesn't require anesthesia because it can't even feel itself and if it did, it would need another brain to interpret the signal. That's what the brain is.

Ms. Graham's blog is here...and apparently wasn't much used until Terminal Humming came along.

http://delirioushem.blogspot.com/2009/05/mind-is-muscle-by-k-lorraine-graham.html