bad poem

Just for the record, I don't think "Kissing John McPhee" is a good poem. It would get an enthusiastic rejection from me if it were to be submitted to Willow Springs. It's sentimental, melodramatic, and its predictable details about McPhee's life as a writer sucks any intriguing tension that might otherwise exist between the speaker and the situation. I don't think it's trying to be ironic or sarcastic, it seems to be a sincere attempt to be a form of author-worship, which makes it all the more cheesy. And the fact that McPhee wrote for The New Yorker, and just recently had a new essay published in it, makes it all the more cheesy. But, I must admit, you gotta admire a writer who writes poems for other writers and submits them to a magazine as big and prestigous as THE NEW YORKER!! And then documents (announces?) those submissions and rejections on her own blog! Now, that takes guts. (I'll keep my bad poems and rejection slips to myself, thank you very much.)

After NF form/theory class tonight and Jeremy's presentation on McPhee and his book (The Survival of the Bark Canoe), Jeremy suggested I write my own version of "Kissing John McPhee." I considered, but instead thought I'd rather write a poem called "Kissing Henri" (pronounced "on-ree", for those like me who aren't familiar with French names). But now it's late, and I can't muster the energy to write it, even though I drank Mountain Dew during class.

But if I were to write about my experience of reading McPhee's nonfiction book for class, it might go something like this...

Kissing Henri

Maine's wilderness and Thoreau, and now this:
sympathetic portrait
of twenty-five year old Henri,
lonely in his art, unmarried and still living
with his parents in his New Hampshire hometown.
He carved wood, remembered the best trees,
was obsessed with only this.
A white man seeking
mastery of the Indian bark-canoe.
I know it's hard to let go what you create.
Green beef jerkey breath,
faint orange stain
of Tang on your lips
and pressed
into the side creases
of your mouth,
please paddle faster for me.