Quotables

Organic girl dropped by last night

For nothing in particular

Except to tell me again how beautiful and serene she feels

On uncooked vegetables and wheat germ fortified by bean sprouts–

Mixed with yeast and egg whites on really big days–

She not only meditates regularly, but looks at me like I should

And lectures me about meat and ice cream

And other aggressive foods I shouldn’t eat.

Suzanne Somers, in her book of poetry entitled Touch Me, published in 1980.

Friday’s Huffington Post has an amusing piece on celebrity poetry. In addition to this Somers tour de force, they also showcase the poetic works of Leonard Nimoy, including this breath-taking stanza:

I love you

not for what

I want you to be

But for what you are…

I dunno. I’d talk shit about these poems, but I don’t know much about poetry; I didn’t major in English because I didn’t feel like going to law school. I actually kind of like the Somers quote. It’s not, like, super deep and dense, but I fucking hate poetry like that. It’s like, “Yeah, dude, you’re a big fancy poet. You smoke filterless Lucky Strikes. You wear fedoras. You don’t own a TV. Your girlfriend smells funny and you have a pet rat named Kerouac and you think football is barbaric and when I tell you what I do for a living you roll your eyes for so long that even I get a headache, then you promptly launch into a story about this one time you smoked out with John Stamos, which isn’t at all hypocritical and fucking annoying, but whatever. When you’re not working the afternoon shift at the moribund local record store, you juxtapose big words in a way that is meaningless even to you, so you must be very cool, and I should envy your bohemian existence and the sheer joie de vive that certainly comes with owning a car worth less than my purse. Yes. I’m right on top of that, Rose.”

I’d much rather read poetry like that one from Suzanne; it conjures a clear image with a clear message. I fucking hate organic girl already. And I get it. And I know her. She’s annoying. And she dates Big Important Poetry Guy. And they both suck and we’re all polite to them while secretly hoping that one day even the incense will get sick of hearing them talk and burn their damn house down. I’ll take that over the over-thought, pretentious, angsty bullshit coming out of the MFA classes any day.

Anyway.

Check out the full article for rhymes by Charlie Sheen, Viggo Mortensen and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 12:17 am and is filed under Leonard Nimoy, Suzanne Somers, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.