From the Poetry & Popular Culture Mailbag: Gumball Poetry

This week, Rachel Dacus writes in from the Bay Area, giving Poetry & Popular Culture a little bit of history to, uh, chew on for a while: poetry gumball machines once distributed across eight states by the innovative Portland-based publishing operation Gumball Poetry.

For a while, somewhere between 2004 and 2006, it seems, you could get your hands on a poetry gumball machine stuffed with the work of ten or so poets for as little as $300 each (plus extra for the stand). Here, Dacus takes a moment to reflect on what was—and what could have been.

Dear Poetry & Popular Culture,

Poetry in unlikely places is one of my favorite things (which makes P&PC one of my favorite blogs, of course), and I'm writing to share an example. On my bookshelf sits a row of plastic capsules that were part of a really original poetry-publishing experiment—the poetry gumball. Instead of finding a Bazooka Joe bubble gum comic inside each capsule, you get chewable gum and a short poem. A real poem.

But Bazooka didn't launch or even adopt this project. I mean, pick the two most incompatible cultural artifacts you can think of, and poetry and chewing gum might be there at the top of the list. But Gumball Poetry didn't see it that way, and neither did I. When I first heard of the gumball poetry-delivery mechanism, I thought, I just have to have my poem combined with my favorite childhood chew-toy: my very own Bazooka Joe Brodsky.

That was the grand plan, at least, and I could hardly stand the excitement. But then I discovered that the culturally chic Bay Area didn't boast a single Gumball Poetry machine. To buy poems and gum, I'd have to take my fifty cents—my two quartets?—all the way to Portland where Gumball poetry was making its grand offer: "Would you like a Gumball Poetry Machine in your cafe, bar, dance hall, office, hospital, library, school, bathroom, art gallery, clothing store, car, community center, life, church?" The one that really intrigued me was the church—it really rang my bell. All the quarters go into the coffers. The pearly whites meet the pearly gates. Saint Peter meets David St. John.

But, alas, Gumball Poetry is no more. The website remains open—now an artifact of a really cool cultural concept—and if you go there you find this note: "This is all just here for historical purposes. In case any of our memories go. Gumball Poetry is on hiatus (likely permanent). We miss you too. It was the best fun we ever had."

Looks like even popular poetry's bubble can burst.

Yours,

Rachel Dacus

Rachel Dacus' poetry books are Another Circle of Delight, Femme au chapeau, and Earth Lessons. She blogs at Rocket Kids.

I Couldn't Make the Grade with Mister Morgan: A Ticket to Your Heart

As far back as 1884, the Astoria Schuetzen Park in Queens was being billed as "the most beautiful in the vicinity of New York" and the building adjacent to it as decked out "with large halls, stage and ante-rooms for Balls, Parties, Theatrical Performances &c." In 1901, the Calamity Bowling Club knew where the action was at and held its third annual outing and games there, offering—or so the New York Times reported—"valuable prizes" for "bowling, running, jumping, and other sports."

In October of 1916, Justice Charles Evans Hughes stood on the grounds of Astoria Schuetzen to deliver an election-year campaign speech as the only Supreme Court justice in U.S. history to also be nominated for the Presidency. Even though Hughes had the backing of Progressive Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt, he would ultimately lose to incumbent Democrat Woodrow Wilson who ran under the campaign slogan "He Kept Us Out of War." In April of 1917—urged on by Wilson less than a year after Hughes made his speech in Queens and shortly after Wilson's inauguration—Congress declared war on Germany.

When the William J. Garcey Association of Long Island held its fifteenth annual "Cabaret and Ball" at Astoria Schuetzen Park on January 13, 1917, however, who knew war was so close on the horizon? Who knew that the France of line 3 (on the event ticket pictured here) would see the arrival of 10,000 U.S. soldiers every day by the summer of 1918? That four million American men would be drafted into military service? That the "Mister Morgan" of line 5 would run all British munitions purchases from the U.S. through one of his firms and organize a syndicate of banks to bankroll and profit off of the war effort?

It's hard to know what is a simple profession of love, and what is, instead, an act of whistling in the dark—what is a coincidental pairing of France and Morgan prior to the declaration of war, and what is prescience. Here, in any case, is the poem dancers and young lovers were carrying in their pockets and trendy clutches that night in Queens in early 1917:



Million Dollars Worth of Love for You

I haven't got a bank account to offer
I haven't got a ring from Tiffany's
I can't afford a French maid and a butler
No villa where you can get the ocean breeze
I couldn't make the grade with Mister Morgan
With a motor car I never could come through
I've got a house and lot, outside of that I've got
A million dollars worth of love for you.

Poetry & Popular Culture Heroes: An Interview with Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist

Poetry & Popular Culture was pleasantly surprised when it opened up the September 2009 issue of Wired magazine and discovered that a significant portion of a feature article on Craigslist (Gary Wolf's "Why Craigslist is Such a Mess") was given over to the poetry that has become part of the warp and woof of what is now the world's largest classified section. Wolf reports that Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster (pictured here) has turned to poetry as a weapon in the fight against spammers, con artists, message-happy business owners posting in too many categories at once, and other people interfering with the site's effective performance. "Without a computer science research department to work on evil-fighting algorithms, or a call center to take complaints," Fox explains:

"Buckmaster has settled on a different approach, one that involves haiku. The little poems he has written appear on the screen at times when users might expect a helpful message from the staff. They function as a gnomic clue that what you are seeing is intentional, while discouraging further conversation or inquiry. For instance, start too many conversations in the forums and your new threads may fail to show up. Instead, you will see this:

frogs croak and gulls cry
silently a river floods
a red leaf floats by

Attempt to post a message that is similar to one you've already entered, and this may appear:

a wafer thin mint
that's been sent before it seems
one is enough, thanks

The slight delays in cognitive processing that these haiku cause are valuable. They open a space for reflection, during which you can rethink your need for service. But haiku can't solve everything....."

Wanting to know more about the power of these gnomic clues, and taken by the prospect of the huge audiences that Buckmaster's poems might command (even if a fraction of each month's 20 billion page views results in a user reading a poem, that's a huge audience that even Billy Collins and Mary Oliver combined can't touch), Poetry & Popular Culture decided to track Buckmaster down and ask him a few questions. Here's what he had to say for himself.

P&PC: When and why did you start using poems on Craigslist?

Jim: In 2000, strictly for the fun of it.

P&PC: Do you write them all? Like, do you have a secret MFA degree that we don't know about?

Jim: No MFA, but I did write the haiku.

P&PC: What's your favorite?

Jim: Probably:

frogs croak and gulls cry
silently a river floods
a red leaf floats by

P&PC: Why limit yourself to haiku?

Jim: We don't. We've also used bits from Shakespeare's Sonnet 33, Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," and I believe something from A.E. Housman.

P&PC: Your poems appear when people are potentially abusing the site. What sort of discipline does haiku offer in contrast to other poetic forms?

Jim: Brevity.

P&PC: Gary Wolf's Wired article suggested you match certain haiku with certain offenses. How does that pairing happen?

Jim: Each haiku was composed to address a particular aspect of our user interface, often to take the place of an error message.

P&PC: What sort of feedback do you get?

Jim: Users seem mostly to like them, at least compared to error messages.

P&PC: Can we expect a Craigslist Collected Poems anytime soon?

Jim: Not sure the corpus merits it, but one can dream.

We Can Do Better Than That

Appeared in the Statesman-Journal on September 5, 2009

For “luxury living in the heart of Salem,”
The Rivers has asked for a loan.
“We desperately need a product to show,”
or so says one partner, Matt Sloan.

We’ve bailed out airlines, Big Oil, Detroit,
Freddie Mac and AIG,
so why not the Front Street condos as well?
It sounds okay to me.

In fact, we can do better than that.
Why loan when we can give?
Times are tough for all of us,
and even the well-off need places to live.

But why only give? It’s important, you see,
that we help the properties sell.
I’m sure we could get a helluva price
if we promise to buy them as well.

A Gallery of Poems from the Oregon State Fair

The Oregon State Fair runs for eleven days this year, from August 28 to September 7. From the Poetry & Popular Culture home office in Salem, you can see the Ferris wheel and hear the shouts of delighted children who've won stuffed animals and souvenir posters of Hannah Montana. At night, you can take in the demolition derbies, attend concerts by the likes Tesla or Peter Cetera, or bask in all the glory that is the Pink Floyd LaserSpectacular light show. And all day long, you can hear the celebratory siren sound whenever the Human Slingshot catapults fare-paying fair-goers into the stratosphere ($35 for one person, $50 for two).

These are the usual sights and sounds of the Fair—an event that traces its history back to 1858. They are not that different from state to state. You know them. I know them. But if you look a little closer—past the cotton-candy veneer and impossible ring tosses, past the corn dogs and funnel cakes, past the over-the-hill performers in stretch jeans and past pen after pen of disgruntled 4-H or FFA livestock waiting to be shown and sent to the local meat locker—you'll find a different side of the Fair. An unexpected side. A long-running but barely-mentioned tradition. It's on the walls, and it's under your feet. It's on stickers, souvenirs, and cross-stitchings.

It's poetry, and P&PC is happy to bring you a gallery of some of this year's finest.

1. 22 Years of Oregon State Fair Poetry....








2. ....and people still stop to read the poems.







3. For the critic in the crowd....

















4. ...and for the weary of foot.

















5. Poet Steven Robert Heine....
















6. ....and the award he sponsors.

















7. Glenn Knight and his sonnets....

















8. ....and Jessie Turner with Moat the Goat Tries to Vote.













9. The curious....

















10. ....and the cross-stitched.

















11. Where Poetry & Popular Culture spent most of its time.

What Does an Orgy of Poets Sound Like? A Guest Posting by Steve Healey

Somewhere en route between Minneapolis and East Lansing, Steve Healey stops to take in the huffs, puffs, gasps, chokes, pants, gulps and luscious lip smacks that comprise The 60 Second Anthology of American Poetry. How much, he wonders, can poetry be counted on to take one's breath away? Has the anthology reached what one might now call its expiration date? And what, exactly, does being swallowed by a sea of saliva feel like? For answers to these questions and more, read on.

Exquisitely cranky Pierre Bourdieu (pictured here) argues that poetry's high cultural prestige combined with its tiny audience makes it—even more than the other arts—"destined ... to a continuous struggle for the monopoly of poetic legitimacy." Anthologies from Louis Untermeyer's Modern American Poetry (1919) to Dave Smith and David Bottoms's Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (1985) have long been potent weapons on this battleground of literary status, and as they help make careers for some, these "flower collections" (as they were called by the Greeks) are also fiercely denounced for being cliquish and exclusionary.

Breathing new life (literally) into this old conversation is an unusual poetry anthology I recently encountered. It’s actually an audio piece called “The 60 Second Anthology of American Poetry,” found on the website of an organization called Language Removal Services (LRS). As I learned in correspondence with LRS representative, Chris Kubick, this piece is “a dense collage of breaths, lip smacks and other bodily sounds which all come from between the words of recordings of American poets reading their works.” In other words, there are no words in this poetry collection, and this absence provokes some provocative questions: Can poetry exist without its words? If so, what then is poetry?

It’s often said that poems exploit the gaps in meaning and the silences between words, and there’s been some excitement lately about erasures (poems found in the remains of partially-erased pre-existing texts). But this LRS anthology arguably asks us to travel much farther into the void, suggesting that poetry can be found in nothing at all. In that darkness, might we best read (or hear) this 60 second sound trip as a cynical jab at the pretensions of high-brow poetry and its anthology industry, or as a comical, easy-to-digest bonbon for a post-literary consumer culture?

Kubick admits that the LRS project has this kind of critical edge, but he sees his work as primarily celebratory and sincere, an attempt to reorient listeners’ attention “away from the abstractions of language and onto the breaths and bodies of the speakers in all their sexuality, raw power, and musical glory.” LRS has performed its peculiar surgery on many recordings of well-known voices—including many non-literary figures, from Marlene Dietrich to MLK—and Kubick points out that most of them are people he greatly admires.

So the LRS mission appears to be more interested in complementing or enhancing language rather than annihilating it. Removing language becomes an opportunity to reclaim the physical, erotic pleasure surrounding it. “There is that kinky side to LRS,” says Kubick, “so in a sense, you could hear ‘The 60 Second Anthology’ as an orgy of poets. And I hope, also, that there’s something natural in it, something like the ocean, when you get swallowed by a wave. Swallowed by a sea of saliva.”

Still, when pressed for the names of poets who were included in (or removed from) this anthology, Kubick is evasive. He mentions having operated on a wide range of poet voices, from Gertrude Stein to John Ashbery, but he says that the choices he made for the anthology itself are “somewhat personal.” So despite LRS’s reverence for poetry, it appears unwilling to engage in the canon wars. Perhaps, like many visitors to Poetry & Popular Culture, LRS thrives on the impossibility of answering the question: what is poetry?

Steve Healey's first book of poems Earthling is available from Coffee House Press, and a second is due out soon. When you get a chance, also check out his article "The Rise of Creative Writing and the New Value of Creativity" in the February 2009 issue of The Writer's Chronicle; it's part of a book manuscript which he'll be finishing at Michigan State during the 2009-10 academic year.

Top 10 Roadside Rhymes: Number 2

2. The Testicle Festival (Rock Creek, Montana)

Danny Heitman of The Baton Rouge Advocate doesn't think there's been much, uh, truck between poetry and automobility in recent years, but we here at Poetry & Popular Culture disagree, and #'s 3-10 of the Top 10 Roadside Rhymes show why. (Just scroll down to find 'em all.) For #2 on that list, we go all the way to the Rock Creek Lodge in Clinton, Montana. There, the folks of Big Sky don't just make up triple rhymes (a pair of dactyls at that!) but they've got, well, the balls to use that rhyme as the name of their annual Mardi-Gras-like event held in celebration of the Rocky Mountain Oyster—the Testicle Festival.

Now, before you turn away in disgust—either at the thought of ingesting a bull's family jewels, or because you think P&PC's got nothing more in the way of cultural taste than Beavis and Butthead—it's important to remember that bawdy rhymes and body parts (or is it body rhymes and bawdy parts?) are always more complex than they first appear. Mikhail Bakhtin would have agreed with us, but it's not necessary to bring in a Russian Formalist's analysis of European social events to tell us about American bull.

The Testicle Festival is, in fact, a modern-day commemoration of the "rendezvous system" of fur trading—a way of exchanging goods that replaced trading posts in the American West around 1825. Rather than hanging out a shingle year-round, fur trappers and their agents and assigns agreed to meet once a year to do their business and buy supplies all at the same time. "The typical rendezvous," Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes writes in The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History, "was a combination fair, circus, and rodeo with opportunity for feasting, drinking, carousing, and contests of skill." That's still pretty much the case at Rock Creek, except that these days—or so a quick look at the 18-and-over portions of the Test Fest's web site reveals—there are different sets of assets put on display.

Intrigued about the derring-do of the triple rhyme—to say nothing of the cajones it took to erect such a stunning pair of dactyls on a sign along I-90—P&PC caught up with event organizer Matt Powers. Here's that conversation.


P&PC: Um, how's it hangin'?

Matt Powers: With a bit of a swing.

P&PC: How did Rock Creek come up with the Festival's rhyming name?

MP: When trying to come up with a party based in Rocky Mountain Oysters, Testy Festy just flowed, so it was used.

P&PC: What were the other options?

MP: There really weren't any. It was the first thing we thought of.

P&PC: Are there any poetry events held at the Test Fest?

MP: There are not, but this year a limerick competition would be a great addition to the contests we hold.

P&PC: You'd have to keep an eye out for dangling modifiers, I suppose. Have a sample limerick for us—or a first line?

MP: I went to the Testy to take a peek / and lost my virtue down by the creek....

P&PC: I hear a lot of bikers attend. What sort of poetry do bikers like?

MP: A lot of bikers attend, but bikers over the last 15 years are not lumped into the same box. You get some bikers that are high school dropouts, who probably don't like any poetry other than music, and some who have Doctorates, who would probably enjoy all forms. That's a question that is best posed to the masses. Sorry.

P&PC: How about cowboys?

MP: It's a well rounded party ... Yuppies, bikers, rednecks, cowboys, fans of Dorothy... Really a true mix.

P&PC: Well I guess I should say "have a ball," right?

MP: Hell, have 2.

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Postscript:

22 August, 2009.
This just in from Dan Vera of White Crane Journal: