Please, Lord, Make Me a Famous Poet or at Least Less Fat , by Dean Blehert
Word & Pictures East Coast, 1999
If you've been out of school for a while you might be a little rusty on all the literary references that populate this book. Chock full o' parodies, Dean Blehert has more than a way with words -- he has a way with other people's words. An entire chapter of Please Lord is devoted to how famous poets -- living and dead -- would write "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." These writers include Sylvia Plath, Lyn Lifshin, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Blake.
Tongue-in-cheek, the book intersperses Blehert's own poetry with instructive "how-to" advice-poems on such topics as "how poetry is done" and "How To Be A Prestigious Mainstream Twentieth-Century Academic Poet." For example, in the chapter on the first subject, Blehert writes:
You can make any sentence poetical
by mentioning blood or bone.
For example, instead of "Yesterday
I went to the store," say "Yesterday
I went to the blood and bone store."
Instead of "The moon rose," say
"The blood moon rose" or "A bone
of moon rose" or, best, "A bone
of blood moon rose."
There is so much in this book, it will take many many readings to catch just half of its humor. Brush up on your "dead white male" poets if you want to get the rest of it.
If you're ever in the Washington, DC, area on the second Sunday of the month, you can usually catch Dean Blehert (and his wife, Pam) reading at the open mic poetry night at IOTA in North Arlington, 6-8pm. Or, check out his web site at www.BLEHERT.com.
Also by Blehert: Dear Reader or Love Letters From Here to There; The Naked Clowns; Poems for Adults and Other Children; I Swear He Was Laughing; and No Cats Have Been Maimed or Mutilated During the Making of This Book but Some of Them are Disappointed -- DEEPLY Disappointed -- in Me.
