GREATEST HITS!

The ostensible pupose of this would be to cull the best songs from the not-so-great songs. In the music world, pulling together a collection of the best-selling singles or most-radio-played numbers of any given band or artist is a pretty reliable method for this. In the poetry world, whose standards and practices tend to defy any kind of logic or understanding, this isn't really the case. So what I'm doing here is basically picking out the dozen or so poems that have gotten the best responses from friends, family, fellow poets, etc., and presenting them in a short form aside from the rest of the body of work. Why I am doing this is simple: it's Sunday, and I have already mowed the lawn.

I suppose that publication should be the highest standard, so I would have to include Sunrise in the Urban South and Modern Era, which appeared in publication as a broadside when I was in grad school in the mountains. I would also have to include a little ditty called "Stalin Island," which was published back in the dark ages of the late 80's in the Lit/Arts rag Sanskrit of UNCC, my undrgrad almar, but that would require dredging it out and transcribing it. I'll get around to it.

The Wifey has said that she is a big fan of Golgotha. Anything the Wifey is a big fan of is definitely a greatest hit. My Dad has an appreciation for Brother, but that's because, so he says, it's the only one of my poems he really thinks he understands. Nobody has ever been a fan of Brother Part 2, especially not my alienated-ex-brother-in-law, the adoptive brother of my own brother's ex-wife, for whom I wrote it based on a conversation we had early in the process of having a debauchelor party. I gave him a copy of it the next time I saw him. He never said a word about it.

(But we can include it as the part 2 of a song that went to number 1.)

My Dad has never, to my recollection, read Internet Poetry Workshop Poem, which is ironic in that he was partially responsible for inspiring it. Fortunately, it was a big hit with the folks I was corresponding with at Zoetrope at the time, despite the fact, and occasionally because of the fact, that they were in it.

The event that prompted this whole cockememe project (that is to say the Greatest Hits page, not the web page in general) was the revelation that Doc Nagel's erstwhile paramour* exposed her Mom to Psychotic Break on I-77, and as it turns out she liked it so much she turned one of her friends on to it, and she also found it to be a hoot. Which caused me to reflect that I've had that kind of reaction from alot of folks on that poem. So that makes it a hit.

I've had alot of reaction to "Kleebold and Harris in Hell," the best of which was my brother's ex-wife's reaction, who looked up halfway through the poem to comment "This is not a nice poem." "This is not a nice poem," I confirmed, and my brother and his then wife finished reading to the effect of both getting gooseflesh. But alot of the other people who have like this particular piece have liked it because they were, frankly, assholes, or at least wanted to be assholes. So it's not a greatest hit. I have, in fact, upon occasion thought to disown it.

The monumental goof New World Symphony was a big hit with everyone who read it right after I wrote it, although no one knows what in the hell it's supposed to mean. I guess it's been less of a hit since then. George, written very shortly before George Harrison's death, was a hit shortly after George Harrison's death amongst a few vocal Beatles fans, and, again, has apparently been less of a hit since. Hey, when you put together a Greatest Hits package, occasionally you have to grasp at straws.

Plastic Neon Raincoat Poem has tended to be a hit amongst the few contacts I have maintained in the illiterati, unlike At a Mall in Scranton, PA, which is both too much a poem about a mall and too name-droppingly pretentious. I guess. I have no real way of knowing. An American in Denny's has been a hit to both fans and opponents of Denny's, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons. Kinda like "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry. It should be recognized that it's a parody, but if a misunderstanding brings up the per-unit-sales figures, who's to argue?

Another hit that was a hit for the wrong reason is Day Winds Down, which was a hit due to the image I inserted that I didn't, in any way, earn. Mike's Desk Drawer has been a hit only to people who have witnessed the kind of obsessive-abusive office behavior detailed in the piece, although I always thought that was a larger audience than it seems to be.

Never Been to Paris was a hit with my niece Caitlin, who wasn't in Paris at the time I wrote it for her. Frankly, who could ask for more? That damned untitled "I lie about my dreams" poem was a hit with Doc Nagel, who remarked, upon reading the third revision of it, and I quote: "Jesus!" Big Sur Poem has never been a big hit with anybody but Doc Nagel, who, on reading the third revision in progress, said, and again I quote, "Jesus! What happened?" Anyways was a hit one night at a coffee-house poetry reading, for being the shortest, sweetest thing in a night full of pretentious posturing and profanity.

On such slim justifications as that, I could go on and on. But I won't. Eventually I'd have the whole damned page in here, and that would defeat the purpose.

*And full-time nut.