This thread resurfaces at an opportune time. Green’s book has won the 2014 Poets’ Prize, and the award ceremony is tomorrow (May 1).
The discussion of the book’s title poem is of considerable interest to me, since I have some experience, in both poetry and stand-up comedy, with writing/performing material that some people find offensive even though it’s perfectly obvious to me that there’s good reason not to. Although I don’t think the poem is mind-blowingly hilarious, it’s not the least bit reprehensible. Glowering at it as if it were nothing but an exercise in mockery of physical disability is just plain dumb.
Of course it’s OK to write lightheartedly about Byron’s club foot. Same deal with Milton’s blindness and Coleridge’s opium addiction. (Even Plath’s suicide, I would say, although some might not choose to follow me that deep into the shadows of questionable taste.) Those realities aren’t the most important things about the poets in question, but they are the Stuff That Everybody Knows, just as everybody knows William Howard Taft was the fattest U.S. president, even if they don’t know much at all about his political career. And when you’re writing about somebody in his capacity as a celebrity, it makes perfect sense to focus on the Stuff That Everybody Knows, since that’s a big part of what celebrity is all about.
|