I met a world renowned poet yesterday. I knew he was a world renowned poet because he told me so, as he offered to give me copies of some of his work on the sidewalk in front of the student center at Rutgers University. Then, in case I did not believe him, he also showed me a few letters he had received from famous and important people around the world, identifying him as a person of significance and praising his work. I promised I would read the maybe dozen poems he handed me and mention him on my blog. Personally, it does not impress me. It is part of that modern approach to nearly all art that eschews structure in favor of feeling and winds up with neither. After all--

I do not understand
The concept of a poem
Which is merely prose
Arranged in lines
Of different lengths
Without any recognizable meter
And completely devoid of rhyme.

It seems ultimately that this is a poem,
Because I said so,
And I am a poet;
And that I am a poet,
Because I wrote this poem.

So if that's the sort of thing that appeals to you, I invite you to visit James J. Nemeth, tell him Mark Joseph Young mentioned him on a blog, having met him at Rutgers. I sort of felt sorry for him, handing out free copies of his poetry on the sidewalks of a public university in the sparsely attended summer session. I almost wish I saw the point of that sort of writing, so I could tell you it was good stuff.

Obviously, I did the things I said I was going to do yesterday. They took me longer than anticipated--I sat back down to work around two in the morning. Today was also bogged down with lots of details, although among them I managed to burn a couple copies of that first CD I'd made of a few of my songs a few years back, in time for my son to take a copy with him for his drive back to his job at camp. His new used car has a potent stereo, but he has a serious shortage of CDs, and he happens to like those songs particularly. He says it will be good to have it, because when he's tired he can play it and sing along, and it will keep him awake. As a father, that strikes me as an even better thing than were he to have said he enjoys listening to it.

It sounds as if my Caravan is dead. The garage says that the transmission would take a few hundred dollars to fix, but that that horrible noise is coming from the engine, and that's about at the end of its life now so it's probably not worth doing the expensive transmission only to have to do the outrageously expensive engine next. Probably tomorrow I'll let him know to bury it, and I'll have to go up and gather such possessions as are still inside it. We're going to be a one-car family for the immediate future, it appears, and I'm not sure when or how that can be remedied, as it is going to be difficult.

--M. J. Young