Lightning Rod Needs a Scandal

[Lightning Rod]

What I need is a good scandal, you know, one big enough to really put me on the map. Bombings and assassinations are too extreme for my nature, I'm not a priest so I don't have any alter boys to fool around with. I'm not smart enough to embezzle billions. I've written some scandalously bad poetry but long ago i learned that poetry is a highway to neither fame nor infamy.

One of my earliest and most important realizations about what it meant to be a poet was that the job description included much more than the act of writing or saying poetry. It was also more than simply knowing the difference between Shakespearian and Spencerian sonnets or the flavors of haiku which are more various than cheeses. The time a poet must spend crafting his poems is relatively small compared to the time and toil required to discover the truths expressed in those poems. Unless a poem tells us something that is true, it is soon forgotten no matter in what fine and arcane form it is written. The poet's main occupation thus becomes experiencing and examining life in a deeper, more profound way than is required from civilians, looking for essence, looking for truth, always alert, looking for the poem.

It is no major feat to rhyme moon with June. Anybody can do it. The poet is asked to do more than that. He is asked to tell us why the June moon breaks our hearts or lights our way to passion or moves the tide. He is asked to explain the obvious in songs the soul can hear and to rhyme moon with nucleic acid or jealousy and show you things you cannot see. All this, and there is no pension plan. That's why I need a good scandal.

I need to do something outrageous like have eight babies or get caught sleeping with my parole officer's husband or try to hijack an airliner dressed as a fallaffel. I could carry a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in my pocket at all times and just wait for some natural disaster to happen and then claim credit for it. I would chain myself to something but not in NYC because I think they have a special SWAT team dedicated to nut-cases who chain themselves to things. They just use the jaws of life and snip the kooks off from whatever monument or landmark they have handcuffed themselves, write them a parking ticket and send them home. Takes about ten minutes. No headlines. What does a poet have to do in order to get a little notoriety?

Who am I kidding? Notoriety doesn't have a pension plan either. Poetry is 100% Pro Bono work. I thought about running for public office as a way to generate book sales, like Kinky did, but the field for that type of opportunism is getting a little crowded what with Sarah and her protege from Delaware using runs for high office as auditions for jobs as talking heads on cable TV. Maybe I need a celebrity endorsement. If Pinsky said my poems were good or Diddy said they were BAD, or Lady Gaga sang one of my songs, if I could sit on Oprah's couch and play toesies with Maya Angelou or if the paparazzi got a shot of Angelina Jolee reclining on some naked beach in France reading my book on her Kindle, now that would give me a pension plan. I wouldn't need a scandal. Literary lore has it that Emerson, who was quite famous, made one remark about Whitman, who was not, and it put Walt on the map as an American poet. Emerson's remark after reading a promotional copy of Leaves of Grass sent to him by Whitman was, "Incomparable things said incomparably well."

Which brings us back to the truth, the active ingredient in poetry. The truth is that poetry will never sell. It's like love which is only of value when it is given away. It's a priceless commodity, passed from lip to ear and heart to heart sans currency and is thus only profitable in the futures and derivatives markets. The Poet's Eye will only see an improvement in the economy when they start hiring poets again. That would be a scandal.