My Favorite Living Poets

Michael Lavers just posted on his favorite living poets. So here goes: in at number one, or at least one equal, is my office mate Joe Wenderoth. Here is his “Political Poem”:

I give
A fuck

Letters to Wendy's is staggeringly brilliant. He is an Ali G of poetry, disturbingly “on” all the time. Imagine Kurt Cobain doing an Ali G, that's almost it. Joe once asked me to participate in a panel he was doing on pop lyrics. I said I was worried about it.

“Have you ever read a poem?” he asked. Disconcerted, I thought about it. Then there was the time he asked an MFA writing student of mine whom he would choose to sing his poetry. Stumped, the student was silent. “I was thinking of Barry White,” said Joe. No one else was thinking of Barry White. Barry White sings L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry!

Then there was the time the department chair told us the Dean was interested in our trajectories. He wrote a piece called Trajectories that day and sent it to me. In it, someone ends up in the Dean's office. The first question she asks is this:

“When did it first occur to you that you were hurtling through the air?”

Joe keeps asking me to be in his band, and his wife Romana is a very very good human.