from the archive of vanished posts

This morning's post dealt with William Jewel McGonagall, the Scots bad poet, who wrote about whales and the Queen's Jubilee, believing he was a genius, but in fact being invited to perform so that people could jeer; a poetry reading I attended at the Iguana Cafe in North Hollywood, California, hosted by one of my wife's old college classmates; how I failed to win the fondness of said classmate during a debate in which I explained my theory of bad poetry as "not this, not that" when she kept talking about things like the inner critical eye; her own surprising skill as a poet, after her screenplay did not sell; the Iguana Cafe owner's gruff, shouted pride that the only support he gave that reading was renting the room; a poem read there by an elementary school principal read about the things the nuns said at the private school he attended as a child, and the double entendre some of those things involved; the time I eBayed "Chess Poems for the Tournament Player" in Dutch Auction for one penny each, using the ad title "Worst Chess Poem Book You'll Ever Own", prompting a bright purchaser to leave the feedback "Product EXACTLY as advertised"; what it is that prompts those of us who are not "really" artists or poets to wish to express ourselves; the virtues of self-promotion; how "real" artists can show their authenticity and what is real, but how writing by "non-artists" can sometimes show a delightful artifice; how sometimes when I write things that are trite or sentimental it is because I am; and how interconnection is what matters. The post was preceded by a poem about going to see an exhibition whale at sixpence a head. It was titled "Wednesday's child in rhyme". I invoked Ogden Nash once, and self-expression as a way to deal with woe once. When I finished it, I moved the mouse to set the cursor on "Update journal". But the mouse no longer worked, and the post vanished.