Goodbye, Mr. Pinsky...

In case you aren't one of the loyal and your internet trolling has gone a little stale, add to your favorites the Washington Post column Poet's Choice. Don't be intimidated -- it's a weekly article featuring selections of poems surrounded by careful and understandable explanations of them.

Up until March, the column had been written by Robert Pinsky, the former United States poet laureate, and he did a wonderful job. Written in a warm, unintimidating style, he could get anyone to fall in love with his selected poems and to understand why they were essential, what about them speaks our soul's deep little human corners. So hat's off to Mr. Pinsky! (And by the by, his new book of poetry, Gulf Music, is a prime example of the best of American poetry.)

To fill those big, wonderful shoes we have Kay Ryan, whose shoes are undoubtably smaller but possessing more elegance. And she lead's off with one helluva poem, written in the seventh century by a man who has been scorned by his friend:

Liar

Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers,
strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid
surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle
now set rattling by the wind, while facedown,
helpless as a poison cur, on all fours, you puke
brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet,
barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful,
treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves.
And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that,
smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.

That is painful! But it's the vitriol we love, the kind we feed off of in gossip magazines and lap up from political pundits. So maybe I should feel guilty for loving this poem so much, and though it may be trashy, it's in verse -- how bad can it be?

Keep an eye on the Poet's Choice column. You won't regret it.

-Patrick