Poems by Kanye West, Snooki and ... Rex Ryan?
So all I'm saying is me dipsomaniac
As well as descending down
That's how we am when we party
Though the little of the things we do is,
like, "Really, Nicole?"
These lines are from "The Anthology of Really Important Modern Poetry" (Workman Publishing, $11.95). Their author was born in 1987, the anthology notes, and she is from "The Reality School" of poets, those "voices of the often unheard, 'regular folks,' who also are the so-called stars of what may be considered modern cinema verit."
Well, if you consider "Jersey Shore" to be documentary filmmaking. Because the poet is Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi. She keeps good company in this anthology, which is filled with notables such as Donald Trump, Rex Ryan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Kardashian, Flavor Flav, Charlie Sheen and John Madden. Just in time for National Poetry Month, the volume positions celebrity soundbites in a new light, one of unwitting ... profundity.
In another chapter, dedicated to particular body parts, one Carmen Electra waxes the following, in "From 32B to 36D":
I had nice boobs before
they were small but
nice ... Of course
I could have them reduced.
But
then where would I be?
The anthology is the work of Kathryn and Ross Petras, a New Jersey-bred brother-sister writing team that appreciates unintentional lyricism of famous people as much as poetry of the canon.
"We're like stupidity experts," Kathryn explains. "I am ! one of t he only people who can say I proudly make my living from stupid."
The siblings also have a Page-A-Day calendar called "The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said" and a book called "The Stupidest Things Ever Said: Book of All-Time Stupidest Top-10 Lists" (Workman Publishing, $10.95).
Yet with this venture through "really important" poetry, they weren't going for straight stupid so much as utterances that sound funny.
Workman PublishingTake Snooki. "I think it's sort of like a stream-of-consciousness thing," Ross says of the verse, lifted from an article in Rolling Stone magazine. "Sarah Palin has the same sort of thing." (Palin's listed under "The Patriotic Poets," for her account of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" ... "with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.")
The Petrases grew up in Plainfield and Egypt, where their father worked as a consultant for a few years. When the family returned to New Jersey, they moved to Ridgewood, where the siblings graduated from high school.
Ross, 56, lives in Toronto and Kathryn, 53, lives in New York. She calls herself a "typical English major" who received honorable mention for the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Poetry Award. One who "detested Sylvia Plath," but adored Anne Sexton and T.S. Eliot. "I would send my poems into the New Yorker," she says.
Ross, a former political officer at the U.S. State Department, has come across his fair share of bureaucratic speak, so he has a keen eye for the ridiculous in speeches from people like, say, Fidel Castro, who has a poem in the anthology from a speech that in reality took an hour to recite (it's truncated in the book).
They're finishing a book tentatively called "Wretched Writing," which includes examples of ill-applied alliteration, comma ov! eruse an d bad cacophony, as well as bad poetry. There are both terrible excerpts from the worst novel writers and horrible examples from great writers.
While Ross is given to learning ancient Greek and Latin, Kathryn admits to a perhaps less lofty enterprise: "I watch really crap TV." She remembers listening to Melissa Gorga fudge the lyrics to "Amazing Grace" on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." She could hardly contain her excitement. Lady Gaga is another reliable source, says Kathryn. "She tries so hard to sound incredibly clever."
The Petrases started with romance novels. "We didn't succeed," Kathryn says. A Christian publisher once ended up replacing their sex scenes with prayer scenes, she says. ("Wretched Writing" has a section on the "worst sex scenes ever written.") Working as a temp, Kathryn began writing job-hunting guides and turned to humor.
"This brief poem by rapper Kanye West packs a powerful spiritual punch," they write, introducing the last of West's three entries. "One feels he or she too is 'home' at Gucci."
The duo laugh at comments about their anthology that suppose "the collapse of civilization is near," Ross says. While each "poem" is free for anyone to dissect with a close reading, the book's intention is clearly satire.
"Poetry skewers egos a little bit," he says. Take Dr. Oz and what the authors have called "I'm Rich," his "poem" about taking his cat to the vet after a fall. "I can guarantee/that normal people/would not have been able to pay for it," he says, at its end.
"We're not saying that anyone in here is, like, a moron, necessarily," says Kathryn. Given the fact that those in the public eye are constantly being interviewed or filmed, there's plenty of potential for gaffes, notes Ross:
"It's not reall! y their fault. They're talking all the time."
Other poetry:
Rex Ryan (excerpted): Let's make sure we play like the f**king New York Jets
and not some f**king slapd**k team.
Taht's what I want to see tomorrow,
do we understand what the f**k I want to see tomorrow?
Let's go to eat a goddamn snack.
Kate Moss:
I've just started wearing bras.
It's a miracle.
Great timing for my lingerie collection.
I've just grown breasts.
I am a woman now.
It's true.
Honestly, I've never worn a bra in my life.
Ever!
It's so awful, even my friends are phone me up and
saying, "Are you pregnant?"
And I'm like, "No! I just put on a couple of pounds and
they went in the right place."
Isn't that weird?
Now I can fill a B cup.
My boyfriend might not like them.
I'm a bit worried.
Kanye West:
I won't go into a big spiel
about reincarnation,
But the first time I was in the Gucci store
in Chicago
Was the closest I've ever felt
to
home.
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