Your Failure To Enthuse Is Violence, Apparently
Mr Roy G Guzmán, whose tweet appears below, describes himself as “a marginalised writer,” and an “artist and influencer,” thereby signalling to lower beings both his suffering and his modesty. He’s also, it seems, a tad sensitive:
Note the gratuitous use of white woman. Perhaps that tells us something about Mr Guzmán’s poetic soul. A sample of Mr Guzmán’s creative output, titled Queerodactyl, is reproduced in full below. But before we venture further, you may wish to grip the arms of your chair:
My heart was a dystopian
berry budding in water tiger
lilies claiming
hocus-pocus wonder. I was broken
vanity, vixen vase, victorious tête-
à-tête — the Scrabble game nobody won
because the tiles aspired speculums.
Ocean-misaligned brook / brook-misaligned
agua
— where else could these gospels have dawned
if not in the bellies of men
hyenaing a becoming?
Twerking in church,
I outperformed the candles
diarized in the simpleminded annexation. Wussup,
Blastoise
with the veiniest homebound
pika-pika aim?
Wussup, Sims
Chumbawamba Family Portrait Simulation?
St. Sunny of the Sissies
beheld the bukkake throng
of mojo-coated cartilage
squandered
on the refurbished bunk
for new cetaceans. A dazzling jeremiad
shone me dead
until I gridlocked the algebraic expressions
of my body in question marks.
These syndicated fiyahs
stigmatized my herculean magma
shades,
but I held these walls apart,
every inch of my mascara cut off
apple pie.
You watched me hobble home
while the streets coalesced magenta. Tell Momma
the holes I cover with one error
swell — & there are only inadvertent landscapes
to dollop with nonetheless.
I’ll give you a moment to process that. To internalise its immensity.
Mr Guzmán tells us that he “holds degrees from the University of Minnesota, Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and the Honors College at Miami Dade College,” and is “pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies (Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society) at the University of Minnesota.” Mr Guzmán is now violently blocking lots of people on Twitter.
Update, via the comments:
After dismissing the recent, rather negative appraisals of his poetry as driven by “toxic masculinity” and “(white) male fragility” – no other possibilities being conceivable, of course – Mr Guzmán has apparently retired from Twitter. We are, it seems, a terrible disappointment to him. Such are the travails of artistic genius. Or rather, such are the effects of spending so much time in the Clown Quarter of academia, where narcissism and flummery are indulged – and consequently being ill-prepared for anything approaching honesty.
Via sk60.
I still think about that.
I bet he does.
I bet he does.
He’s a delicate flower, too fine for this world.
He’s available for readings, by the way.
Guaranteed woke.
The poetry is very Titiana McGrath-esque.
I can think of no greater compliment.
Mr Guzmán is now violently blocking lots of people on Twitter.
Punchline of note. 🙂
Punchline of note. 🙂
He’s erasing so many voices.
The bukkake thongs sound interesting.
Oh wait, that’s not quite what he said.
Note the gratuitous use of white woman. Perhaps that tells us something about Mr Guzmán’s poetic soul.
That.
That.
It’s another illustration of why wokeness and identity politics hold such appeal, at least for certain types of people. They dovetail perfectly with obnoxious personalities and even the most ludicrous narcissism.
Apparently I have some of his poetry! It’s in the form of a bunch of magnetized words affixed to my refrigerator.
No doubt, count Mr. Guzmán among those who we’ve discussed before on these pages who believe that society needs to subsidize the existence of “artists and influencers,” particularly Mr. Guzmán, because we refuse to be “influenced” the way we should. And the only reason for that refusal is because we are “anti-art” and “anti-intellectual.”
Steel rods of reason through my head.
Salmon jumping… where jump I?
Camels on fire and spotted clouds.
Striped horses prance the meadow wild,
And rush on to drink at life’s fountains deep.
Life is Cream. I am puce.
Ching. Chang. Cholla.
How will Chumbawamba, the St. Sunny of the Sissies, ever hold back the bukkake throng? So exciting!
Twerking in church,
I outperformed the candles
OK. Related, then, Twerking For Peace.
I am having a hard time figuring how this mentality is any different than a bunch of primitives somewhere dancing around a fire to ward off evil spirits – aside from the neurotic narcissism, of course. All I know is that as far as climate justice goes, if I went outside and was “hip-shaking, fist-pumping, ass-twerking” because it is only in the 30s (F) here, my neighbors would rightly have me hauled off.
They wouldn’t insist you keep going, just for the laughs? :-p
I am having a hard time figuring how this mentality is any different than a bunch of primitives somewhere dancing around a fire to ward off evil spirits – aside from the neurotic narcissism, of course.
Cargo-culture politics.
I awoke and flung the tigers
Deep into that darkness retching
Cats – tormentor of my dreams
When I thought of the cats
Once I sat engaged and petting
In a kingdom full of dalmatians
‘Cats!’ said I, ‘thing of bullmastiff.’
My passion is the silent upchuck.
https://www.poem-generator.org.uk
Make it your own with random spacing, capitalization, and punctuation.
Mr Guzmán tells us that he “holds degrees from the University of Minnesota, Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and the Honors College at Miami Dade College,” and is “pursuing a PhD in Cultural Studies (Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society) at the University of Minnesota.”
And he still can’t write even half-decent poetry.
Make it your own with random spacing, capitalization, and punctuation.
Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
It’s because we’re jealous. 🙂
https://twitter.com/dreamingauze/status/1074151799903408128
It’s because we’re jealous. 🙂
Soon, we’ll be told this was Guzman’s plan all along: To gain exposure among the masses to Guzman’s profundity and initiate a grand poetry appreciation renaissance among us, the great unwashed.
It’s Vogon poetry, just less metrical. BTW, has anyone else noticed Twitter becoming ever more insistent to visitors that haven’t signed up?
I am having a hard time figuring how this mentality is any different than a bunch of primitives somewhere dancing around a fire to ward off evil spirits
Primitives didn’t have biodegradable confetti.
It’s in the form of a bunch of magnetized words affixed to my refrigerator.
You can imagine how much fun it was to duplicate his chosen formatting. That’s time I’ll never get back.
“BTW, has anyone else noticed Twitter becoming ever more insistent to visitors that haven’t signed up?”
“We’ve detected that JavaScript is disabled in your browser. Would you like to proceed to an older version of Twitter?”
Click the button, and bingo. You have to click through that page every time mind you, and video clips don’t play, but other than that’s it’s fine.
My phone’s a different story, though. It just doesn’t work at all on the Brave browser with all the tracking protection switched on. Like I care.
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll rattle the spam filter.
Why is it twerking in a church and not say, just off the top of my head, a mosque? Now that would be edgy which is the premise of Mr Guzman’s work all along no?
Heh:
Also heh.
Mr Thompson I am not as worldly as yourself, your last link, can you in terms best describes a halal Jew as indicated by the Twitter handle?
He likes to mention if someone is white even when it’s totally irrelevant. Never a good sign.
It’s worth bearing in mind that these people aren’t aberrations or random inadequates. Their vanities are a result of prolonged exposure to the Clown Quarter, where such things are actively encouraged. People like Mr Guzmán – and as we’ve seen over the years, there are plenty of people eerily like Mr Guzmán – are the ideal end products of all that processing.
K..so this is OT…but no more OT than violence is to this guy’s poetry…though come to think of it, the wretching his “poetry” induces is its own violence…posting here because I can’t find the thread where this was discussed, though I’m fairly certain it was here, Psychology Today offers advice to the boy who was bullied for having the last name of Trump. Turns out it’s really the victim who is to blame for his misery…
Oh, there’s more. RTWT.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resilience-bullying/201812/advice-bullied-kids-named-trump
I used to write poetry in my mid-teens, some of it pretty angst-ridden and much of it composed of fairly original but ultimately rather tedious imagery. However, I like to think that even at my most pubescent and febrile, I still had some notion of the traditional meaning of words. I don’t take a prescriptive view of language – words and syntax evolve with the times – but I don’t see how anyone could even look at the first few lines of the above poem without taking the view that the poet either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what many of the words he’s employing actually mean.
For example, berries don’t bud; and whilst conceivably a vase could contain a depiction of a vixen, it’s pretty obvious the poet is merely choosing words based on their initial letter and relying on the reader being so swept away by the rhythm as not to care.
At this point in my consideration of the poem, I also began to suspect that the poet doesn’t quite understand the rules of Scrabble, either.
Then it dawned on me that what might be going on here is that the poem (or at least the beginning — or possibly “hyenaing” — of it) was “inspired” by a game of Scrabble. Berry/budding, water/tiger, lilies/claiming, vixen/vase, ocean/agua/brook, etc., could all have come from a Scrabble board. Possibly the poet was so amused by the coincidence in the “misaligned”
that he decided to insult our collective intelligence with this kind of secular divination drivel. It would be just like the “cut-up” technique, only with less scope for creativity.
Just a theory.
It’s Vogon poetry
All that’s missing is the Poetry Appreciation Chair, but I’m sure that the left is designing them at this very moment.
If I internalise that word dumpster I’ll be stuck in the lavatory for a week.
Hey, what the world needs is a Woke Word-of-the-day Calendar. Today’s word is “Violence.” Bonus points for most out of context use of the word.
Fuzzy kittens, the implied violence of their existence causes me to block my dog from Twitter.
Just what the world needs: another *&^%$#g drip.
Apparently, the public’s failure to be impressed by Mr Guzmán’s poetry is not only “violent,” but also a consequence of “toxic masculinity” and “(white) male fragility.”
No other possibilities can be imagined, it seems.
Mr. Guzman’s poetry is the hazmat suit that protects against toxic masculinity. But the non-violent kind of hazmat suit.
Espresso violence
Americano style
“Room for cream?” asks the poet barista,
his fight for 15 button now faded.
“Yes, please,” I reply.
from The Reality Is Violent, by Hopp de Síngg
He’s a delicate flower, too fine for this world.
Too fine for Twitter too, it appears, as his page seems to be have been terminated, violently, no doubt. A shame, he was a national treasure.
Too fine for Twitter too, it appears, as his page seems to be have been terminated, violently, no doubt.
The pressures of stardom.
Primitives didn’t have biodegradable confetti.
Monkeys fling their feces at each other. I think there’s an obvious parallel.
The pressures of stardom.
True, true. Heavy lies the mantle of greatness.
True, true. Heavy lies the mantle of greatness.
Or maybe it’s a result of spending so much time in an absurd and pathological environment, in which narcissism and flummery are indulged, and consequently being ill-prepared for anything approaching honesty. (See also Dr Ben Pitcher, whose chosen habitat – also the Clown Quarter – apparently spared him from any feedback of an unflattering kind.)
– His poem, above:
TL:DR
Sorry. Time to buzz the tower. He wrote a load of boilerplate non-intelligible shite and crap. Hope he didn’t get paid for it, although I shan’t hold my breath there. Next time I see him, I’ll not restrain my natural tendency to be slightly outspoken. I was kind this time.
If not for the h8trs, Queerodactyl would be plundered as thoroughly as Yeats’ The Second Coming.
Seemed apt.
That’s poetry? I’ve heard more poetic flatulence from strangers on a bus.
Oh, and don’t forget, quoting a woke-ling’s tweet, even favourably, is a violation and “causing harm.”
the public’s failure to be impressed
Oh, dear, he’s taken it away so we can’t play with it like, well, Steve E’s fuzzy kitten batting a ball around.
…even favourably, is a violation and “causing harm.”
It could expose the wokeling to the unwoke, who will likely mock.
You can imagine how much fun it was to duplicate his chosen formatting. That’s time I’ll never get back.
No refunds… 🙂
Oh, dear, he’s taken it away so we can’t play with it…
A shame too, he had one great tweet where he was scolding some detractor by
flattering himselfsaying he at least, as opposed to the other person apparently, was “perfoming labor”. Violent emotional labor, no doubt, very much on a par with coal mining.Interesting link about Obama’s youthful poetic exuberances and his continuing interest in the art form. I always get annoyed when politicians dishonesty flatter poets but I have to admit Obama’s statement –
“Poetry matters. Poetry, like all art, gives shape and texture and depth of meaning to our lives. It helps us know the world. It helps us understand ourselves. It helps us understand others, their struggles, their joys, the ways that they see the world. It helps us connect…
I think it’s fair to say that if we didn’t have poetry that this would be a pretty barren world. In fact, it’s not clear that we would survive without poetry….”
– is for the most part fairly conservative, aside from the last rhetorical flourish. Anyway, it’s not half as bad as Trudeau’s statement to a poet: ‘We need poets to change the world.’ Lefty friends just swooned at that one. Ugh!
Violent emotional labor, no doubt,
And again, this isn’t some random idiocy. It’s idiocy that’s been taught. Then eagerly regurgitated.
Seemed apt.
2019 Social Justice Kittens calendar–now with Social Justice Puppies!
http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/post/178717122640/announcing-the-2019-social-justice-kittens
2018 calendar:
http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/post/165834277465/announcing-the-2018-social-justice-kittens
I don’t blame people like Guzman for demanding that society support them for producing worthless pretentious twaddle even as they metaphorically spit in our face.
I blame us for acquiescing to it. We’re the idiots.
I think it’s fair to say that if we didn’t have poetry that this would be a pretty barren world.
Yep, because there are no painters, sculptors, musicians, real writers, or other artists in the world. An intellect as deep as a drop of oil on a rain slick street to match the depth of profundity of his so-called poetry.
Poetry is where you find it.
Some of us find poetry in a few, well-written lines of code.
Others in the smooth lines of a well designed car.
Some, in the graceful movements of an even better put together woman/man/cat ( insert ones desired preference here ).
As for written poetry – 99% is pure guff.
Unless youre Benjamin Zephaniah
That guys AWESOME!
…now with Social Justice Puppies!
Thanks pst314, spewed most of a martini through my nose once I scrolled down to the puppy part!
Not sure which entry is the funniest. This is why I block my dog on twitter.
And my favourite:
That’s gold, Jerry! Gold!
Like a bad parody of Alan Ginsberg.
A little less time with the bukkake throng and more with the algebraic expressions and he might have had a salable product to offer.
It’s Vogon poetry
Nah – he seems like he could give Grunthos the Flatulent a run for his money.
Well, Douglas Adams did warn us that the worst poetry of all was composed on Earth. If this is true, it’s disturbing to think that there actually may be a Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings out there.
The “refurbished bunk” line nearly brought me to tears.
The bukkake thongs sound interesting.
Oh wait, that’s not quite what he said.
David’s blogging thong was traumatic enough, so don’t need any more thongs.
Incoming!
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/316005/
Incoming
@pst314
When you throw yourself on top of one of them to save the rest of us, we’ll speak of you fondly at the regimental club.
I’m crushed.
Stuff like that has no hands to grab me.
I had to look up the definition of Speculum. Now I can’t unsee this.
Mr. Guzman’s claims of violence bring to mind Hugh Mungus vs Zarna where Zarna screamed sexual harrassment because a guy said his name was Hugh Mungus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzA4dCT4X0I
Laugh away, but these are the people the Republican Party has been surrendering gracefully to.
I made it a third of the way through that. reading this is like hitting your head with a brick because it feels so good when you stop.
It’s a pity Mr Guzmán has retired from social media. I was planning to highlight several subsequent exchanges, all fairly comical, and all now deleted. (Note to self: Always take screengrabs.)
After Mr Guzmán claimed that a lack of interest in bad poetry constitutes “violence,” and by implication that an audience shouldn’t get to determine how bad a poem is, a fellow woke-ling chimed in by insisting that not liking bad poetry is a precursor of oppression, racism, even genocide. At which point, several non-woke tweeters pointed out the figurative violence being done to logic and the meanings of words. A third woke-ling then rushed to Mr Guzmán’s defence and said (I paraphrase), “How dare you question his definition of violence? He works with words for a living.”
The appeal to alleged expertise, and supposedly gainful employment as a woke poet, albeit one who seems determined to spend his entire life in academia, was quite a thing.
Though after digging about, I did retrieve this one:
“There are no bad writers.”
One perhaps shouldn’t judge an entire book by first impressions gained from a flick through – but you can’t exactly stop it, can you? And in general I find one of the main problems with contemporary poetry is disregard for the reader or listener. Words are there to communicate, to connect with an audience, and if you as the writer don’t make the least effort to connect, then what are you doing?
(It would probably be churlish of me to post a link to my poetry book, which has just recently been published, so I won’t…. but I might strongly hint it.)
It would probably be churlish of me to post a link to my poetry book, which has just recently been published, so I won’t.
Don’t be shy, Tim. Go for it.
Why not, my sales pitch is as smooth as sandpaper anyway….
A link is up on my blog with contact details.
One perhaps shouldn’t judge an entire book by first impressions gained from a flick through – but you can’t exactly stop it, can you?
Well, having struggled through quite a bit of Mr Guzmán’s, um, output, much of which is difficult to distinguish at first glance from the example above, I can’t say I was intrigued. It’s quite wearying. But Mr Guzmán and his peers are keen to displace responsibility for any failure to enthuse. Critical comments, even statements of fact, are dismissed as “(white) male fragility” and “trolling,” irrespective of their particulars, and irrespective of whether the person making the comments is actually white or male.
But then that’s what “social justice” posturing is generally for, and why it appeals.
It’s perhaps worth noting the parallels with other efforts to shift blame for incompetence and misjudgement – say, the unsuccessful Ghostbusters remake, or woke Star Wars, where the explanations favoured involved “sexism,” “toxic fandom” and “toxic masculinity,” rather than a failure to create a product that audiences were happy with.
Twerking in church,
I outperformed the candles
I also used to sometimes turn up at Midnight Mass when drunk.
Actually, now I think about it, when staggering home through the streets afterwards we too had to avoid stepping in the “coalesced magenta”, especially if it was below freezing and Christmas Eve fell on a Friday night.
He works with words for a living.
I suppose “works with” can be synonymous with “tortures” or “mangles”.
Better still, “is emotionally violent to”.
“There are no bad writers.”
Yes there are, and do I get a grant ?
“There are no bad writers.”
Obviously hasn’t seen the new woke Doctor Who.
Guzman lost me at “dystopian berry.
He is a product of the zeitgeist where individual experience is reduced to deterministic intersections of social forces.
Jacques Derrida is to blame. Or rather, the university sophomores who grabbed a phrase or two from him and expanded them into a metaphysics.
Laugh away, but these are the people the Republican Party has been surrendering gracefully to.
What’s worse is that we pay these people to write these things and to behave in this manner. We shouldn’t laugh. We should be happy that we’re getting what we’re paying for.
“How dare you question his definition of violence? He works with words for a living.”
So did Goebbels.
Yes there are, and do I get a grant ?
Philistine! Don’t you know real poetry is not supposed to rhyme? Here, similar subject matter…from Mrs. Jones’s third grade…
Of all the birdies in the sky
I wish I were a duck
I’d fly down the beach at night
And watch the people swim
Philistine! Don’t you know real poetry is not supposed to rhyme?
Quite. In other words, remove anything like rhyme or meter which require artistic skill in production, a theme which has surfaced numerous times on these pages when our host gets peckish and takes it out on us. (Yes, I know. No refunds . . .)
The thing is, there is good modern poetry which dispenses with the classic forms. In the wayback, I had the opportunity to take an “Intro to Poetry” course from a rather renowned American poet, who’d won a bundle of awards. It’s interesting to note, not once during the course was he self-referential. He didn’t use the class as a platform to declare his own greatness or demand veneration.
Best story: I was a freshman. I wrote a paper and received a “C-” which was devastating to my ego. I went to see him about the grade and he spent a few moments reviewing my work, then looked up and asked me a question: “Do you own a Thesaurus?” When I replied in the affirmative, he said, “Throw it away.” Point being, I was trying to sound like an intellectual and wound up channeling a pretentious asshole. (“And that’s unlike today how precisely,” I hear you ask. “Bugger off,” I explained.)
That’s the problem with Mr. Guzman. He’s trying too hard and demands respect without having earned it. My freshman poetry professor grew up on a farm and his hands showed hard manual labor; his face showed years of California sun. His poetry reflected that upbringing. In other words, it was authentic. Mr. Guzman is just a poseur. That’s why his poetry is crap.
Philistine! Don’t you know real poetry is not supposed to rhyme?
Limericks:
There was a young lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in a lake.
A man in a punt
Stuck his pole in the water
And said “You can’t swim here, it’s private”.
There was a young man from Milan,
Whose poems would never quite scan.
There was nothing more worse
Than his terrible verse,
But he didn’t give a shit.
“Don’t you know real poetry is not supposed to rhyme?”
Did the Literary Review’s poetry competition – “for poems that rhyme, scan, and make sense” – die with Auberon Waugh? A cursory glance at the website doesn’t turn anything up. (The Bad Sex in Fiction Award is still going strong* though, you’ll be pleased to hear.)
“He’s trying too hard and demands respect without having earned it.”
It seems to be all the rage these days.
*Oo-er, missus.
Philistine! Don’t you know real poetry is not supposed to rhyme?
wordShamed
by patriarchal Xtian worshipBook Reference
violently mindtossing likesound syllables
into
the Gutter of oppression
like the unspaced brownbodiesredbodiesyellowbodiesblackbodies
of colonial misogynistxenophilia
Damnit, the formatting was lost, as will my grant, no doubt, and don’t ask how it got posted twice.
the unspaced brownbodies
Band name.
Band name
“like the unspaced brownbodiesredbodiesyellowbodiesblackbodies
of colonial misogynistxenophilia” is actually a Chumbawumba lyric.