A Few Ideas for Books or their Content

Without bothering to explain why, I can say I have no use for books of poems that purport to be written simply to publish a book of poems. Put another way, I am tired of poets who are merely poem publishers, whose work is the work of being a poet known for the poems they have written. This looks unreasonable. Fine. Perhaps then it is very poetic. I do not care either to excite or to offend, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts I suppose for content of that which purports to be a book of "poems."

• Besides wordy poems, I sometimes provide more concrete poems, including those with numerals, etc.
• I also might provide drawings. These are usually rendered with a graphite stick. Goodness my days are complicated.
• How about taking photos though, saving them as jpeg files and inserting them into a word doc? That would be a nice way to push the wordy poems out away from each other.
• A page of more or less pure color inserted here and there.
• Repetitions of a dedication page, taken up as a kind of apology.
• How about a book that purports to determine reaction and response to an absurd degree and so offers directions or advice to the reader for "coping" with the poetry?
• Voting, investment, breeding instructions. This one really is quite relevant. It would not have to be an ongoing, insertionary form of proto-representation (don't screw with me you punks) but might conclude a matter in offering the sort of post-Edenic guidance any poet would be proud to sign off on.
• In the midst of this, we create or teach children.
• Work-out routines; song-lists; coupons.

When the world was young, one might have put one's hand out and expected nothing in return. Those are long gone.