Poetry My Arse: A Poem

Poetry My Arse: A Poem by Kennelly, Brendan. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781852243234.

When anyone snaps Poetry My Arse! they may not be dismissing poetry, but they are certainly pouring scorn on the intellectual elitism often associated with poetry, or on the posturing arrogance of some poets, or on the ways in which poetry is talked about or "taught". Poetry My Arse is written in that spirit of scorn, trading self-glory for self-abuse. In Poetry My Arse, Brendan Kennelly plays devils advocate, exploring the poetryworlds of one Ace de Horner, who is slowly going blind. Helped by his uglyjoe dog, Kanooce, and by a woman, Janey Mary, Ace thinks he is seeing things in himself a little more clearly, connecting the fragments of his life a little more convincingly. Not so! As the poem digs into Aces vanity, visions, fantasies, failures, dedication and absurdity, the reader becomes party to his painful efforts to relate to poetry, to his jocular distortions of language and to his pained perspective on the world. Poetry My Arse is also a poem about Kennellys Dublin, a city of parody and caricature, an attractive, scruffy centre of scandal and gossip where slagging, piss-taking and ridicule keep boredom and the terrors of self-knowledge at bay. Poetry My Arse is an anatomy of mockery, at once satire and elegy, epic and lyric, narrative and impressionistic. The blind poet sees the citys blindness, says Kennelly, the blind city accommodates the poets blindness. What, then, is the blindness of poetry, so often commended for its "vision"? Ask Poetry My Arse.