I despise the word
blurb.
Its approximation
to burp.
Its truncated
BS
on the back,
of that book
you feigned was
great, essential,
a 21st-century
masterpiece,
not the piece
of shit it really was.
I haven’t got the
gumption
to tell it straight,
shooting at the centre
of the target,
felling the aspiring
poet in their hearth,
their flame
snuffed out at last,
never again
to inflict us
with their clumsy
prosody,
their incessant
démodé,
their farcing
the quotidian.
I confess
to my own
hypocrisy:
the blurbist’s
constant usurping
of the stage,
the tossing of the
words in salad
bowls, without the sting
of vinaigrette,
the look-at-me
you fools
I’m surely
tempted to convey—
my praise
more poetic
than the poetaster-
disaster
within, embedded
like a landmine
between the covers.
So, my fellow bard,
ask me not
to laud your golden
verse, claim it’s
even better
than your last,
worth twice
the price
of purchase,
say your rhyme of
“June” with “spoon”
is so clearly innovative—
in an ironic
sense, of course,
knowing the slurp
of every plaudit
cannot be ingested
with a fork,
a knife deliberately
dulled
on either side,
a utensil
in a month
that’s not the sixth—
open to the grifting
of my guile,
my wanton flattery.
Andreas Gripp
January 6, 2025
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