Poetic Inspiration for Dunces

About the Book

"Poetic Inspiration for Dummies: How to Create Modern Verse, For Better or Worse" presents 156 examples of the innovative poetry authored by the late Henry ("Harry") M. S. Phake-Potter (1940-2000), now presented here for the first time to the American public, as posthumously edited by Potter's friend and colleague, John F. Moffitt. In his ten-page, theoretically focused "Foreword," the erudite Editor describes the profound significance of, and properly modernist contexts for all the compositional techniques so deftly deployed by Dr. Phake-Potter. As complemented by his 18-page "Epilogue," the Editor provides whatever specific data any aspiring student of post-modernist poetical practice will need to know in order to compose--then to get published--his or her own poetic endeavor. Hence, this is a "must read" for all poets, either genuinely talented or merely aspiring.

As shown by the Editor, Phake-Potter's poetical oeuvre falls into two categories, and so this anthology has been broken into two parts. The first part presents the "Modernist-Traditional Poems," 95 pieces composed according to the orthodox--that is, now "traditional"--rules defining what constitutes acceptably "modernist" poetic endeavor. Such modernist canons were set in place as early as 1917 and 1921, with (respectively) the publication of Ezra Pound's First Canto and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. "Traditional" also means (as defined by the Editor) that this part of Harry's oeuvre was composed in "the old-fashioned way." And that means that Phake-Potter "composed" by using his "imagination" (that is, rather than computer-driven randomness). After his initial cognitive discharge, Harry committed (wrote) the imaginative outpourings onto paper, then further refining such tricky technical components as "word choice," "meter," and "rhyme." As Phake-Potter's work repeatedly shows, overall the modern poet's primary task has been to come up with "arresting imagery," with that provoking various kinds of presumably desirable, emotional reactions in the arrested reader.

Following "The Modernist-Traditional Poems," the second part of the present anthology belongs to an even more "modernist" Phake-Potterian genre, the "Post-Dada, Neo-Surrealist, Post-Mechanical Poems." The term "Post-Dada" refers to the original Dada artists and poets who had created themselves ex nihilo in the nihilistic milieu of World War 1. Provocative cultural scolds, they gleefully brought down invective upon the materialistic, also lethal, European culture of their times. So does Harry in his time, "Postmodernism," and in his ex-patriotic geographical locus, "America." Besides discharging invective, the Dadaist (or Post-Dadaist) sensibility delights in polemics against reigning canons of what constitutes "good taste" in art or (even) in real life. So did Prof. Phake-Potter. The emotive corollary is the "Neo-Surrealist" mode. Besides being quite keen on all sorts of French thought, especially the really modern sort, Harry was especially interested in Surrealism. Particularly, he was fascinated by the Surrealists' dogged employment of the aleatory techniques of "automatism" and "chance." These hyper-modernistic routines inform many of the 62 poems found in this part of the anthology, where Phake-Potter also "composed" by using his "imagination," but with that convulsive talent now enhanced by post-modernist, computer-driven randomness.

About the Author

The author of record of "Postmodernist Deconstruction for Dummies" is Henry ("Harry") M. S. Phake-Potter, D. Lit. (Oxon.). Now deceased, Dr. Phake-Potter (1940-2000) was Associate Professor of Deconstructionist Studies at Futurist State University (River City, New Mexico). After his death, his previously unknown critical writings were accidentally discovered, then carefully edited by his colleague and friend, John F. Moffitt (Emeritus Professor of Art History, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, N. M.). These works, 50 essays, 85 excursuses, and the Editor's critical introduction, are published here for the first time.