Earl Gray's Laws of Poetry

Earl Gray's
Laws of Poetry

Rule #1	Never say anything in a poem that you wouldn't say in a bar.
Rule #2	If you can't be profound be vague.
Rule #3	There's a difference between poetry and hebephrenia.
Rule #4	McNeilley Dictum #4: Cut off the last line! This will make your poem better! (If this doesn't work, keep cutting off the last line.)
Rule #5	Never discuss bad poetry with anyone who hasn't read Ferlinghetti.
Rule #6	Poetry lies between synonyms.
Rule #7	The difference between self-expression and communication is poetry.
Rule #8	If you can't spell a word don't use it.
Rule #9	The fact that it's bad writing doesn't make it good poetry.
Rule #10	Don't emote. Evoke.
Rule #11	Linebreaks don't make poetry any more than stuttering does.
Rule #12	Try to be understood too quickly.
Rule #13	If it doesn't sound like poetry to a Lower Slobovian it probably isn't.
Rule #14	Every modern poem must contain at least one em dash abuse.
Rule #15	Audiences don't come to use their imaginations. They come to use yours.
Rule #16	To each their own taste, even those with none.
Rule #17	Don't use clichés. Create them.
Rule #18	The Egoless Motto: "If you don't think your poetry is competing against the works of others you're probably right."
Rule #19	Don't worry about your voice until someone is listening.
Rule #20	Writing is to poetry as paper is to stone.
Rule #21	Poetry isn't about the writer or the reader. It's about everything in between.
Rule #22	You aren't a poet until the janitor says you are.
Rule #23	The Gerard Ian Lewis Rule: Triteness is a minor flaw, easily remedied (should nothing else occur to you) by adding a mysterious reference to a goat in the last line.
Rule #24	The Elizabeth Alexander Rule: Poetry's only selling point is that it is cheaper than tear gas.
Rule #25	The fact that it's boring doesn't mean it's poetry.
Rule #26	We aren't stoned enough for this.
Rule #27	The Pistols at Dawn Rule: Never compare a poet's work to Ferlinghetti's unless you're a better shot than target.
Rule #28	The Joan Houlihan Rule: Any poetry reading longer than 20 minutes is a hostage situation.
Rule #29	The merit of your words should exceed the considerable value of silence.
Rule #30	Poetry cannot be paraphrased.
Rule #31	If you cannot scan verse you cannot imagine free verse.
Rule #32	"I should rather be skinned alive than exploit my feelings in writing. I refuse to consider Art a drain-pipe for passion, a kind of chamberpot, a slightly more elegant substitute for gossip. No, no! Genuine poetry is not the scum of the heart." - Flaubert Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Rule #33	Poetry needs to get over itself.
Rule #34	Tripe details the unspeakably obvious. Poetry details the unspeakable obvious.
Rule #35	People don't read poetry for the same reason you don't read film scripts.
Rule #36	Memory is the difference between storing and misplacing. Intelligence is the difference between planting and burying.
Rule #37	Free versers don't count.
Rule #38	There is always a deadline.
Rule #39	The Rule of Two and Three: Two is a contrast. Three is a trend.
Rule #40	Bad poetry haunts the author. Good poetry haunts the reader.
Rule #41	Journalism is about what you say. Poetry is about how you say it. Diplomacy is about how you avoid saying it.
Rule #42	Prose is message. Poetry is words.
Rule #43	All those who distinguish between art and audience understand neither.
Rule #44	"I want your honest opinion" is never entirely true.
Rule #45	Poetry is cheaper and safer than other general anaesthetics.
Rule #46	If you ain't getting better you're getting worse.
Rule #47	The funny thing about arrogance is where you find it.
Rule #48	Writers shouldn't write better than readers can read.
Rule #49	It's not too clever to appear so.
Rule #50	The 50-50 Rule: Fewer than 1 in 50 can recite a poem written in the last 50 years.
Rule #51	Denial is not a cure.
Rule #52	Poetry used to have fans. Now it has constituencies.
Rule #53	Defining poetry by content is like trying to grab a drowning donkey by its bubbles.
Rule #54	A picture contains a thousand words. A poem contains a thousand pictures.
Rule #55	Art is the opposite of time. It does not age, never weakens, and cannot be forgotten.
Rule #56	Fewer people know the fundamentals of poetry than the rudiments of Klingon.
Rule #57	"It's more fun if you take it seriously." - Pearl's Paradox #1
Rule #58	No meritocracy ever survived a vote.
Rule #59	Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.
Rule #60	We hold these truths to be, like, duh.
Rule #61	Your ear is brighter than your brain.
Rule #62	Poetry bears repeating.
Rule #63	Poetry used to be a challenge to write and easy to read. Now it's the opposite.
Rule #64	As goes contemporary, so goes classical.
Rule #65	Imagine how dull the world would be if you or I were the most interesting thing in it.
Rule #66	Bad actors pause for breath. Good actors pause for thought.
Rule #67	"Forgettable poetry" is an oxymoron.
Rule #68	Trust your wings, not your perch.
Rule #69	Poetry is an act of consumption, not production.
Rule #70	There has never been a better time to be a bad poet, never a worse time to be a good one.
Rule #71	Poetry is about poems, not poets.
Rule #72	Introducing your work as "poetry" is like a hunter firing off a warning shot.
Rule #73	Those who believe in criticism without criticism usually believe in poetry without poetry.
Rule #74	Would you buy a car from someone whose sales pitch amounted to an argument that the thing in front of you is, in fact, a car?
Rule #75	We are just one great performer away from a renaissance.
Rule #76	Good poetry is memorable. Great poetry is unforgettable.
Rule #77	If you have to ask its meaning a poem has already failed.
Rule #78	If you have to tell me it's a poem it isn't.
Rule #79	Novice poets don't have a style. Experienced poets don't want one.
Rule #80	You will learn more from the critique that you give than the critique you receive.
Rule #81	Inspiration has a date of expiration.
Rule #82	What trips off the tongue lands in our memory.
Rule #83	One who compromises on wit becomes a half.
Rule #84	Rehearse until it seems unrehearsed.
Rule #85	Today, the poet with five readers can envy the exclusivity of the one with three.
Rule #86	Bad poets may argue that words have no meaning. Theirs certainly don't.
Rule #87	People reread stories because they forgot the words. People reread poetry because they remember them.
Rule #88	If no one is in for a penny then no one is in for a pound.
Rule #89	If you can't be famous be infamous.
Rule #90	It is not the public's apathy we need to address first.
Rule #91	We can sell crap to a lazy ignoramus. We can't sell crap by a lazy ignoramus.
Rule #92	What can mean anything means nothing.
Rule #93	Try not to blur the distinction between aesthetics and anaesthetics.
Rule #94	Chris Richardson's American Ido effect: "Being bad includes not knowing you're bad."
Rule #95	"Now that phone booths are gone will poets stop trying to fill them?"
Rule #96	"Avant garde" is beyond pretentious. It is pretension itself.
Rule #97	Don't ask what it means. Ask if and why it will be remembered.
Rule #98	Authorial intent is to poetry what creationism is to science.
Rule #99	The Bachmann Question: "How can we tell where the disingenuity ends and the stupidity begins?"
Rule #100	We can work with the clueless. We can't work with the clueproof. (Be teachable.)
Rule #101	Those who can't do...preach.
Rule #102	What is fashionable can never be original.
Rule #103	Poets not jealous of Maz have the most reason to be.
Rule #104	Ignorance isn't the sin that laziness is.
Rule #105	On Originality: The question isn't: "Have I seen this before?" The question is: "Do I want to see this again?"
Rule #106	*Shakespeare's Law:* "If you don't know how poetry is performed you don't know how it is written."
Rule #107	There are no rules, only tools and fools.
Rule #108	People avoid today's poetry for the same reason psychotherapists charge money.
Rule #109	I'm a big fan of my work. Sadly, others have better taste.
Rule #110	In poetry, superfluous words are a crime. Superfluous modifiers are a felony.
Rule #111	Do not confuse wilful ignorance and opinion.
Rule #112	Anyone can be awful but if you want to be shockingly so you need to go first.
Rule #113	"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James D. Nicoll
Rule #114	Nobody Reads Poetry
Rule #115	There is no more certain proof that poetry is dead than the need to deny it.
Rule #116	While alive, poetry was art. Now it is religion.
Rule #117	People don't call what they read "prose" and they don't read what we call "poetry".
Rule #118	History is politics.
Rule #119	[When writing...] Show, don't tell. [When performing...] Tell, don't show.
Rule #120	Write for audiences, not readers.
Rule #121	Common sense is not an open-book test.
Rule #122	Poetry isn't what you write. It's what others remember hearing.
Rule #123	Trying to sell poetry today is like trying to sell scripts in a civilization without theaters. (Pssst! You have to build the theaters first.)
Rule #124	What are you afraid of learning?
Rule #125	Vicious cycle warning! Learning breeds curiosity. And vice versa.
Rule #126	Poetry is an effect, not a cause, not an affect.
Rule #127	A poem is rarely about its topic.
Rule #128	Honesty is just a lack of imagination.
Rule #129	Lies tell us twice as much as the truth.
Rule #130	The wise learn more from fiction than fools from fact.
Rule #131	"But what really pisses me off when you get right down to it, is the unmitigated gall of so many who post here...who have the patronizing, self-absorbed opinion that the person who critiques their poetry has not a clue, has never loved, has never grieved, has never existed in all of the frames they write so badly about. That (at the moment) is what really pisses me off." - Debi Zathan
Rule #132	You don't have to be clever, just slightly less stupid than everyone else.
Rule #133	Nothing good ever followed the words "Hold my beer and watch this!"
Rule #134	News is what doesn't happen.
Rule #135	If everything is art then nothing is art.
Rule #136	How to read poetry: Rule #1: Don't. (Instead, listen to it.)
Rule #137	"Poetry readings" is an oxymoron.
Rule #138	The one lesson that can be learned only by reading poetry is that we should be listening to poetry.
Rule #139	Mixing politics and art yields neither.
Rule #140	Too much clarity has the same effect on pseudointellectuals as too much sunlight has on vampires.
Rule #141	"...you wanted your poetry to move people...that's what escalators are for, no?" - - Mary E. Hope
Rule #142	Tell me the fable, not the moral.
Rule #143	Common sense isn't just a myth. It's an oxymoron.
Rule #144	Truth is the most effective lie.
Rule #145	The story is the story.
Rule #146	The teller is the story.
Rule #147	You can't invent what you can't imagine.
Rule #148	Quality is not a genre.
Rule #149a	When arts die they turn into hobbies. - Michael Lind
Rule #149b	When arts die they turn into lobbies. - Pearl Gray
Rule #150	"Poetry is the original digital art; its audience tends to be in the digits." - Michael Lind
Rule #151	Poetry ≠ Email From Rehab
Rule #152	Why do you think teleprompters were invented?
Rule #153	Prose is timely. Poetry is timeless.
Rule #154	From childhood, humans are conditioned to fall asleep when you read to them.
Rule #155	Poetry. It isn't just prose you agree with.
Rule #156	Never accuse anyone of being a poet. They might know a lawyer.
Rule #157	There is no such thing as a little candor.
Rule #158	The Tsendoku Law: The number of poetry publications read is lower than the number sold.
Rule #159	"Maybe it was a slow news day. Poetry has a lot of those."
Rule #160	You can't sell books shorter than 25 words.
Rule #161	"All a real editor needs is clean copy, dirty graphics, a nearby printing press and a corrupt janitor."
Rule #162	Satire should be funny, not just silly.
Rule #163	Poetry isn't homework.
Rule #164	"Poetry is only as important as we are."
Rule #165	Your greatest ability is your available.
Rule #166	If the audience is not your first concern then you will be their last.
Rule #167	Whether or not critique is constructive depends on how the author uses it, not on the manner in which it's phrased." - John Boddie (on Gazebo)
Rule #168	Postmodernism is incoherent solipsism.
Rule #169	"Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time." - Howard Nemerov
Rule #170	Better is different enough.
Rule #171	The only thought more frightening than poetry being dead is the notion that this is poetry being alive.
Rule #172	Most poetry isn't.
Rule #173	Get better. Not bitter.
Rule #174	"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis
Rule #175	Poetry's status quo: Those who perform cannot write; those who write cannot perform; those who learn cannot teach; and, those who teach cannot learn.
Rule #176	Piracy is advertising.
Rule #177	Poetry is the mathematics of language.
Rule #178	If you can tell it's poetry it's not. - Pearl's Paradox #2
Rule #179	The lack of an aesthetic is, itself, an aesthetic. - Pearl's Paradox #3
Rule #180	People who finish every project don't conceive many.
Rule #181	Shakespeare's Question: "'Pandering'? WTF do you think I was doing?"
Rule #182	"Poetry is a well-planned accident." - Pearl's Paradox #4
Rule #183	"If you're not careful... ...you might learn something here."
Rule #184	Fools can be followed, forgotten or fleeced. (Choose wisely.)
Rule #185	"The correct definition of a problem is its solution."
Rule #186	So proud of their dizzy display as they prowl through this dark neighbourhood, these loud voices with nothing to say will all need to be misunderstood.
Rule #187	"Art is our vanguard against the mundane, a tin foil umbrella against the insane."
Rule #188	All good poetry is easy, the great stuff deceptively so.
Rule #189	"If you have to tell me you are a poet you aren't." - Pearl's 5th paradox.
Rule #190	Imagination is not imaginable.
Rule #191	"Poems are elliptic, not cryptic."
Rule #192	There is no river. Only currents.
Rule #193	"A poem is a little machine for remembering itself." - Don Paterson
Rule #194	Art is for strangers.
Rule #195	The less horrified we are the more horrifying we become.
Rule #196	"Critics who don't insult writers insult readers."
Rule #197	Every guppy thinks itself a whale until it sees the ocean.
Rule #198	The best way to slight one poet is to praise another.
Rule #199	"I am not as good as I think I am." - Scavella's Mantra
Rule #200	"There is no escape from metre; there is only mastery." - T.S. Eliot
Rule #201	Accessibility is a club that the incoherent and the banal use to batter each other.
Rule #202	Reading poetry is like tasting art.
Rule #203	Pearl's 6th Paradox: The simpler the concept the smaller the number of poets who understand it.
Rule #204	Poetry is defined by its reception, not its conception.

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