Epigramaphobia, or: Where the Hell Did the Satire Go? (Part 1)
[Ed. Note: A version of this exchange between Kent Johnson and John Bradley appeared in Plantarchy #5, 2008. Thanks to Justin Katko for permission to reprint. John Bradley is the author of Terrestrial Music (Curbstone), War on Words (BlazeVOX), and You Don't Know What You Don't Know (Cleveland St. Univ. Poetry Center, forthcoming).]
“Only those deserving of scorn are apprehensive of it.”
– La Rochefoucauld
John Bradley: You’ve recently published a book titled Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets (BlazeVOX, 2006), a large gathering of epigrams and accompanying pictures dedicated to individual contemporary poets. You’re now expanding it to fifty or so more. I think it’s safe to say there hasn’t been anything like this in poetry for a long time.
I’ve been thinking about the growing popularity of social and political satire with newspaper, online, and book versions of The Onion. On TV, there’s South Park, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and a BBCA show called The Thick of It. In film, there’s Bullworth, Wag the Tail, Thank You for Smoking, and Borat. Americans seem fairly comfortable with social and political satire, but not with literary satire, specifically satire that goofs on writers. What do you make of this curious dichotomy? Is the poet seen as off limits? What contemporary poets have been effectively employing satire? Is it possible that poetic satire is more accepted when it mocks social trends or celebrities as opposed to particular writers, literary movements, and poetry politics?
