{"id":481,"date":"2010-01-03T14:07:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T21:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/?p=481"},"modified":"2015-11-21T15:33:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T22:33:38","slug":"how-to-read-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"How To Read a Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(after listening to one too many poetry readings)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>How To Read a Poem<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>and for all that you keep holy please DROP<br \/>\nthat whiny-assed sing-song whimper-will<\/p>\n<p>you are reading to human beings<br \/>\n&#8212; do you hear? &#8212;<br \/>\nmade of blood and clay<br \/>\nand sperm and shit and brains.<\/p>\n<p>know your audience:<\/p>\n<p>lovers who&#8217;ve fucked themselves into screaming madness<br \/>\non wintry granite mountaintops, flecked with snow<br \/>\namidst bristlecone pines born before Jesus<\/p>\n<p>philosophers who&#8217;ve whittled matter down to quantum formula<br \/>\nand in one such coffee-stained scribble &#8212; for just a moment &#8212;<br \/>\nswore that they saw fingerprints of divinity<\/p>\n<p>soldiers who&#8217;ve spit from sandy teeth<br \/>\nbits of friend&#8217;s livers and spleen<br \/>\nflung by roadside bombs in Basra<\/p>\n<p>memento mori, dear reader at the podium:<br \/>\nyou, too, will slam into a brick wall some day.<\/p>\n<p>so speak from the rumbling earth,<br \/>\nand grumble that metaphor and essential trope<br \/>\nfrom your salivating cunt,<br \/>\nfrom your enraged cock,<br \/>\nand <strong>read<\/strong> like you&#8217;ve got a gun pointed to your head<br \/>\n(for you do),<\/p>\n<p>and not like you&#8217;re ordering<br \/>\na god-damned chamomile tea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(after listening to one too many poetry readings) How To Read a Poem and for all that you keep holy please DROP that whiny-assed sing-song whimper-will you are reading to human beings &#8212; do you hear? &#8212; made of blood and clay and sperm and shit and brains. know your audience: lovers who&#8217;ve fucked themselves into screaming madness on wintry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niles-blogs","category-thoughts","category-writers-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nilesritter.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}