EastWesterly
Review

Towards a Manifesto for a New Poetry
by Lael Ewy

Poetry should:
1. Refuse to be reduced to an "ism"
2. Fly in the face of convention, except where it feels impelled to embrace it
3. Reject all snobbery and effete-ism, except to ridicule it
4. Be blatantly random
5. Be not afraid to be unreadable
6. Be not afraid to be abstract
7. Be not afraid to be vulgar, angry, political or annoying
8. Reject all notions of craft
9. Be not afraid to be funny
10. Be unafraid to be humble
11. Be unafraid
12. Be useless
13. Be unpublishable
14. Be written without regard to set notions of art, artifact, or above all, the artist's place in history
15. Be handwritten
16. Include hypertext, if desired
17. Be as easily performed as ballet as spoken word
18. Be in blatant violation of FCC regulations
19. Contain genuine emotion
20. Be written for people, dogs, rocks, fruit. . .
21. Be exclusively auditory
22. Be exclusively visual
23. Be exclusively excrement
24. Be pleasurable
25. Be difficult
26. Be easy
27. Be academically unsound
28. Be chemically unstable
29. Be cruel
30. Be humane
31. Be blasphemous
32. Be holy
33. Be heavy
34. Be cream
35. Be blue
36. Be pink
37. Be red.

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