The Condition of Poetry in the Modern World
subtitled "A Stoogist Manifesto"
Paul Fericano
Poor Souls Press/Scaramouche Books
Millbrae, CA
(c)1980
I was on Ebay tumbling through postings of small press books when I saw this item among a "lot" being sold for an obscene amount of money, at least to me obscene, and I was taken more by the subtitle than the title. "A Stoogist Manifesto"? Three Stooges or Iggy Pop's band? What was all this then?
I found a copy elsewhere and it arrived and I noted that it has a 1980 selling price of a nickel. Yes, five American centavos.
I never hear of the author or the press involved. The author does have a page on Poets & Writers website though.
This is an essay that I will grant some clear political forthright since it was written after Reagan was first elected and was already anticipating his 1984 re-election. It was written in November 1980 so after the election but before RR was sworn in.
However, to me the essay is intentional gobbledygook. The theme of the essay seems to have been that only "Stoogism" was the gleaming poetic light for the future, of course showing no examples of this clear and awesome poetry itself but rather simply ridiculing "existing poetic norms". It does seem that every decade starts out debunking the existing work of the previous one, so perhaps that's what is going on here or maybe it's just some puffery. Not sure.
I have no better understand of what is or is not "Stoogist" after reading this essay than before opening it's staple-bound cover.
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