Correspondence with James Berger
I loved Kent's ability to use the poetic art form to criticize not poetry itself, but the popular trends that muddy and obscure poetry by forcing all of us to dig through the garbage to find actual substance.
Discipline and Poetics: On Kent Johnson’s “From One Hundred Poems from the Chinese”
“From One Hundred Poems from the Chinese” doesn’t aspire to the brevity and concision of classical Chinese poetry. They’re relatively long, jumping between themes and styles, and always very funny.
Guy Fawkes Day in The Poetry World
Not since Ed Dorn have we had such scathing satire on the state of the arts, and not since Alexander Pope, I don’t think, have we had someone willing to take on the establishment with such vigor — and in rhymed couplets, yet!
Amanda Gorman, The Typescript, and Big Houses
The ostensible cause was Kent’s Emily Post-Avant piece critiquing Amanda Gorman’s poem for the Biden inauguration, which an editor at The Typescript said was “antithetical to our values.” I’ve sometimes disagreed with Kent, both in private exchanges and on the pages of Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, but I see nothing particularly offensive about the Gorman column, with the possible exception of calling Lady Gaga a “narcissistic bitch.”
On Because of Poetry…
Johnson’s work is distinguishable for its international breadth and for its pugilism.
Though I was often confused about the heated arguments
He has a cause and he has devoted himself to it. I can’t say God bless him but I can say Poets bless him.
“All Because of Poetry”: The Sincerity of Kent Johnson’s Satire
“It sucks being a famous poet. / All your time gets taken up on / the phone or in answering emails / from people looking for a blurb, / and stuff. It’s totally tiresome!”
On Kent Johnson
Echoes from so many sources, augmenting frequencies, ostensibly bitching about insufficient personal rewards — but more fundamentally, questioning the Peter Principle that underlies curatorial commodification.
Kent Johnson and the Future of Poetic Satire
Satirists live in a kind of poetic permanent revolution: “to mock,” a Greek proverb goes, “is to thumb through Archilochus” (Guy Davenport, 7 Greeks).