day 10: Three Poems for the New Year, by Charles Wright

Sometimes I wonder where my evening went. Then I think - oh, right, I was researching random things for my blog.

Sigh.

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Charles Wright does not get the honor of being tagged with "poets I love." No, he gets the dubious distinction of being labeled "the other hipster poet." (The first hipster poet being Charles Bukowski, who I would totally tag as "that hipster poet" if I actually ever talked about him on my blog.

Which I guess I am doing now?

What even is my life.)

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...UrbanDictionary describes a hipster like this:

"Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. The greatest concentrations of hipsters can be found living in the Williamsburg, Wicker Park, and Mission District neighborhoods of major cosmopolitan centers such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco respectively. Although "hipsterism" is really a state of mind,it is also often intertwined with distinct fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses. Both hipster men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. Such styles are often associated with the work of creative stylists at urban salons, and are usually too "edgy" for the culturally-sheltered mainstream consumer. The "effortless cool" urban bohemian look of a hipster is exemplified in Urban Outfitters and American Apparel ads which cater towards the hipster demographic. Despite misconceptions based on their aesthetic tastes, hipsters tend to be well educated and often have liberal arts degrees, or degrees in maths and sciences, which also require certain creative analytical thinking abilities. Consequently many hipsters tend to have jobs in the music, art, and fashion industries. It is a myth that most hipsters are unemployed and live off of their parent's trust funds. Hipsters shun mainstream societal conventions that apply to dating preferences and traditional "rules" of physical attraction. It is part of the hipster central dogma not to be influenced by mainsream advertising and media, which tends to only promote ethnocentric ideals of beauty. The concepts of androgyny and feminism have influenced hipster culture, where hipster men are often as thin as the women they date. The muscular and athletic all-American male ideal is not seen as attractive by confident and culturally-empowered hipster women who instead view them as symbols of male oppression, sexism, and misogyny. Likewise, culturally-vapid sorority-type girls with fake blond hair, overly tanned skin, and "Britney Spears tube-tops" are not seen as attractive by cultured hipster males who instead see them as symbols of female insecurity, low self-esteem, and lack of cultural intelligence and independent thinking. Hipsters are also very racially open-minded, and the greatest number of interracial couples in any urban environment are typically found within the hipster subculture. 

Although hipsters are technically conformists within their own subculture, in comparison to the much larger mainstream mass, they are pioneers and leaders of the latest cultural trends and ideals. For example, the surge of jeans made to look old and worn (i.e. "distressed"), that have become prevalent at stores such as The Gap, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister, were originally paraded by hipsters who shopped in thrift stores years before such clothing items were mass produced and sold to the mainstream consumer. The true irony here is that many of the detractors of hipster culture are in fact unknowingly following a path that hipsters have carved out years before them. This phenomena also applies to music as well, as many bands have become successful and known to mainstream audiences only because hipsters first found and listened to them as early-adopters of new culture. Once certain concepts of fashion and music have reached mainstream audiences, hipsters move on to something new and improved."

My own personal definition is basically as follows:

Hipsters are like that boy - the one who used to walk across EMU's campus in December without a coat, because coats Definitely Were Not Cool - that boy who knew all of The White Stripes' obscure lyrics, and read James Wright and Charles Bukowski, and gave me his beat-up (extra) copy of The Other Side of the River. 

Thia texted me recently about the Bukowski poem "Bluebird." It reminds me of ____, she said, naming one of our mutual friends. She was right, like usual, but I texted back: It reminds me of The Boy With No Coat. She agreed. We laughed about it, this past weekend when she came up to DC.

...Hipsters. Seriously.

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This whole aside is just to say that I don't really get Charles Wright's poetry - although I've only read snatches of The Other Side of the River; maybe I should give him & his poetry another chance - and I only ever stumbled across him because an acquaintance of mine at EMU had two copies of this book and gave me his extra one.

Wright's poetry is cerebral and dense and word-heavy, and makes me think a little bit of melodramatic theater majors talking about the meaning of life two weeks before graduation and the start of a search for a paying job.

Like...okay, one of his poems is titled "Cryopexy." Good grief. I mean, I looked it up, it makes sense, it's all fine - I mean, it's actually a really interesting idea to write about, whatever. But there isn't even a wikipedia page for that word. Literal definition of hipster, right there.

But I think I am probably swayed by my impression of The Boy With No Coat as someone cerebral and word-heavy... In any case, The Other Side of the River is one of the books of poetry I own, so I'm reading from it.

I did not read "Cryopexy," however.

I picked "Three poems for the New Year," mostly for the line about the "knuckle of solitude to gnaw on," fully realizing that I was really toeing the limit of believability when I read the line "I wake into middle age..." in my twenty-three-year-old voice. (For some reason it didn't seem strange to read the lines about being 45 in Adrienne Rich's poem. I don't know why.)

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To be fair, I feel like I should acknowledge that I do remember standing in the cold bite of a December night talking about DFW with The Boy With No Coat. It doesn't seem very sporting for one literature nerd to take digs at another. Even if the other was illogical enough to shun coats for the sake of fashion.