Friday, March 15, 2013

Press Release: Leiter wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry‏

The Pulitzer Committee is proud to announce this year's winner for poetry, "Maurice" Leiter (relation unknown but suspected), a great soul that has graced this country for too long to not be officially recognized. Leiter has been a scarcely-published writer of verse since the mid 1990's, when his "Poems II" was first written. This first work was a sensation, taking the literary blogosphere by storm:
Poems in the roadway found in tire tracks
Poems on soiled napkins rescued from trash
Poems inside matchbooks like something to buy
Poems on toilet paper unrolling without end
Poems in cereal boxes like prizes to be tried
Poems shaped in seaweed delivered by the tide
. . .
Death poems ringing coffins wrought by wriggling worms
Love poems found at morning drying on the sheet
Poems    poems    poems     poems     poems
This is the genius of Leiter, and why he is an American treasure, the Whitman, or even Ginsburg, of his generation. The images presented by Leiter surpass "Leaves of Grass" one-hundred fold. When an ordinary man sees a piece of trash, Leiter sees glory; when an ordinary person sees a soiled napkin, Leiter sees a story; when an ordinary person sees a fragment of rotting kelp at the beach, Leiter sees Neptune's beard. Does this not teach us how to think—nay, how to live? And the poet does not shy away from stark images: of "coffins wrought by wriggling worms". How exactly a coffin was created (wrought: beaten, or shaped by) by mere worms, the poet does not stay, but leaves us to mull over it, until we can grasp what he has long known. And when an ordinary person sees a suspicious stain on the mattress, Leiter sees only the residue of love: "Love poems found at morning drying on the sheet". Then our poet repeats the word "poems" five times, so that we will not forget we are reading a poem on a page full of poems about poems. Why? His poetic power is unstoppable.

In another tour-de-force, Leiter discusses without any shame his own behavior when young(er):
In college I gave a talk in Comp Lit
On Le Rouge et Le Noir
The hour before class
I sat in the john
Trying to figure out what to say
It took merely an hour to think of how to speak extemporaneously on a subject! And was not "on the john", but "in the john", literally swimming in it. This man has no restraints; nature made not a mold for him, but that he should break it by his muse and his talent. Anyone taking a university class could either deliver a prepared speech, or speak off-the-cuff. But few could do both at once! The man's mind is multifaceted in both its apparition and capabilities.

Nor is Leiter afraid of experimenting with traditional forms of free verse. In "When the Poem is Done", he masterfully weaves accidental sounding rhymes with free verse:
When the poem was done
Again old sorrows spun
The painful course rerun
As antidote to dying

And drained silence won
The welcome apathy
Of greying light
And day retired sighing
          . . .

He is able to rhyme both "spun" and "rerun", and better yet, is able to push the boundaries of the meaning of "rerun" beyond that of merely referring to previously-aired television shows. He also seamlessly changes the syllabic accent of the word. Grammar rules are not meant for the great! So our poet breathes new life, pouring new reviving (rereviving) blood into our timeless language from his many spouts.

Leiter's mind known no earthly bounds, yet it is still as humble as a Bulgarian peasant's. Witness his masterpiece, "To Have Lived This Long":
To have lived this long in fealty to women without understanding them yet
      knowing their value as they melt or harden with the changing seasons
To have lived this long scowling at the genuflectors the cringers the 
     clingers the gossips especially the barren patriots
To have lived this long among these barbarians even perhaps to have
      supported them by inaction to have tutted and tsked but not to have
      risked my body
The standards for a Pulitzer finalist—nay, winner—have obviously been met. Each line begins with the same "To have lived this long", and that is genius of the work. The repetition combined with bathos brings the reader to tears, and these are not crocodile tears, by any means. Women are not moody to Leiter, but they "melt or harden" (presumably they maintain their original shape, however). And despite a free verse form that does not require further poetic license, Leiter chooses to drop important grammatical words such as "and" between lists of nouns, all the better to shock us of how cruel the world is, yet we live in it still. And this is Leiter's world! And the barbarians: Not even the soul of our poet, who truly is a saint-sage, could hold back rage against those who have "tuttted and tsked" when reading great words, or having encountered such a great personality.

Finally, to show his understanding of world culture, Leiter mastered even the obscure and difficult form of Haiku:
Falling the ant rises
And falling rises climbs again
Say we two are free.
Here, the poet weaves the image of an ant falling and rising at the same time. Do not question this, as it is no contradiction: one must accept this, if one has understanding, that something can go up and down (physically) at the same time. Why an ant would fall down at all, since it (as an insect) has six legs and is rather good at climbing, is a question the poet does not even deign to address—his mind is pushing us to the clouds and away from such petty details. Our poet can see past base appearances. The ant "falling rises climbs", giving us three action verbs at once, shows how perseverance and doing three things at once is not limited to the higher strata of the animal kingdom, but among all of nature's creatures. The ant is capable of multi-tasking beyond the level of even a modern personal computer. And finally, the trifecta is ended with an aphorism: Say we two are free. Leiter's long-lost spirit has been freed by the sight of a mere ant (mysteriously) falling down! This is not petty, but profound. The poet and his ant companion have shared a moment together. Long may it last! And poetry live in the heart of his readers!

And because Leiter writes not for profit but for art, he placed all of his poems online for free. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/poems_by_maurice_leiter/. The Pulitzer Committee is proud to add "Maurice" Leiter to the list of past winners, such as: Carl Sandburg, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, and now, Maurice Leiter. Read him, and understand truly what it is like to be alive!

Sincerely,
Pulitzer Committee

p.s. If anyone has a good "radio announcer" voice, The Committee is looking for volunteers to recite Leiter's poetry; maybe a recording or two (fair use!) could be placed online, to bring art and literature to the masses. It could be read aloud in every school in the nation.
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28 comments:

  1. Let's talk about something real (put the coffee down, coffee's for closers). Even if you survive law school mess and "make it", as you go all in with law, and end up as CFO of a major financial institution (that crashed and burned), would it have been worth it? Does the culture of the legal industry lead "successful people" to reflect upon their lives (20 years down the road) as "missed opportunities"?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/is-there-life-after-work.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0

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    1. Should be pointed out. Though Callan was CFO of Lehman, she started her career as an attorney (and probably someone who today would speak to undergraduates to ignore opportunity costs which include law school tuition). From the article at

      http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/15/17301962-former-lehman-cfo-erin-callan-dont-do-it-like-me

      Callan grew up in Queens, N.Y., the daughter of a police officer and a homemaker. She was driven – a competitive gymnast who practiced so hard her hands bled, and a serious student who secured a spot at Harvard University and later New York University School of Law. After law school, Callan headed to one of the city’s most elite law firms, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she worked with Wall Street firms, including Lehman Brothers.

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  2. Preston, this is the best post I've seen on this site. Had me laughing at my desk at work. A funny and clever stab at our bud Brian. Classy.

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  3. The King is leaving us...

    "Blogging hiatus for the rest of the month
    Spring Break begins here, and I'm on a lecture tour abroad in South America and won't be on the Internet much, if at all, for most of the next two weeks (I also travel with only an ipad which, for reasons unknown, doesn't work with typepad any way).
    ---
    I have one special item pre-scheduled for Monday, and that's it. Regular blogging will resume in April."

    So get that? Leiter does not, repeat, does not, have Internet access. Nothing posted on the internet for the remainder of March could possibly be by Brian Leiter. Got that?

    I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for his "special item" on Monday!

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    1. Who will protect Brian's wikipedia page while he is away?

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  4. How does such a genius completely fail at meter?

    "Poems inside matchbooks like something to buy
    Poems on toilet paper unrolling without end
    Poems in cereal boxes like prizes to be tried
    Poems shaped in seaweed delivered by the tide"

    10, 12, 13, 11 with no discernible rhythm.

    And what does "inside matchbooks like something to buy" mean, anyway? Do you normally buy things from inside of a matchbook?

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  5. "Poems on soiled napkins rescued from trash." So, Brian Leiter is pulling used sanitary napkins out of the trash and writing poems about them? What a classy guy!

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  6. "Do you normally buy things from inside of a matchbook?"

    Some matchbooks used to have ads in 'em. Stuff like those "if you can draw this turtle, you could be an artist" ads for art school.

    A more up to date version might say, "if you can read this ad, you could be a lawyer!"

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    1. Er, Leiter, women don't "harden". You're thinking of dudes.

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  7. Violets are blue
    Roses are red
    But if Leiter's shit be poetry
    Then cap me in the head

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  8. Cut it out, folks. Maurice Leiter is Brian's elderly father. He is a sweet man, and a decent man, and has nothing to do with his son's antics. No, I am not Brian Leiter, and I don't like him, and I think his efforts to "out" people are reprehensible. But the family should be off limits.

    I have no problem with your taking cracks at his PhD students, but not family. Most of us have elderly parents. Keep your eyes on the culprit, and the family off limits.

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  9. I am the Anonymous poster just above. To be clear: the poetry is written by Brian's father, not by Brian himself. So, please stop. Attack Brian all you want, but not his dad.

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    1. Why not email Brian and tell him to target people who send him email, not all the people in that person's firm?

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  10. Bwian's bwother? Looks similar, but more benevolent. And with better teeth.

    http://www.arnoldporter.com/professionals.cfm?u=LeiterMauriceA&action=view&id=66&CFID=21239200&CFTOKEN=74039232&mp=1

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    1. Maybe not. Maurice, if it is really his "dad" and not one of his plentiful internet puppets, is 80 years old (as per Brian's own blog).

      Thank god that the grave is soon going to claim this world class "poet", if nothing more than to stop him writing this drivel.

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  11. Is "Maurice" retarded? His poems are like some of the shit I saw when I worked in a home for retarded adults.

    I guess that would explain a lot about Brian. Simpleton for a father...

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  12. The most obscene and repulsive stuff I've read in years. Marvelous!

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  13. I feel dirty having read that. But I agree with Ms. Turner. Fantastic! Once in a while, you just stumble upon a diamond in the dirt, and this poem made my day.

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  14. "To have lived this long among these barbarians..."

    It is sad to think that the son could not escape his old man's cruel face, forced to dwell amongst his inferiors.

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  15. Please repost the Maurice Leiter Poem, "My Son", regularly. It is a work of art that brings tears of joy to my eyes. And hopefully it brings tears of sadness to Maurice's eyes as he realizes, in the twilight of his life, that he was a failure as a father and as a poet. Sorry, Maurice. You lose. You just get one ride on this planet, and the product of yours is an object of universal ridicule and hatred. Douchebag.

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  16. "Brian"

    By Maurice Leiter


    I hear the patter
    of his fingertips on the keyboard.
    More internet chatter.
    More internet data.
    More secret natter to find
    a ratter who can give him IP addresses so he can
    tatter a reputation.
    He tries to matter
    but nobody cares.
    His cock grows fatter
    and his fingertips caress its tip as he views
    his own reflection in the screen.
    He loves to see cunts on his computer, like porn.
    That fat, yellow-toothed cunt.
    Then the splatter
    of his batter.
    And the clatter
    of soiled napkin in trash.
    I pick it out.
    Another poem is written.

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    1. Could this be the beginning of a collection?

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    2. I almost puked at the thought of Leiter jerking his tiny cock to his reflection in his monitor.

      Class! Please keep going wiht this schtick! I wamt more Maurice Leiter poetry,.

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    3. lol splatter of his batter

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  17. According to complete heresay on another website, it's Brian's brother Maurice:

    http://www.arnoldporter.com/professionals.cfm?u=LeiterMauriceA&action=view&id=66&CFID=21239200&CFTOKEN=74039232&mp=1

    If true, fair game, especially since the poetry is universally hated.

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    1. If this is how you are spending your parents' money or adding to your student loans I am pleased that I no longer have kids in college. Had you bothered to "research" any data base as a practicing lawyer might do, you would know that Maurice is Brian's dad. Mr. Leiter is an elderly scholar,and a former teacher. He has spent his life working for cause oriented organizations. That Brian wishes to so honor his father by giving voice and purpose should be respected. Perhaps,someday you will show your gratitude to your parents in a similar fashion. The scolding Granny(No relation to the Leiter family).

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