eight great american poets

eight great american
poets I’ve been reading recently

Theodore Roethke, an alcoholic
and schizophrenic was
found drowned in a
swimming pool face
down at fifty five

Elizabeth Bishop
whose mother spent
most of her life in a
lunatic asylum hid
her alcoholism, depression
and lesbianism all her life.

Robert Lowell
a manic depressive
took electric shock
treatments to his
head all life.
in delusional grandeur
he thought he was
the greatest villain
and attacked others
with physical violence.
he was married three times

John Berryman’s
father killed himself
putting gun to his head
when John was young.
he heard the gun
shot and never forgave him

a believer in monogamy,
was married three times
bu lived an adulterous life.
a chronic alcoholic
on a wintry day when fifty-six
killed himself jumping from
a Mississippi river bridge
onto the frozen boulder below

Anne Sexton, a walking
encyclopedia of mental disorders
was addicted to alcohol
tobacco, barbiturates, tranquilizers

she called herself a
witch, abused her children.
when hardly forty six,
she dressed herself in her
mother’s fur coat and died
in the idling car parked
in her garage.

Sylvia Plath’s husband,
Ted Hughes started f---ing
his friend’s wife and Sylvia
killed herself gassing up
her lungs from the kitchen
stove when hardly thirty one

Allen Ginsberg was profane
in his use of tongue,
celebrated homosexuality
used psychedelic drugs.

James Merrill avoided women
celebrated homosexuality
like Allen Ginsberg

these great American
poets for the past half
century, so full of insights of
life - their verses so admired –
were what a great bunch
of people in real life!

perhaps those who can
see order in disorder,
can’t see disorder
in their own lives.

- Ravi Kopra
http://whitewings.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/09/eight-great-american- poets.htm