The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Bill Van Buskirk serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2025.
First of all, there is a problem.
You are a cliché and you embarrass me.
Furthermore,
you are too close, too strange.
I call you—Siamese Twin
Now, don’t get me wrong.
I recognize your good points,
the steady, unrelenting ongoingness
you seem to have been built for.
I call you thick-legged-steed
and the thumpthumpthump
at the back of every song.
I call you bass guitar
Yet in spite of your limitations
I expect more and more of you.
I guess it’s all the rumors—
how you supposedly breathe fire,
break in two, freeze,
how good you look on a sleeve,
how women find you
irresistible,
I call you harlequin
how easily you give yourself away.
I call you bought-and-sold, gypsy and dancing bear.
I call you Aria. I call you flame.
An editor once told me
to lock you out of every poem—
that nothing original can be said about you anymore.
I call you exile.
I call you darkening wood.
So you see how impossible it all is.
I call you
little red pump.
This poem was inspired by an editor’s rejection of an earlier piece—not exactly a pleasant experience. But what really struck me as odd, was his reason. He said that he was rejecting the poem because it had the word “heart” in it. Then he offered some well-meaning advice: he wrote “never put the word ‘heart’ in a poem. It is a cliché. It is a worn-out metaphor. It has no meaning.” This was fairly early in my writing days so I was susceptible to both good and bad advice. Often I couldn’t tell the difference. However, without knowing exactly why, I thought there something very wrong in his philosophy. It made me mad enough to write this poem.
It starts with a dialogue, well an argument maybe—between the poem and the critic. The critic wants to judge the poem as good or bad; the poem wants to BE. At first I was confused because there was a grain of truth in what he said—the word probably was overused. But it seemed to me that to shut the heart out of a poem, before a word was written, was to eviscerate it; because, after all, wasn’t it the job of poetry to illuminate the richnesses of heart—its loves, hates, desires, griefs? The critic seemed to be advocating an act of violence. I wanted words or images that would raise poetry from the mausoleum he would consign it to.
So I was conflicted, stuck for a while. I wanted the poem to be an argument with an anonymous critic, but part of me was in agreement with him. I had a number of images for the poem I would write, but the poem did not know where it wanted to go. Then a strange question popped up in my mind. How would a heartfelt poem itself respond to the critic’s advice to shun it?
NAMING THE HEART
First of all, there is a problem. /You are a cliché and you embarrass me: The poem starts out in the voice of the critic. But it is also contains my own. I too have a “problem” with the word. How to name it in a way that reflects the heart’s vast range and depths without becoming soppy? So I decided to start with the problem itself. The heart is too close. It is inescapably physical—we can’t live without it. Yet poets throughout history have struggled to find an unending catalogue of fantastical names. These too are part of what we call “heart.”
Furthermore,/you are too close, too strange: The critic is complaining. The heart is so much a part of who we are, so close, that it seems to defy naming. It partakes of the unconscious, that place in us where we are strangers to ourselves. On the other hand It seemed to me that the heart itself was begging for a thousand names.
I call you—Siamese Twin At this point in the dialogue the poem speaks up. It takes the critic’s complaint and makes a metaphor out of it; and in the process it counters the critic’s complaint with a metaphor from its store of quirky images. The poem begins to name itself. It’s as if the poem is speaking from its own heart.
This exchange sets the tone for the rest of the poem. Throughout this dialogue, the poem will answer the critic’s arguments with a metaphor that names itself by incorporating the critic’s view into one that transcends it. The poem’s voice will provide encapsulating images for both the critic’s dismissal and its own contemplation and wonderment. The Siamese twin integrates the contradiction. Siamese twins are completely joined—they share a common physiology yet they are separate, sometimes alien, beings at odds with one another. Close and strange indeed!
Now, don’t get me wrong./I recognize your good points,/ the steady, unrelenting ongoingness/you seem to have been built for: Amazing machine, this heart. The critic wants to give it its due. But his recognition comes across as half-hearted (“I recognize your good points,” but…the but is unspoken but present nonetheless). The critic, in his rationalistic, abstract language, reduces the heart to physical stamina. Its fantastical/ emotional richness is left out.
I call you thick-legged-steed: Once again the poem provides a richness that is rejected by the critic’s rationalistic view. The thick-legged-steed is as physical, as steady and unrelentingly-ongoing as can be. But it is packed with many other connotations. It has the plow-horse’s determination, its willingness to serve, its massiveness. Implied also is its emotional relationship to its master—sometimes devoted, sometimes stubbornly resistant. This image carries much more than the critic’s “ongoingness”—an abstract word if there ever was one.
and the thumpthumpthump/ at the back of every song: The critic, in spite of himself, is pulled into the music of the piece. The heartbeat is given its due as a musical instrument—keeping time without calling attention to itself. Yet it is reduced to background music barely heard (like the heartbeat?) on an invisible instrument.
I call you bass guitar: The poem’s voice amplifies the musical analogy by providing the perfect instrument. It provides a metaphor that makes heart visible and audible. He imagines it on stage with a live band, backing up the melody, giving it body, making it visible.
Yet in spite of your limitations/I expect more and more of you./I guess it’s all the rumors—how you supposedly breathe fire,/break in two, freeze,/how good you look on a sleeve/how women find you/irresistible: At this point, the critic begins to get confused. It is his longest speech in the poem. Yet he is bewildered—what is this machine that generates one encapsulating image after another? He even generates a few of his own metaphors—fire-breathing, freezing, irresistible to women. Yet even these are qualified by the word “supposedly.” He doesn’t quite believe in his own metaphors!
I call you harlequin: The poem is relentless in its naming. It’s voice once again comes alive in the argument. It answers the critic’s long-winded confusions with the image of Harlequin—a stock character from the Italian Commedia del arte—a masked, costumed, light-hearted rogue who pursues interests often at odds with his master’s. And women often do find him irresistible.
how easily you give yourself away. This is perhaps the critic’s most potent criticism. It contains all the dark sides of romantic infatuation—overtones of victimization, prostitution, insanity…etc. At the same time the heart’s capacity to give itself away—fall in love, write music, appreciate beauty—carries an undeniable spice. The poem, no stranger to the heart’s multiplicity, responds with a riot of metaphor—I call you bought-and-sold, gypsy and dancing bear./ I call you Aria. I call you flame.
An editor once told me/to lock you out of every poem—/that nothing original can be said about you anymore: The poem spills the beans on the editor who tried to give me advice in real life— the authority figure who wants to exclude the heart from poetry. As usual, the poem responds with his own metaphors.
I call you exile./I call you darkening wood: Once again the poet answers judgement with metaphor—the heart is an exile. When I wrote these lines, Dante, who himself was an exile, was in the back of my mind. His Inferno begins with the line—“I awoke in a Darkening Wood.” But Dante’s example points out that even Hell can be poetry. It soothes suffering, brightens darkness. But the critic is not soothed. He makes one last attempt to assert his position
So you see how impossible it all is/ I call you/little red pump: But the poem is having none of this. It ends the argument with a thud. But, in the richness of its imagery, it seals the deal. The heart is indeed “little red pump.” It seems an image that the critic might approve of— simple, physical; but it is a little red pump that echoes the overtones, comes to life in the heart-energies pulsing throughout the piece.
So who wins the argument? I guess it depends on your point of view.
Bill Van Buskirk’s poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Mad Poets’ Review and many others. His chapbook, Everything that’s Fragile is Important, received honorable mention in the Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook contest sponsored by the Comstock Review (2007). His book, This Wild Joy that Thrills Outside the Law, won the Joie de vivre contest sponsored by the Mad Poets’ Review. (2010). His latest book is The Poet’s Pocket Guide to Steady Employment (2023).