emperor's-new-clothes kind of moment

I was forwarded this article, written by Mike Young for HTML GIANT, by a few different classmates, on the some of the most common moves by contemporary poets. I guess it has been circulating for quite a while and I've managed to inadvertently avoid it until now. Anyways, here are some analogies I've come up with that summarize my response to it:

It's like that being naked in front of your homeroom dream.

It's like someone has found the magician's handbook.

It's like that scene in I Heart Huckabees where Jude Law's character hears the recordings of himself telling the same joke over and over again. [Unfortunately, I could only find the clip in Italian. On second thought, perhaps it's a good thing. Jude Law's American accent is rubbish.]

But, really, I find it funny mostly. It is comforting to know no poet is that original. Also, some of the items on the list are just things that occur when we use language.

Regardless, it's a good thing to be aware of what we instinctively do, repeatedly. I don't think we're meant to take the article as being judgmental, just a little self-ridicule-y. I actually wrote a poem recently that operates almost entirely on items 1b and 30, but I'm sure in a large way fulfills many of the other items. See if you can identify more:

takebacks

it left my house
i mean it left my mouth
as if it were late
to an appointment and couldn’t
waste any time getting there.

i didn’t mean to say i love you.
i was meaning to say i hate you, instead
i showed you with my actions.

it’s called parapraxis—freudian
slip, colloquially—so
when i said good-bye, i meant please
don’t ever leave me.

i was alone in my mouth
and something was missing my lips.
i was alone in my bed
and i gave myself a paroxysm.

i looked at myself in the mirror
and then at a photo of you and saw
a parallel, i mean a parallax (it lacks
paratactic syntax; i also mean parallel
structure), what i mean,
succinctly, is that you were further
than i wanted you to be.

i wanted to be you
for at least the duration
of us fucking so i could make sure
it felt as you pretended. i mean
as i intended.

you left my house and my mouth
was full of snow. it was cold
and uncomfortable, and when
my tongue was fully numbed
i said i hate you instead of what i really meant,
spitting pretty snow flecks at your face.

I was also impressed and surprised by the variety of sources Mike Young used for his examples in the article. He called out some pretty big names, and curiously some of the lesser known, but emerging, contemporary poets. It points out that we're all in this together.

Since I brought up I Heart Huckabees, here's a scene I think is perfectly germane and we can all enjoy--in English!