"Balloon Boy By Philip Glass" by: Edward A. Rueda

First Rictus	Second Rictus
Balloon boy's flying	Balloon boy's flying
Balloon boy's flying	Balloon boy's flying
First a rumor	Balloon boy's flying
Then a picture
Glimpse of sliver
Strange and silver
Slowly turning	Balloon boy's flying
Is it burning?
There's a child stuck inside it.
First a rumor	Balloon boy's flying
Then a picture
Glimpse of sliver
Strange and silver
Slowly turning	Balloon boy's flying
Is it burning?
There's a child stuck inside it.
First no one could believe it	Balloon boy's flying
Then no one couldn't believe it
How could we know	Balloon boy's flying
That there was not a child stuck in a balloon?
First no one could believe it	Balloon boy's flying
Then no one couldn't believe it
How could we know	Balloon boy's flying
That there was not a child stuck inside it?
Ft. Collins boy missing	Rumor, rumor
Six-year-old boy missing	Rumor, rumor
Ft. Collins boy missing	Rumor, rumor
Six-year-old boy missing	Rumor, rumor
White little boy missing	Rumor, rumor
Six-year-old boy missing	Rumor, rumor
White little boy missing	Rumor, rumor
Gone in balloon?	Rumor, rumor
Gone in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Boy in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Gone in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Boy in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Gone in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Boy in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Gone in balloon missing	Stranger, stranger
Wait, there's footage?	Stranger, stranger
Look at the live footage	Picture, picture
Latest balloon footage	Picture, picture
Look at the live footage	Picture, picture
Latest balloon footage	Picture, picture
Look at the live footage	Picture, picture
Latest balloon footage	Picture, picture
Look at the live footage	Picture, picture
He's gonna die?	Picture, picture
Boy in balloon to die	Danger, danger
Lack of oxygen	Danger, danger
Boy in balloon to die	Danger, danger
Lack of oxygen	Danger, danger
Boy in balloon to die	Danger, danger
Lack of oxygen	Danger, danger
Boy in balloon to die	Danger, danger
He's gonna crash?	Danger, danger
Boy in balloon falling	Worst fear, worst fear
Clear the airspace	Worst fear, worst fear
Boy in balloon falling	Worst fear, worst fear
Clear the airspace	Worst fear, worst fear
Boy in balloon falling	Worst fear, worst fear
Clear the airspace	Worst fear, worst fear
Boy in balloon falling -	Worst fear, worst fear
Wait, it's empty?	Worst fear, worst fear
(pause)	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I am a news channel	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I need a dead child	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I am a news channel	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I need a dead child	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I am a news channel	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I need a dead child	Not true, not true, not true, not true
I am a news channel	Not true, not true, not true, not true
Who is to blame?	Not true, not true, not true, not true
Is this a hoax?	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Answer the charges	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Is this a hoax?	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Answer the charges	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Is this a hoax?	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Answer the charges	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Is this a hoax?	Outrage, outrage, outrage
All for a show?	Outrage, outrage, outrage
Lock up the family	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
How could you do this t'us?	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
Lock up the family	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
How could you do this t'us?	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
Lock up the family	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
How could you do this t'us?	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
Lock up the family	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
How could you do this t'us?	Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat
(pause)	BARF!
	1, 2, 3 hours
	4, 5, 6 hours
	7, 8, 19, 10, 'leven, 12 hours' coverage
My dear boy Falcon, as I go to pris'n	13, 14, 15 hours
You may be asking why this has aris'n	16, 17, 18 hours
As ancient Egypt once built pyr'mids tall,	19, 20, 21, 22 hours' coverage
So media cov'rage dulls Obscurity's pall
	23, 24, 25 hours
As carv'd ob'lisks praised Pharaoh in Thebes,	26, 27, 28 hours
Our nation dwell'd upon your cur'ous deeds	29, 30, 31, 32 hours' coverage
You scarr'd our psyches as a Great Obsess'n
'Midst two wars and rav'nous Great Recess'n	33, 34, 35 hours
	36, 37, 38 hours
And should you live to ripe old Nin'ty-Fo'r	39, 40, 41, 42 hours' coverage
Th' nation shall proclaim yo'r name once mor'
I see your Times obit, st'rk bl'ck and gray:	43, 44, 45 hours
"Th' boy in th' balloon has died today."	46, 47, 48 hours
	49, 50, 51, 52 hours' coverage
S' view Jon-Kate and Octomom as kin,	53, 54, 55 hours
Go pursue fame and help our fam'ly win.	56, 57, 58 hours
	59, 60, 61, 62 hours' coverage
First no one could believe it	First no one could believe it
Then no one couldn't believe it	Then no one couldn't believe it
How could we know	How could we know
That there was not a child stuck inside a	That there was not a child stuck inside a

Note: One-part pride and two-parts anal compulsion push me to share my winning Kilmer poem on this blog, so that The Phlog or other publications can reproduce the poem with proper layout. (c) 2009 by Edward A. Rueda

Alfred Watts Rediscovered!

Here’s something to be thankful for this Holiday Season: the poetry of Alfred Watts has been rediscovered!

And it was really easy to do, thanks to that most brilliant of search engines: books.google.com. I googled "water-rats are tired," and I felt like Howard Carter viewing Tutankhamen's tomb for the first time when I saw the result:

It turns out that the January 1916 issue of “The Others” Magazine features not one, not two, but THREE whole poems by Alfred Watts! And what was once a fragment about water-rats has blossomed into a complete bad poem:

The Current
The white soul of the water
Dips — gnawing the tree-roots.
It is broken.
Across the implacable bronze-green scummed bark
And the glistening water-rats
Are tired.

Isn’t that amazingly awful? There are two other Watts poems in that "Question Nocturnal" and "In The Park: For Farouche, November, 1914." I plan on looking at this magazine in person, and reading the other two bad poems.

What's funny about “The Others,” besides its snooty name, is that it really was a cutting-edge periodical of New Jersey's WWI-era avant-garde community, which featured the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and the artwork of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
Stay tuned for more updates on the rediscovery of Alfred Watts!

The Tale of a Made-Up Poet

When you have as long a history as Columbia University's Philolexian Society (207 years and counting), you're bound to attract some memorable characters. One such august personage was Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), an American poet and a 1908 graduate of Columbia College, who is now chiefly remembered as the author of "I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree."

Call Kilmer maudlin, but he was continuing what Western poetry had done for at least 2,500 years: expressing awe at forces greater than man. "Poems are made by fools like me / But only God can make a tree." But as Kilmer was writing these lines, waves of contemporary poets were doing away with past pretensions - rhyme, meter, exhalted subjects. More and more, poets wrote prose-like pieces about mundane surroundings and interior feelings, rather than lyrical, outward praise.

Every November, the Philolexian Society hosts a "Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest," and every year the society's Avatar, Thomas Vinciguerra (seen here in a picture by Ms. Campbell), recites a story of how around 1915 Joyce Kilmer decided to have some fun at the expense of the modernist poets.

Kilmer and his poet-novelist friend Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978) submitted awful free verse poems under the pen name "Alfred Watts." Alfred was Kilmer's first name, which he hated, and Watts had almost become the middle name of Widdemer, as she was a relation of poet Isaac Watts of "How Doth The Little Bumblebee" fame.

The duo submitted a group of snooty avant-garde poets that Watts was a reclusive poet who refused to leave his garret, who churned out dyspepic poetry about a cruel world. The story goes that the bohemians ate it up.

In Widdemer's autobiography, "Golden Friends I Had" (1964), she remembered two fragments of Watts's poetry, which read like a lame-brained Sappho.

the opening line:

"Eyes like little green apples / In an apple-blossom face -"

and a closing line: "- and the water-rats are tired."

Prominent avant-garde publishers - Harriet Monroe, W.S. Braithwaite, etc. - started t0 publish Alfred Watts poems in magazines and anthologies. The bohemians wanted to meet Watts, but the submissions stressed that Watts "only lived for his art" and could not stand visitors. The two jokesters kept on cranking out bad free verse poetry, until, as Widdemer writes, she admitted one day to Kilmer: "A terrible thing has happened to me. I don't know what to do. I can't write anything but Alfred Watts poetry!"

Kilmer admitted to Widdemer that he also suffered an Alfred Watts writing mania. So they decided to kill their fictional character, and as Widdemer writes, "the tragedy of [Watts] being found starved to death in his garret by a visiting classmate from Kankakee, Kansas, seemed regrettable but reasonable."

Then cracked an ignoble heart. Today, the Philolexian Society holds a "Bad Poetry Contest" in Kilmer's name, not only as an acknowledgement of the late poet's dubious legacy, but also to remember Kilmer as a trickster who was unafraid to use parody to make a statement about art.

But how much of Widdemer's story is true? Can Alfred Watts's poems still be found? Are they really as bad as they are reputed to be? Only time (and more blog entries) can tell....

Hunting Down Alfred

Hello, Internet,

I am Edward A. Rueda, the Philolexian Society's current Kilmer Laureate. I am taking advantage of my tenure to try to bring some of Philo's esteemed history into the 21st century.

The primary purpose of this blog is to find the truth behind Alfred Watts, the alter-ego of fellow Columbian poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer and the ancestral inspiration for many parodic bards of the modern Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest. We'll see where we go from there.

God 'ield me!