Zac Smith is for the children

Zac wrote a book called 50 Barn Poems. At first, it seemed like a gimmick, but when Zac encouraged donations to bail and aid funds supporting BLM protests in June by offering to write personalized barn poems, I took him up on it and was pleasantly surprised. Like maybe poems having gimmicks isn’t bad, maybe gimmick in general is neutral or even good, maybe all poems have some degree of gimmick in them, maybe I need to keep scraping away at this stupid calcified snobbery I put so much effort into building up as a teenager and into my twenties.

I misinterpreted the offer as being one poem for any donation of at least $5, but he meant one poem per $5, so since I gave $10 to the actblue he linked to, he sent me two poems.

On Zac’s blog, he recently posted a few poems he wrote for others who donated to charity. They’re also good. I wonder if his decision not to include any he wrote for me means he’s less proud of them, or if he didn’t want to bother asking me permission to reappropriate them, or if it was an arbitrary selection. Maybe the recipients of the poems he did share bribed him. I would not bribe Zac to mention me on his blog. If Zac mentions me on his blog because of this post, I won’t object, but that’s not why I’m writing it.

Sitting on these has me feeling like Martin Shkreli with that one Wu-Tang record. It may not be the best Wu-Tang record, but it’s not right for only one despicable human to have it.

I like them. Here they are, Zac Smith’s barn poems for charity, liberated:

Barn Poem for Crow Jonah Norlander 1

 we used to paint barns bright green
 but then we invented traffic lights
 and green meant go
 red meant stop
 and barns
 well, they don’t mean go
 they mean stop
 take a look
 really drink in this barn
 check it out
 man, what a nice barn
 etc.

Barn Poem for Crow Jonah Norlander 2

 barn underneath the bed
 forgotten until it’s time to get a new mattress –
 one of those foam ones from the podcast ads
 it’s covered in dust and dog hair
 but it’s still a barn. it’s still good
 we should keep it, don’t you think?

Yesterday Zac asked people to share their own barn poems. This is what I came up with.

Even in his dashed off recommendation of my poem, it’s clear that he’s an astute and generous reader. This is evident in his “brief book reviews” too, though those are a bit more blunt, and refreshingly so (side note: don’t sleep on Imaginary Museums!) I don’t think Zac has recommended any barn poem responses with a word of criticism, but that would be funny if he suddenly turned and harangued people for botching his prompt.

I thought about that too with the minison project. Participatory poetry is fun, opportunities for collaboration are one of the more (only) joyful features of overimmersion in online lit, and the question of even passive “curation” and being selective about which submissions get a “signal-boost” is interesting. Zac seems to be retweeting all responses, just as the minison neutralspaces page seemed not to spare any inclusion.

I noted—not bitterly, but just in the way that happens when you can’t help your constant thirst for affirmation—that neither of the co-creators of the minison form featured my submissions in their tweets. I thought for sure I’d get some kind of extra credit for abbreviating my middle name so that even the attribution was a minison (crow j norlander). Consider, for a moment, the absurdity of feeling slighted—however momentarily—that nobody told you your 3-word phrase was somehow exceptional. Part of it is that I’m on a streak of rejection and discouragement. I’m trying to embrace that, though, let it build character or whatever. Of the minisons, I honestly feel that mine are middling. Of the barn poem replies, I feel that mine is also middling. No others immediately spring to mind as better or worse than mine, I’m just used to assuming I’m neither best nor worst.

Even if there are aspects of humor in my barn poem and minisons, I think I took them seriously. I don’t think everyone took theirs seriously. I don’t think Zac took his minisons very seriously. They’re silly. Many of the minisons rely on gimmick, deliberate misspellings, and a lot break the “rules” by not counting punctuation and emojis toward the 14 character limit. That’s fine, though; rules are meant to be broken? That I couldn’t help but notice speaks to another maybe not-so-flattering aspect of my personality. I’m not legalistic, but I do embrace constraint.

I sincerely like all the minisons and barn poem replies. It’s exciting to see people be inventive and playful and find loopholes and workarounds. I think it’s all good. I considered doing a silly barn poem instead, like “im a barn, she’s a barn, he’s a barn, we’re all barns hey,” but for whatever reason decided against it.

I confess that I have not read Zac Smith’s book of barn poems. His tweet soliciting barn poems suggested he might be sending some copies out, though I’m again unclear about his criteria. If he doesn’t send me a book for free, I’ll probably try to buy two so I can give one to my friend Kerrie (and her husband Brian) who was the first person to fav my barn poem tweet, likely because she recognized her own barn in it. I’m very fond of Kerrie and Brian and their barn, as well as the house attached to it, and Olee, the cat inside the house.

The kayak that sheltered the wolf spider that I found on my leg while paddling to an island to go camping was not my kayak, but it had been stored in their barn. I have used their barn for storage of other things, but I’m pretty sure (I hope) I don’t have any more junk over there. Kerrie and Brian do store firewood in their barn, but it has not caved in, and hopefully will never cave in, though it is apparently developing some rot and termite damage.

Breaking: Zac just offered to send me a copy via DM and I had the pang of regret you feel (at least I do) when successfully guilt-tripping someone into doing something, even though this post only exists in draft form so far and he has not seen it. I’m declining his offer and buying them not because I’m above freebies but because I’ve decided I need two, one to give, and I would never be so presumptuous as to demand an extension of his generosity. (Tangent: I saw some news alert yesterday that was like “Breaking: Report shows something condemning about I dunno probably Trump” and wondered when people would realize that we’re past the point where any report could break anything.)

Update: I noticed on my sixth-ish reread of my barn poem that I forgot to delete the word “wood” when I decided to change it to “firewood,” but its a screenshot so that’s canon now.

Another update: I’ve been busy with other stuff but am hoping to get some more minisons over to Tom and Jo in the next couple of days in time for round 2.