Outside what would be my first question.
Poetry always exists for those who need it. The mentally ill and the disenfranchised will always get the hind tit just because they have no rel voice, and poetry is no exception. I like to think of Outsider Poetry less as a definition of how people feel in terms of their relationship to culture or society, and more how their internal state, including mental disability, may make interaction with that culture difficult, even impossible. There is really no shortage of outlets for the cacophony of teenagers, punkers, misanthropes, castoffs, and uncategorizable human self-exiles who want to define themselves as something other than human in order to make what is inherently uninteresting seem more interesting.
The fact of this matter may be that there is only one Outsider Poet in this entire Universe... me. The rest of you are free to be whatever permutation and mutation or batch of humanity you so choose, or associate yourself in that way. I don't know anyone else like me, so I can't really say I'm in this boat with anyone else.
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| If Charles Krauthammer were a poet, he would be an Outsider Poet, mostly because no one else would want him. |
Here's an Outsider Poem from a random Outsider Poet:
Faking Bad
In anticipation of my
Evaluation to be declared
Non Compos Mentos
I slept under a bridge
For three days
"Getting into character,"
But on the morning of
My intake interview
My hair fell perfectly,
I mean I looked like
A fucking rock star.
College girls on the bus
Were giving me their
Numbers and my skin,
Which I'd purposely sunburnt
And caked in the finest filth,
Glowed like an Australian
Chippendale dancer named Weegie
And even the female Assisstant D.A.
Who had busted me for vagrancy
Waved her panties from
The third story building
Of the Courthouse.
No matter how much I
Tried to speak gibberish
Poetry and philosophical
Tracts spewed from my mouth.
Shuffling past the park
I beat eight
Grand Masters
At chess on move 1
Inadvertently I solved
The Phi Epsilom Theorem
By kicking stones
Into an algorythym.
When I arrived they didn't
Make me wait at all.
My caseworker giggled like
A schoolgirl while I told her
Each day was like an endless shift
In a Chinese fish- gutting
Sweatshop and every one of my fellow
Employees was motivationalist
Richard Simmons.
She ungirdled her enormous
Tits and as they spilled
Like fishguts onto the desk
She began to howl
"Fuck me, fuck me, oh fuck
Me right here in
Front of the open window
On State Street as everyone
Watches me fucking the strongest,
Healthiest, smartest, most popular,
Well-adjusted man in the world.
The rest of the examination was
Also a success.
But as I left the Mental HealthCenter
feeling marvelous
I accidentally bumped
An old woman with the door:
"Watch out you manic-depressive
Schizoid with Socially Avoidant
Features klutz."
-Thomas L. Vaultonburg
