Felix Dennis: Poet? Naaaah

Maxim Magazine founder and vole-like mogul Felix Dennis really wants to be a poet, or so he hints to the Wall Street Journal today.

Oh, The Corsair loves rich eccentrics, like Sargent Shriver and Felix the scat ... we could go so many ways with this little chestnut.

WSJ's Matthew Rose writes:

"'It would be nice if Mr. Letterman or Oprah gave me two minutes,' Mr. Dennis says. 'I'd blow their bloody socks off.'

"Mr. Dennis has let his hair grow long and shaggy since he started writing seriously in late 2000. He has completed 650 poems, at last count, in the four hours a day he devotes to them. Every few weeks, he sends what he calls a 'wodge' of poems to his editor and to a lawyer friend, who stands in for the kind of ordinary reader Mr. Dennis seeks. Mr. Dennis then joins the other two in grading his poems. Those that get three As make the cut. Cs are discarded. Anything in between goes up for discussion or revision.

"Mr. Dennis says in the next few years he's considering selling Dennis Publishing, owner of the highly successful Maxim, an irreverent men's magazine. He would like to concentrate on poetry and other interests ..."

" ... A poet named Michael Horovitz (during a reading by Dennis) jumped up and protested that it was 'so wrong and so unfair,' Mr. Dennis recalls. Mr. Horovitz says he didn't use those exact words, but he has little admiration for Mr. Dennis's style: 'He has this maddeningly reactionary and Philistine concern about rhyming, which is why Felix, until he gets over it, won't become a true poet.' He adds that people only bought the book out of 'sheer gracefulness' in return for free wine."

Wine ... or whine. Mr. Dennis is like any other good British boy who wants deeply and perversely to be Lord Byron. The Corsair believes that the whole Rolling Stones/ Beatles thingie began with Lord Byron, rock stars are just pale imitations. But the sun has set on the British Empire, although they have colonized the language -- why not make the most of it, my little soupbones, goes the thinking.

Alas, "Mr. Dennis," while living like an imperial viceroy on Mustique, doesn't know that the category of poet is, in fact, dead. Rigor mortis has set in. No one gives a flying fuck about the poets anymore. And poets, as a social class, are on the rungs somewhere between subway motormen and squeegee handlers on the great social ladder of Being.

Finally, Dennis lacks the exotic bohemian style, the savoir faire, of Lord Byron, Don Juan; rather, Dennis strikes us as Falstaff without the wit and minus the drinking stamina. The Corsair managed (wink, wink) to get a few stanzas of Dennis' floetry, his low grade godawful doggerel.

Check it:

"Epistle to Celebrity Skin

"Halle Berry's got a lotta class/
Fills out a swimsuit with her tits and ass/
She took the Motion Picture Academy to the Cleaners/
Plus she stirs my Oscar ... Meyer Weiner"

Also:

"Lara (Flynn Boyle)

"How does one adequately describe in verse/
Without appearing too perverse/
I'll set aside my pint of Bass/
And describe the bony curvature of her ass."

But, that's not all ... Finally:

"Gina Gershon

"Gina, Gina, Burning Bright/
In the forest of the night/
Should a pizza suddenly appear/
Which slice would go best with beer?"

I'll refrain from reading Rhyme of the Ancient Pamela.

Big kudos to TMFTML, who also tear Felix a new hole.

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