The Kool-Aid Kids Really Kick It

I’m really impressed by the youngins these days. ’80-86 were good years to have babies. The youngins have prevailed against the evil leaders that the youngins had no part electing. The youngins have read and reviewed more books than anyone ever will. The youngins lap laps. Were their parents playing The Smiths while they were asleep in their cribs? Were these kids raised on organic produce only? Are their parents skaters? The mind wonders.

The youngins are artful. They can accomplish what you can, but they will do it faster and sexier. My old man’s sister, born in ’81, is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Claire Donato (’86) just released an incredible chapbook from Cannibal Books and she’s still in poetry school! Every poem that Julia Cohen ('81) writes is brilliant. She has published something like five to one hundred chapbooks, four of which came out before she finished poetry school and she has a book on the way. The poet Paige Taggart (’80) writes poems and also makes beautiful jewelry. Dan Magers (’80) let me read his mind-blowing epic sestina that follows the Snyder legacy on As the World Turns.  How do they do this? How did they come by their wisdom?

Two youngins’ voices of this bright, savvy, hip but not hipster generation: Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn. Laura Marling is actually younger than the youngins, weighing in at nineteen years, but I will patiently wait for the day when she can come play music in Brooklyn. My old man and I heard her interviewed on NPR when she was less than nineteen. Johnny Flynn is located on my ipod between Johhny Cash and Joni Mitchell, so you know I’ll be writing more about him. I’m rather disgruntled that neither singer will be playing while I’m in London next week (because they are both playing tomorrow), so I guess I’ll have to continue listening to Johnny Flynn while I’m at the gym. Yes, I listen to British folk music while I’m at the gym.