September 23-29, 2004

art

Days of Wine and Couplets

Magazine magnate and vintner Felix Dennis balances Maxim with 16th-century rhyme.

by Andrew Parks

Felix Dennis is an art-school dropout and former crack addict. He's also the neighbor of Sir Mick Jagger, subject of a John and Yoko single ("God Save Us" b/w "Do the Oz") and proprietor of Dennis Publishing. You may have heard of its leading title, a lil' lad mag by the name of Maxim.

Why, whatever will Dennis do now that he's the U.K.'s 65th richest man as well? Resuscitate the flatlining art of Olde English poetry, of course!

"I buy a lot of modern poetry, so I'm not surprised it doesn't sell," Dennis says, calling from Chicago. "Most of it is deliberately opaque, and absolutely never uses traditional forms, like quatrains or ballads. Poets are determined not to be handcuffed by form, and readers are determined not to read anything that isn't. I think you can figure out which side of the argument I'm on."

His is the side of thees and thous, and rhymes more rhythmic than Reasonable Doubt-era Jay-Z. That's not to say the 57-year-old with the tree collection and cellar of fine French wine is stuck in the 1570s.

Quite the opposite, actually. New Journalist Tom Wolfe calls him a 21st-century Kipling, an assessment characterized in Dennis' page-turner of a poetry collection, A Glass Half Full (Miramax Books, $12.95). That's right: 187 formal-meter poems that fly by rather than get stuck in a rut of runny, free-verse ruminations.

"People who continue to write that kind of poetry and sell maybe 500 or 1,000 copies say, "It's nothing to do with form, my dear. It's got to do with them watching too much television and the Internet,"' Dennis explains. "I don't believe that's true. Poetry has always been a minority pastime."

Kind of like how brown-bagged porn is viewed as the minority pastime of perverts. And we all know how Dennis bypassed that stigma, covering the perky models of Maxim just enough to get placed between People and Star in checkout lines. Dennis' flair for cloaking classical form in everyday tales of sex, dogs and death promises to do the same mass-market act with poetry. Or at least that's the hope of Miramax, who pressed an initial 25,000 copies of the collection: an unheard of print run for a poet, regardless of his own world-class publishing record.

"A number of people told me this is a very bad idea, that if it fell flat on its face, it would not reflect well on the company," Dennis says. "Of course I took no notice of that."

The bold move would be no different than Keanu Reeves indulging his rock star fantasies—if it didn't prove such an amusing and dare-we-say moving read. Credit Dennis' command of the English language, honed through decades of writing facetious cover lines about people like Xena: Warrior Princess. A good, honest editor doesn't hurt either. And Dennis got one in the form of Simon Rae, an Olde English opponent who supposedly cut around 90 thees, thous and thines. The hack job is lampooned in "A Song For Sam Johnson," which closes with the couplet "so here's a glass to scholar scribes/ who spit upon pc/ who keep the faith among the tribes/ god bless the OED."

"He said, "All I've got is my literary reputation,"' Dennis explains of his first encounter with Rae. ""Associating myself with a buffoon like you means that if your work isn't good, it's going to rub off on me. There's a risk involved and a lot of people are going to laugh at you.'"

The Wall Street Journal reported one such adverse reaction: poet Michael Horovitz, who said Dennis has "this maddeningly reactionary and Philistine concern about rhyming, which is why Felix, until he gets over it, won't become a true poet." Eh, but who cares about such profane pretension, anyway?

"Tom Wolfe told me, "Get used to the fact that no one from the literary world is going to take you seriously, but that doesn't mean you don't write damn good poetry,'" Dennis says. "I only get grumpy when people assume that it's just a facility that flows out of you. Ha! "Excuse me?'"

Dennis says he's written poetry three to four hours a day for the past three years and 11 months. The words poured out after a debilitating brush with thyroidism left him bed-bound. It's safe to say that poetry's become his passion, possibly even overshadowing that of publishing. Why else would he spend $300,000 on a private jet, just to share verses with 14 U.S. cities, not to mention ship a cache of overpriced, vintage wine bottles as refreshments?

"I will eventually because I'm not a spring chicken anymore," he says of a possible Dennis Publishing sale. "Timing means everything, though, right? Well, I don't think this will be a good time. But sooner or later, the answer will be yes. But sooner or later, in the long run, we'll all be dead."

"Did I Mention the Free Wine?" Tour, featuring the poetry of Felix Dennis, Thu., Sept. 23, free (register at Felixdennis.com or call 1-877-GOT-WORD), Franklin Institute, 20th St. and The Parkway, 215-448-1200.