Saturday, February 9, 2008

Nonsense Amen


Chris what a fantastic article. A cogent manifesto of energy, action, deliverance and damnation. This should be the quality of your poetry—though I’m having second thoughts about where you belong under this umbrella. Because of your immense literary knowledge and fierce probing of philosophy, perhaps you are mostly an essayist -/ critic with a poet’s heart. Whatever wild beast you are:

I tip my hat to you. I bow in my best seersucker suit. I curtsy in my famously white wedding gown . I throw my hand in the middle of the circle of your words and on the count of 1-2-3 shout “Poetic Terrorism!”

Wow and we’re really the only two people reading any of this (with perhaps the exception of Traci). There is a certain wonderfulness about this anyway—and perhaps because we are unheard. It musters the yet-to-fly carrion, makes us equally rapacious and meretricious, covers the skin like packing tape for us to be shipped somewhere sometime.

Imagine the package of us being delivered in a mushroom to infant revolutionaries. Oh how they fed the small cisterns of their brains with our nonsense amen. Oh how they danced in the moonlight, small papers of us spilling from their beautiful heads, the heads they would burn and chide between their asses.

There is a clear and present opening in poetry. Subtle, yes, and very close to miss, yes. I say poetry because fiction is always there. Non-fiction coupled with memoir…yawn (of course deservedly necessary) yawn…it will always have its place.

But poetry. Poetry is the only heavyweight that after losing five rounds, can rally and unanimously win the next seventeen. It's clear we've been losing. But we're in the corner, burning blood and spitting, cool wet rag on our foreheads. One stray sucker-punch might end it all. You’ve been warned by everyone that this might be the hit of your endless coma. I’ve been warned too. Stand up. The center of the ring is a bull’s eye.

Liam Rector, “Corner Man”

You took that round,
Champ! You didn’t
Just sit and pout:

Now get the hell
Back in there
And knock the fucker out.

3 comments:

Red Light! Green Light! said...

Happy to see your inspiration and your kind words. Poetic terrorism is not mine, however. I don't know his name. I meant to praise him yet criticize his judgement of other people. He has left the celebration in that regard. But yes yes. There's a tear in the aether and a crack in the shell. Heaven's blown to hell. Poetry is open.

Red Light! Green Light! said...

oh. signe is reading, but just not posting. i don't know where james is in all this. we'll hit him up. wednesday we're meeting up again at notsouh. i know you can't make it on wedenesdays (set schedule, right?) but its a recreational thing and doesn't really take the place of a real meeting and discussing of poetry. there's the whole shut up i'm reading kindness thing going on, but that can be abated by meeting in the back. but, I have tests this week which makes my stay short, AND valentines is thursday so i'll be working BUT i have friday night off which i'll spend with traci, but if you, franke are up for a post date drink or two, it'd be great to meet up at poison girl. i look forward to seeing you. you remind me of the kid doing artistic renderings of handprint inksplotches in the begining of the movie the 400 blows. me and traci rolling over at the resemblance.

Red Light! Green Light! said...

i was told the other day, "a man in boxing ring is just a man brutalizing another man."