This Mary Ruefle poem is one of my favorites of hers. I haven’t heard her read it unfortunately, but I found this in her Trances of the Blast collection.
Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.
Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.
These spirits do not mix.
All it took was a 30 minute dose of Nietzsche
on the herd mentality, mobbing,
and the perversion of the ubermench’s spirit,
to make George Bailey’s wonderful life a Greek tragedy.
Prior to this encounter, I had seen the movie
over 15 times, usually during holidays,
and never failed to be touched.
But this was the first time I saw
George’s family, friends, and townspeople
ply that combination
of guilt, shame, and sex
(not to mention some angel dust pyrotechnics)
to level George Bailey, man of talent.
And on this viewing, surprise of surprises,
Mr. Potter turns out to be the only man
trying to save poor George,
even if it is
only out of self interest.
And all those gut-wrenching moments
coming so close to escaping:
the board meeting,
the bank run,
the train station with Harry,
the call from Sam Wainwright,
(if that idiot can make it anyone can).
If only Ernie the cabbie
would just chloroform Georgie-boy.
Just so he could get out of his own way
for a half an hour.
The real dagger in the soul though is the end
when he’s wet, disheveled
with tinsel matted on his head,
looking out as an imbecile on all proceedings,
as he is made
to feel grateful for it all.
Check out all the work in the Collection: Occasional Verse
Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.
One shameful moment when I was young I thought I could work into the sharing moments at one of the meetings.
I lost a coat as a kid when we were staying in a hotel in the southwest. I’d been playing with a Mexican boy also staying in the hotel for a few days at a multipurpose court that the hotel had. When the coat went missing my dad asked me where I thought it was. I told him the Mexican boy probably stole it. My dad called me on that assumption immediately and that same day he found my coat in the hotel lost in found. My dad bringing it to me mentioned it was probably the Mexican boy that took it to the lost and found.
Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.
Check out other work in the Dirty Dish Gallery here.
a square-yes
no not even that
or maybe it doesn’t
find its fold
the map I mean
make it into work
of the captured heart
the heel is heavy
I serve
a practiced gesture
since I can’t say no
I won’t
Check out other work in the 17/18 Poems series here.
Check out other work in the Paint Chips, Cracks, and Decay series here.
This is one of my favorites. I’ve heard Shapiro read this one. It’s great spoken or on the page. Here is the page-version from Slate.
Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.
Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.
Occasional Verse is an attempt to reimagine that genre of poetry around smaller events. Events that are still meaningful in a life without being the major threshold events that are the mainstay of occasional verse: birth, marriage, death…
Check out all the work in the Collection: Occasional Verse
Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.
(an attempt at dialogue, I’m viewing this as the founder being interviewed by a reporter)
-What you need to understand it that the club isn’t a place for racists.
-Then why is it called the Racists of America Club?
-Well. I guess it is for racists. It just that I mean. Crap. Hold on.
-It’s like it’s a place for racists trying to escape racism. Does that make any sense?
-How do you try to “escape”?
-Mostly by just talking. We each share a little something. It could be something going on at the moment. It could be something from the past that a person is working through. The important part is that it’s not judged. Each person says what’s in their heart. They learn to trust the group. One guy has a black guy at work he’s having a problem with. One girl has a story from when she was ten years old that has shamed her to this day.
Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.
Check out other work in the Dirty Dish Gallery here.
of made to gather
jingles many songs
feeds a complex hunger
live at your ear
to notice and care
admitting exchange
eyes never shut
sense trying to make itself
mist more than memory
a raft of deadmen
late at night
in low earth orbit
Check out other work in the 17/18 Poems series here.
Check out other work in the Paint Chips, Cracks, and Decay series here.
I first heard Le Petit Vie on the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the day podcast. I love Edwin Butt’s poem written too.
Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.
Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.
You entered the do not enter
and there is no way out but through.
You will learn that the usually effective
embarrassed/apologetic wave has its limits.
Even the church-going mother
in the hatchback
taking her children to school
can be seen muttering
a few non-biblical epithets
under her breath.
Her stare is enough to wish for the end times.
You have screwed this up for everyone
and will have to keep screwing
because backing up is worse than continuing.
You can only manage your level of wrong here.
Driving the wrong way down a one way street is like
putting a roasted potato in your mouth
at a dinner party that is way too hot
but you can’t spit it out.
So take the honking,
take the shrugs,
take the fingers.
This is an exercise in humility.
It is spiritually cleansing.
Remember Elliot’s words
Nothing dies harder than
the desire to think well of self
and know that today,
if just for a little while,
you killed it.
Check out all the work in the Collection: Occasional Verse
Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.
Here is an attempt at dialogue. The scene is a reporter asking the founder of RAC questions
I know you are interviewing me, but can I ask you a question?
Uh, okay.
Are you a racist?
(The reporter looks shocked.)
That wasn’t an accusation. I have no reason to think that you are.
No, of course not!
Have you ever imitated a black speech to make a joke with your white friends?
No! (defiantly)
Have you ever laughed at one of your friends who did?
Uhm…..(hems and haws)
Have you ever looked at a name on a piece of paper and your first thought was, ‘that person must be black’?
Well, this doesn’t really seem like racism, at least not in its worst form.
Okay, how about this, have you ever been talking with someone who said, “I’m not a racist, but….” and whatever they said after the ‘but’ sounded racist to you?
(laughs a little) I’ve definitely heard that before.
So this is my point, there are a lot of people out there that are a little racist, but don’t think of themselves as racist. In fact, my guess is most of the racism in America is of this sort. There are very few people that even in private conceive of themselves as racists. I would also guess given that our difficult 400 years of race relations that nobody has been untouched by that history. Struggling with race is in our cultural DNA. Calling somebody a racist is basically calling them American.
Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.
Check out other work in the Dirty Dish Gallery here.
early the scarlet morning
the sky floods
blood ruddy
we must remember
the heart is simple
the limousine full
it is ancient
it is awful
image: turning baskets over
Check out other work in the 17/18 Poems series here.
Check out other work in the Paint Chips, Cracks, and Decay series here.
Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.
You are discussing a movie with your wife.
Talk has circled around various interpretations,
and now you find yourself debating, rather vigorously,
whether you agree with each other.
You maintain that with minor exceptions you do.
Your wife is quite certain that you don’t.
Don’t be surprised.
For if there is an acorn through which
to glimpse the forest of marriage,
it must be the argument about whether you are arguing.
And so, here we have
in this discourse
the inability of two to be one,
coupled with the relentless determination
that quite simply two equals one.
It’s a very real physical impossibility,
a duality of states
as in superposition
not as one, not as two
but, for lack of a better term,
a one / not one.
Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.
Hey dog,
Hope the shingles aren’t too bad. I talked to mom last night. She’s thinking about coming up to <> and nursing you. She also convinced me to get the shingles vaccination. She’s in full mama bear mode 🙂
If you are feeling well enough, I have a question about the Racists of America Club. I’ve been working on it like I said. I seem to have gotten into it by opening it as an interview. Right now it doesn’t have the bite of a real story though. It is more akin to one of the Socratic dialogues in Plato in which the star is the idea less than the characters discussing the idea. I think one of the problems of the story for me is that I actually believe in the idea too much. It is not like a real interrogation. I’m too one sided about it. Have you ever had this problem writing a story? Maybe I should be writing an essay instead? Help!
The reply…
Alright, as far as your question about RAC, yes, this is a common issue for a lot of writers, especially people newer to fiction writing, though we all face it. I see it with my students sometimes: they want to write the “Message Story” that feels like it has a thesis statement that they lead with but then remember they’re supposed to tell a story so they try to paste some one-dimensional characters and plot onto sexy their idea after the fact. I sometimes think of this as the story that knows too well where it wants to go so all the arrows point in one direction. It’s not that fiction should avoid big ideas by any means; it’s just that those ideas are always WAY more interesting when they grow out of three-dimensionally complex characters who have the real life human fears/hopes/conflict that we all do. That’s harder to do, I know, but if you don’t you run the risk of making the story about the idea and the idea only, and so the characters become cardboard cutouts spouting the author’s big idea. As a reader you feel cheated: You came looking for a story and you got a treatise, so you sort of feel like, Homie, why didn’t you just write an essay or polemic?
Actually, Pynchon of all people has one of the best lines about this. In one of the very few–perhaps only–nonfiction writings about his work (it’s the introduction to his volume of early short stories which is called Slow Learner) and in it he talks about an early short story he wrote that was titled “Entropy.” Entropy, of course, is the central Pynchonian metaphor and concern for all of his mature work, but early on he tried to write a story about it with that very fucking title and he has this great line about it: “The story is a fine example of a procedural error beginning writers are always being cautioned against. It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol, or abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.”
So you are not alone. We’ve all been there. You don’t have to take me to funky town. I already live there.
But while the diagnosis is clear, the solution is obviously much harder. I do think it all essentially comes down to character. You cannot have Socratic mouthpieces. These need to be characters that you make the reader feel like are real, that we have known or can recognize as true to our lived experience. You need to think about who these people in your story are. Sit down and think about their backstories and what has brought them to the present moment of your story. As yourself what their greatest fear or hope is. What’s their greatest shame? What’s their biggest wound in life, or their greatest joy? Where did they grow up and why is that significant? What’s the one thing they’ll be thinking about or remembering on their death bed? Not all of this will actually appear in the story, but they will help you get to know your character and you need to know it because that will help you make them three-dimensional. It will give context and complexity to the way in which you write/present them in the present narrative of your story.
The other thing about this gets back to this notion of the story knowing too well where it wants to go. I think it’s okay to have a sense of where you think the story might go, but you can’t be locked into it. I typically try to have a rough outline for a story. Very rough. I sometimes think of these as almost stage directions (By the end of this scene Character A has to wake up, go to work, and have a fight with a coworker) that mostly function as floaties that help me get into the big pool: they help me get started writing when I feel the anxiety of ‘what the hell do I do’ as the cursor blinks back at me. But I’m not beholden to an outline in any way. Because usually no matter what I think might happen in a scene or story will actually change in the act of actually writing it. And that is one of the exciting parts of writing. You have all that highly conscious forethought about your story and what you think is gonna happen, but the hope is that at some point you sort of drop into the zone/muse, that less conscious level that can’t really be planned for except by doing, that opens up new doors to and changes the way you thought the story would unfold.
I guess the last thing I’ll say is about my own personal experience with this. In <> I very much set out to write about politics in an overt way, which was risky. And obviously as a leftist/socialist I have a particular world view and belief system. One of the big tricks for me was figuring out how to not shy away from politics (which I think a lot of writers try to do to avoid charges of dogma or propaganda), but how can I write about it in a complex and interesting way. I think when people say they don’t want to read about politics in their fiction what they’re really saying is they don’t want to read bad writing, whether it’s Ayn Rand or Soviet social realism. So I wanted to write about these abstract ideas that I’m committed to, but to do so with complexity so that it didn’t just feel like characters were mouthpieces for my politics. This meant giving complex issues their due complexity, which meant I oftentimes had to undermine my own politics or point out its flaws or contradictions or limitations (even if I personally still remain committed to them). I felt like that was the only way I could write overtly about politics while still making the good kind art that strives to make the simple more complex. Thankfully I’m better at this in art than in my daily life, where too often I want to make something as complex as economics or politics overly simple.
A few years ago this website asked me to write some advice to young fiction writers. I ended up coming up with a list of 25 pieces of advice. Some of these might be silly, but I think at least a couple of them might be helpful for you in thinking about how to tell this story. Anyway, I attached a copy here if you want to take a look.
I hope I didn’t overwhelm you with all this, but it’s a big and complex issue in writing so I wanted to give you my honest thoughts.
Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.
Check out other work in the Dirty Dish Gallery here.
willow said to be weeping
joy said to be mocking
hope said to be thin
and the cargo was not slaves
this is the verbal energy
that surrounds the contemplation
of difficult (I mean ravenous) things
a bit daring I do say,
unlovely hand,
you are the subject given over
just like the dead
and in such quantities,
such well-meaning forevers
Check out other work in the 17/18 Poems series here.
Check out other work in the Paint Chips, Cracks, and Decay series here.
In every life, there’s a moment or two.
In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea or in the mountains.
On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.
Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:
on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,
my finger pressing your lips.
The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau flaking a little.
That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,
with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.
A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over the edge of the bed.
It hasn’t dissolved back into nothing, into reality.
Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.
Early morning: a man calling a small boy back from the water.
That small boy–he would be twenty now.
Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with auburn.
Muslin, flicker of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.
Every time I read this it takes me to my room somewhere. I first experienced this poem on the page. I wish I could find a recording of Gluck reading it.
Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.
This is a great example of how lightning can strike anywhere. I photo copied this page from a book of poems in the library. I didn’t like any of the other poems. I don’t even like this poem, but the second stanza by itself is probably the best thing I’ve read all year. It kills me every time I read it. I tried to track down who wrote it, but wasn’t able to. If anyone reads and recognizes it, please let me know.
The reason I can’t write the story is that I believe in the idea too much. It would be the same as writing one dimensional characters that are surrogates for pure good or evil. I don’t have the ability to interrogate the idea.
Robert Saunders was a good friend. He passed away 10 years ago and I still miss him. It is hard to know if I’d like this poem as much if I didn’t know him personally. It definitely reminds me about what I loved so much being around him. I guess it doesn’t really matter though, if you love a poem, you love a poem.
Birdseed
by this kind
he means cancer
the prospect he attaches to firmly
narrative abusing time…again
he is the tom of love now
all windows
in the mood to be forgotten
while others discuss
bribes and blandishments
instead of the love
they are too afraid to want
let the heaven we inherit approach
out of the deep business of some dream,
that heaven so stubbornly former
My company for eternity
Would be “onerous”
Said the devil
And that is how second hell started
I called to the cloying
The grating, the unambitiously mean
With no small pride
I say we are many
no, Mrs. Khokhlakov, no
what can one say
of how to live a life
other than
to just survive it
burnt shame
darkening memory
can God even caution you now?
I hope, but hope only
waiting to be told
that Icarus melts the stars
from where the animating myth
such a thing including
the farmer/cow rehearsal
always like we call them
we first and death as dead
I was young once
mind big like a city
human above the body
two ass-clenching years of it
like a bird too chirpy
practicing my no-one in a bar routine
you don’t know how shitty perfect feels
Justice is not an us versus them problem. It’s an us versus us problem. Any inversion of social/economic/political class just perpetuates injustice. I.e. the difference between labor/capital or high/low class is only an accident of history, not written in our biology. That is why “taking” power only results in “taking on” all the moral problems once despised in an oppressor. A deeper kind of a revolution is one that frees oppressors as well as the oppressed.
and if not why not
talk to me
I’ve given
a wonderful way
a wordful song
a foolhardy love
sometimes you need
off and unlike
various and blinding
I’m not saying stupid, stupid
porn
there falling wasted
when I think closed down
with such a thing including
if by yes
of course I’m telling
what?/but cool
a sign of grace
these woods, these old people
the spring of morning
the bones I still remember
It is kind of hard shaving your asshole.
It’s a bit of a blind spot really. I have many.
Blind spots, not assholes.
Why do I do it? I do it like I do many things.
Like writing poems.
I am wondering if poems are like assholes–
hard to find, delicate,
somewhere you shouldn’t go near with a razor.
Yet we feel compelled. I even listen with razors.
If I was like Burroughs and could
write a man to teach an asshole to talk,
what would it say? Mine always looks angry
at least in the mirror. Mirrors are funny though.
In a car once with my brother, I heard
an interview in which DFW said
he believed something down to his asshole.
What he believed, I can’t remember
even at the time it didn’t seem
as interesting as the fact he could
feel that belief in his asshole.
I’ve never felt anything that deep.
Maybe my sphincter lacks conviction?
I’ll deal with that later. For tonight
my little rosebud will have to be content
with being groomed: bald and beautiful.
Now I realize a poet asks a lot
when he asks the reader to contemplate his asshole.
It is a little past “don’t go there”
and more into “what the fuck?”
If you are still reading, thank you for indulging me.
Where do poems come from and why do I like them
is a knotted mystery to me.
Tipping my seat to DFW I never fail to feel
that kind of uncertainty where the poems don’t shine.
a break like a bend
more or less alive
many rains,
desires, and ideas
dude raw too afraid
the whole jealousy
a suitcase of a man
or a tarball ruining
someone’s beach
the freckled little milk
the mall of dead commerce
the sad clock of particular energy
it’s mixed character
tick, tock, tick
This Nikky Finney poem is too long for my usual taste, but just took me in. I heard it first and was enchanted by the multitude of conflicting emotions that one event could elicit. Having since read it, I still really enjoy the text version. Here is a link to both versions on the Poetry Foundation’s site.
before and astonished, poems.
beneath the honest
and worse the sincere
by hook or by crook?
-crook.
down, as in, to the bottom
then a lateral move
at slow velocity.
And said twice
it seemed
the truth was being told.
There was a woman at the meeting. She was older with a huge Elvis caricature on her t-shirt. I wouldn’t have noticed it but the pompadour fell right across her large breasts. Every time she moved or spoke Elvis’ coif gesticulated wildly.
minimal, slow, and well put
his mode, total attention
a clever view of necessity
and well worth the fight
here is limbo
you didn’t expect that
yet the world opens
the very kind of north
we are talking about.
a place of faith
deadly serious, solemn
the silence
like a prism for words
and their separation
shakes and groans. shivers
the sky was two
was too watery
what a week
how feels a fellow?
the patient, the fellow
lives to fail
must operate soon
In Dantos Gallery there are many red squares. Some are framed hanging proudly on the wall. Some are being prepped for artists, Giorgione for example, to further adorn. Another is by the stairs simply waiting to have ‘exit’ stenciled on it. Being spun through room after room thick with the presence of red squares of every sort… oh look, there’s one on the shoulder of a security guard…the question one is intended to ask is this: is art camouflaged in the banal or is the banal camouflaged in art? How does one find art when it is so cleverly hidden? Or stranger, how does one find art when it is so clearly abundant?
No spare of the headier side
my soul but a devil
the sheath of personal nature
sweating in the shed
prone to need
a list of battles
the body, the great landlord
it’s complaints, coercion,
never-ending
I’m having trouble starting from the beginning. I could start in the middle at an actual meeting. Or maybe a reporter interviewing one of the founders.
of that much.
both be foolish.
spaders.
smile bones I.
get lost.
are now.
into the work.
a true report
as in the rock
the mind on words
the rush to gather
many great songs
the real suchness
he’s a person that knows better than love
but can’t stop himself all the same.
she was a church in the sky
dropping birdshit on people below.
in Britain, things were done differently:
more slowly and with less passion.
okay, something hit me somewhere.
is it that
I can see myself a portion of malice
or at least the meander of their doing?
our hero arrives in take charge mode,
but who can ultimately confirm or deny the world.
we are left with its giant question.
hero cowers. It’s okay big guy.
This is an old favorite. I only know it from a audio compilation of poems from Giorno Poetry Systems. It’s read by Charles Stein. I can’t find the text of it anywhere. If you have the poem or can find it online, let me know. This poem is as smart, playful, and funny as any I know. Here is a link to the album I found it on. It’s called Seed Poem.
beautiful drunk eyes
through which they fall
memory’s sunburn
all over my face
a dangerous inlet
a poem perched on arrival
the elegy blowing through
I thought an early humorous episode by the founders would be to have them create a list of white guilt/shame provoking outings. They would call them field trips.
her sad
it seemed
to the dying
I’m saying.
money,
can we say,
is the most
that matters.
so I have heard
and do in part believe
a wall is a door
you can’t open
am I the one? honestly?
is it Japan where you are?
the distance loving subdivision
compellingly unlikable
(influence felt here)
if you break a name
the cause it gives
the action I mean
is/I have no idea
but think of it this way
because coming north is impossible
what could be ________
and why such hot blood
other than they hate you
and hate you in every color
I was thinking about plot points for the story. Here are some possibilities:
-origin story
-the club’s first black member
-a visitor misunderstands the club to be a solidarity club not a recovery program
-media attention
-a pc crusader visits the meeting
-a meeting is protested
-founders brainstorm how to adapt the 12 steps
-a nationwide tragedy happens like a Charlottesville, police killing, or a black church is attacked
of that much.
both be foolish.
spaders.
smile bones I.
get lost.
are now.
into the work.
a true report
as in the rock
the mind on words
the rush to gather
many great songs
the real suchness
the dislocations of summer
head behind the stars
thinking right now
something ought to
fall out of the sky.
if we feel a who
where a what should be
or a when that reveals itself
to be a why, then
let time fall back on itself
think it’s own tomorrow
swim like an ocean
an Athens of thought
