“I know, but just as he “abandoned the ruse that had once been the poem” and wrote other poems, I’ve abandoned the review — which is as much of a review as Nabokov’s preface to the life of Gogol is a preface — and written something else.”
“But still, I need a review.”
“It’s all there in my girlfriend’s dream.”
“Your girlfriend’s dream can’t be a review!” he shot back.
“Of course it can. It fulfills all the requirements.”
“We don’t have any requirements.”
“Oh, right. Well then, why don’t I send you a micro-review? It’s not like anyone reads reviews anyway. It seems like that would be more fitting for the times. My micro-review would go something like this:
***
Do unicorns exist? Of course they do. What about genius? I’m not so sure. Haruki Murakami in Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World tells us to “forget genius. It doesn’t do much for innocent bystanders. Especially if everyone’s going to want a piece of the action. That’s why this whole mess happened in the first place. Genius or fool, you don’t live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but someone’s going to come along and screw up the works.”
Or there’s Kent Johnson’s take from his blurb: “I guess the definition of a genius is a man or woman surrounded by lunatics.”
I do know that the “author” “never took part in the wars, because no one lets / A dead man into their covert discussions.” He do “Do the Policemen in Different Voices” though don’t he? Yes, “he” does quite well. Who is this Possum among the hoopoes? Some Bantam in Pine Woods? And what about all this mention of Charles Bernstein? Do youngish poets hang out with Charles Bernstein? I wouldn’t know. I do know the Bernstein camp, the avante-gardists, make noises about removing the “I” from poetry — something Johnson claims those same people never do.
So what’s the real story behind The Waste Land and Other Poems? Did Kent Johnson build the shell and recruit Ashbery and Powell and maybe the FLARF collective or his students and who knows who else to give the big middle finger to the establishment? Is Beer a front man? A Kent Johnson persona? Am I delusional? All of it’s entirely possible. I know that the poem “Speak Yon Undiscovered Towers” was written in more than one voice. I don’t know whose they are. But I do know what a tower is. And so does Kent Johnson.
I know that Eliot had a secretary named Pound
Pound a secretary named Mussolini.
(Capsule history of the twentieth
century.)
Wake up everyone, this is the 21st!
In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein wrote: “A name signifies only what is an element of reality.”
Sorry to burden you with more dreams, but my girlfriend woke up this morning with another good one. In it, she told me that she was looking down on a ship manned by a group of sailors who loved their captain for his goodness and generosity and so would do anything he asked. One day he told them that they should all make private wooden boxes to sleep in at night on the deck of the ship. He supplied them with wood and nails and hammers and they went to the task feverishly, constructing their own sleeping boxes in an afternoon. They were so happy with their work that they decided to paint them bright, happy colors. That night they all went to sleep on deck in their boxes which had hinged lids to ward off the elements. Around midnight the captain and his officers came around and nailed shut all of the lids. From there it was easy to slide the coffins off the ship into the sea.
I refuse to construct my own coffin on board someone else’s ship.
Before I go though, I want you to know that I’m OK with not knowing. I’m OK with admitting that there are a lot of things I don’t know. Indeterminacy sits just fine with me. There are masks waiting to be pulled off for sure, but I’ll let others do the pulling. There are cul-de-sacs waiting to be explored (check out the endnotes!) but for me, if there’s a sign that says Dead End, I’m content to walk on by. I’ve got other, more interesting things to see and do.
But even still, you should know that “‘after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the / holy family, it must be destroyed in theory and in practice.’”
R.I.P. [J. Beer 1969 – 1969]
And good luck. Watching the killing ought to be a whole lot of fun.
