epigramititis- 118 living american poets kent johnson book preview

7/31/2019 Epigramititis- 118 Living American Poets Kent Johnson Book Preview

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Epigramititis:118 Living American Poets

Kent Johnson

BlazeVOX [books

Buffalo, New Yor


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Copyright 2006

Published by BlazeVOX [books]All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations inreviews.

Printed by CafePress.com in the United States of America

ISBN 0-9759227-8-5Library of Congress Control Number: 2004116023

Cover art by Larry Fauntleroy

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition


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Praefatio

From the start, it should be kept in mind that these are only poems. Death rushestowards us; the skin sags and flaps; the hair pales and flies off in an onrushing wind.Very soon, indeed, we shall die.

A long time ago, when poets anointed their privates with olive oil, the epigram washeld in highest esteem. A poet of respectable standing could say vile, wicked, andfunny things to another poet, telling him, for example, exactly what he was going to dwith what he had just anointed with olive oil. (What he was going to do with it, that isto the other poet, or to the other poets significant other, if not to both.)

Im not trying to sound outrageous; Im just stating the facts. The epigram was anhonored vehicle of vigorous, uncompromised speech, and its common practiceundermined, in very healthy ways, the genetic tendency of literati toward conformityand sycophancy. Of course, now and then things would get out of hand, and the poetsmight end up bruising one another in a brawl. But more often than not, it was all quitchivalrous and entertaining to the polis. No less than theater (ah, Euripides, ritual foof Aristophanes![see Cauda at books end]), the epigram was a public, competitivepitch upon which players made their histrionic bobs and feints, much for the end ofinjecting some virtue into the body politic. Thus, by and by, in the afterglow of

invectives catharsis, poets more often than not would meet in the commons to drinkand laugh and argue intricate questions of prosody and other ultimately pointlessthings.

(Panting dogs lie near them in the sun. A boy, high up in an orange tree, pokes with astick at a papyrus kite. Workmen, hoisted from hemp belts by pulleys and ropes froma columned roof, give Jupiters hair a fresh coat of golden paint. The pointy, red peniof a dog emerges from its sheath, and the dog licks at it for a little while and then goeback to sleep. They look like seabirds, one of the poets mutters, remarking on theworkmen dangling horizontally in the dusty air, tapping his fingers on the table and

yawning, baring his rotting teeth. And another lifts his bull-like buttock to fart inrapid, high-pitched reports, like a toy train crossing a scale-model bridge [thoughsuch comparison would obviously not occur to them, actual trains not appearing untilthe 18th century]. And then everyone laughs affably and long, and a dog senselesslybarks, and another lifts its leg to pee, and a bumblebee buzzes and gets caught in thestickiness of the gods new hair, and the boy, covered in moist blossoms, comes down


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triumphantly, from the tree. And then the poets go back to arguing about poetry somemore: the latest explorations of the 2nd Aslepeadean by The Younger Martians, theteenage bards of far Antiparos; the latest selling out to Caesar of this or that once-experimental playwright of Sparta, etc. etc.)

But those times of combative collegiality are long gone, and the epigram is a mostlyforgotten thing. Poetry is a kind of business now, with health insurance, includingdental, and paid travel aboard huge metal cylinders that fly faster than Mercurythrough the sky, bound for conferences in the provinces. Yes, poets these days are,for the most part, strategically polite and scriptedly protocoled toward their peers.After all, to publicly proclaim, as Catullus often did, that you are going to violentlyfuck another poet in the ass probably wont do much for your tenure or career.

In any case, none of the badinage here goes so far as that (this particular poet has nointerest, for one, in sodomy with other males, though not that there is anything wrongwith that, of course, 4/5ths of male poets today being of the Brokeback Mountainkind), so these relatively tame bagatteles of amusement or affection, bemusement orcontempt should cause no great upset to anyone. As I said, they are only poems. Andno one listens to poetry anymore, anyway. And, as I also said, very soon, indeed, weare all going to be dead.

--Kent Johnson

[nota bene: A few of the poets here died between the writing of their epigram and thepublication of this book about Living American Poets. See what I mean? As well, itshould be noted that this is only a 1st edition. The 2nd edition will be composed of ayet to be determined number of new epigrams.]


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This book if fated to be assiduously ignored by thePoetry Establishment, mainstream and experimental, the two sidesof its ancient coin. There will be few, if any, words expended on it. Thisis to be expected, especially from the experimental side, wheresilence has been raised (imagine silence being raised--what couldthat mean?) to the level of an Occult Art. Ah, but this silence--the silenceof the silencers and the silence of the minions who obediently keepsilence--shall be dissected and displayed by those who will come, withtheir cold, critical calipers, long after we are gone. Death is coming, as Isaid, but Time Time does not die.


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Introductio

The quick, compressed insights of the epigram have made it a favorite form forwriters from the Roman Martial to the English Herrick, whose translations of thatsatirist are spread generously throughout his work. Here's one translation of Martialfrom Hesperides:

POETS

Wantons we are; and though our words be such,Our lives do differ from our Lines by much.

Or this one, To the Detracter:

I ask't thee oft, what Poets thou hast read,And lik'st the best? Still thou reply'st, The dead.I shall, ere long, with green turfs cover'd be;Then sure thou't like, or thou wilt envie me.

D.H. Lawrence, more recently, in his book of poems Pansies, invigorated theform with robust moral surveys:

ELEPHANTS PLODDING

Plod! Plod!And what ages of timethe worn arches of their spines support!

or

THE MOSQUITO KNOWS

The mosquito knows full well, small as he ishe's a beast of prey.But after allhe only takes his bellyful,he doesn't put my blood in the bank.


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and

IMMORALITY

It is only immoralto be dead-alive,sun-extinctand busy putting out the sunin other people.

The epigram is a versatile form, and it has been used at various times tocut, slice or wickedly reduce the subject by pithy measure. Still, othersoffer complicated evaluations, investigating broad space within formalrestraints, reducing language to extend and amplify meaning, often tocontrary results. One example is Edward Dorn's Abhorrences, wherein hewrites:

THE PROTESTANT VIEW

that eternal dissentand the ravages offaction are preferableto the voluntaryservitude of blindobedience.

and

WHILE YOURE AT IT

As long as you're closing The Window of Vulnerabilitywould you mind shutting that door of paranoiaAnd while you're at it, would you mindsweeping the carpet of disdain.And then there's the container of trash to carry out.When you're finished with thatyou might go to the kitchen where you'll findthe skillet of rashness. Uh,just throw in a few slices of the bacon of compatibilityand fry well.


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The following epigrams by the playfully observant and seriously comic Kent Johnsonwere conceived on a different scale but with the same candid accuracy, making briefevaluations of certain poets of our milieu. The blend of art and criticism combinedhere extends fine delight and insight, flavored with the salt and peppering of hispersonal favorings and rejections. The responses of readers will no doubt blossomwith laughter, nervous consent, or outright loathing. But that's the point. These smallpieces are fun, authentic studies of an obscure group of writers. Some are offered in aspirit of contest, others as a kind of embrace. The rest (I'm shutting up now) speak fothemselves.

--Dale Smith


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From the era of thehorseless carriagenay, erethe era of the buggy, the debrisof forgetfulness has been covering,in strata, the obits. Aye,a lot has happened in Americanpoetry since the birth ofStanley Kunitz.


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In this 17th century wood-cutmy Uncle Ratko bought in Calcutta,the man stuck in the kayakhas come to cut afigure like that of Charles Simic.


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Shortly after 9/11, he spoke in writingon the listserv Poetics:If you encountera terrorist on a plane, you dont politelyrequest that he return to his seat, youpull out a .45 and you shoot him.History is unstoppable in its teleologicaldrive to unity: Pop culture mergeswith the Humanities; the Talk Show mergeswith Talk Poetry. And huge decompressed

machines fall, like ideologemes, out of the air.


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One time, when I was readingYeats, I thought,"How do we separatethe fiction from the plot?


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Pity the aardvark; he seemsat once lost in the Ivy of the zooand strangely at home, too.


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I, too, dislike him,though I'm not sure why.


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In the Preface to the 1999 editionofThe Best of American Poetry,he called me "incontrovertibly brilliant"and invited me to read at the KGB.But then (O bitchy fickleness, thou marrowof all poesy, of the last avant-garde,even!), he decided he didn't like me.


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Poet and critic, we claim himas our Randall Jarrell (the younger version).Oh, goodbye, Helen Vendler, goodbye,for you are their Matthew Arnold.We wash you out of your shattered turret with a hose.


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Gary Sullivan looks faintlylike Jean-Paul Belmondo,but her face launchesa thousand dreamsdeep into French B movies.


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John Ashbery is a very important poet who drinks gin sine finis.Strangely, no one has yet written about the convexed bond betwixtthe wet withouts of his poetry and the dry withins of his martinis.


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Thanks to his poem about a garbage canlid being smashed into a likeness of KingGeorge the Thirds face, my sixteen year oldson is now writing poetry. This activity hasrecently led him into drinking alcohol andexperimenting with drugs, which makesit difficult for me to say, but Ill say itanyway: Thank you, Kenneth Koch,

for your marvelous contributions to Poetry.


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Once I was on a panel entitled"Buddhism and American Poetry"at Poet's House. Armand Schwernerheld forth for a long time on theshikirichi and Anne Waldmanshouted sutras with a massiveintensity. I remember thatJackson Mac Low didn't say

very much, nor did he move verymuch, really. But at the endof the evening he shook my handand said, "Nice to have met you."

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