W, a poem

It is the V you double, not the U, as if to use
two valleys in a valise is to savvy the vacuum
of a vowel at a powwow in between sawteeth.

It is to ask the painter of a watercolour hue:
'why owe you twice what a sheep is or a tree,
if the fee you double has to hew you a puzzle?'

An enigma, like a game in E, its jigsaw zigzag
never fits the excess void left behind by X,
the exit on the way from 'why' to what is said.

If you glean an anagram from each angle, do you
dabble with your double view of what you hate:
a swastika that awaits your Olympiad of riddles?

Is this letter a residuum of what troubles you?
If you slice it down the middle, does it not
hereafter indicate a twofold victory over life?

If it maps the rise and fall of fortune, like a yo-yo,
why oh, why oh, must you find four palm trees
in a park, if not to make of them your symbol?

It is the name for an X whose V does not view
the surface of a lake but the mirror on a wall,
where U and you become a tautonym, a continuum.

—Christian Bök

Revelation 3:15–17

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.
For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

III

Today I took a walk to Fire Pond.
I brought the map, forgot the orange vest.
Into the silence I made human sounds,
coughs and heavy steps, proclaiming, Yes
I'm here, but apart, I can't be folded
into whatever this is. My steps pressed
words onto my mind: Fire...Pond...Fire...Pond...
which changed to my own name. I let the cadence
shield me. Early dark narrowed the spaces
between pines. Still I followed the map's lines
which trickled down toward that dark, labeled place,
an ink blot deep in the woods. But no sign
told what to do once there. O, it said to
no one. Oh, I echoed, embarrassed, new.

— Jessica Garratt
(from Fire Pond)

This bill crisis is ill

Hassan can watch, aghast, as databanks at NASDAQ
graph hard data and chart a NASDAQ crash—a sharp
fall that alarms staff at a Manhattan bank. Hassan
acts fast, ransacks cashbags at a mad dash, and grabs
what bank drafts a bank branch at Casablanca can
cash: marks, rands and bahts. Hassan asks that an
adman draft a want ad that can hawk what canvas
art Hassan has (a Cranach, a Cassatt and a Chagall).
Hassan can fast-talk a chap at a watchstand and
pawn a small watch that has, as a watchglass, a star
padparadschah (half a grand, a carat). A shah can
pack a bag, flag a cab and scram, catch-as-catch-can.

—Christian Bök, from Eunoia, 2001

Maldoror

Throughout my life I have seen, without one exception, narrow-shouldered men performing innumerable idiotic acts, brutalising their fellows, and corrupting souls by every means. They call the motive for their actions: fame. Seeing these exhibitions I've longed to laugh, with the rest, but that strange imitation was impossible. Taking a penknife with a sharp-edged blade, I slit the flesh at the points joining the lips. For an instant I believed my aim was achieved. I saw in a mirror the mouth ruined at my own will! An error! Besides, the blood gushing freely from the two wounds prevented my distinguishing whether this really was the grin of others. But after some moments of comparison I saw quite clearly that my smile did not resemble that of humans: the fact is, I was not laughing. I have seen men, hideous men with terrible eyes sunk deep in their sockets, outmatch the hardness of rock, the rigidity of cast steel, the shark's cruelty, the insolence of youth, the insane fury of criminals, the hypocrite's treachery, the most extraordinary play-actors, priests' strength of character, and the most secretive, coldest creatures of heave and earth. I have seen moralists weary of laying bare their hearts and bringing down on them selves the implacable wrath from on high. I have seen them all together—the most powerful fist levelled at heaven like that of a child already wilful toward its mother—probably stimulated by some denizon of hell, their eyes brimful of remorse and yet smarting with hatred, in glacial silence, not daring to spill out the unfruitful and mighty meditations harboured in their hearts, meditations so crammed with injustice and horror, enough to sadden the God of mercy with compassion. Or I've seen them at every moment of the day from the start of infancy to the end of dotage, while disgorging incredible curses, insensate curses against all that breathes, against themselves and Providence, prostitute women and children and thus dishonour those parts of the body consecrated to modesty. Then the seas swell their waters, swallow ships in their abysses; earth tremors and hurricanes topple houses; plagues and divers epidemics decimate praying families. Yet men are unaware of all this. I have seen them also blushing and blenching with shame at their behaviour on earth—but rarely. Tempests, sisters of cyclones; bluish firmament whose beauty I do not admit; hypocrite sea, image of my heart; earth with mysterious womb; inhabitants of the spheres; the whole universe; God who grandly created it, you I invoke: Show me one honest man! . . . May your grace multiply my natural strength tenfold, for at the sight of such a monster I might die of astonishment. One dies at less.

From the first canto of Les Chants de Maldoror, by Le Comte de Lautréamont, 1868–69. This segment reads like the prayer of The Joker. The first canto, which I've only just finished, ends with the author speaking directly to the reader: "Greybeard, farewell, and if you have read this, think of me. You, young man, do not despair, for despite your opinion to the contrary, you have a friend in the vampire. Counting the acarus sarcoptes that causes crabs, you have two!"

After Dean Young Talks About Wine

Dean Young, "Ode to Hangover":

Hangover, you drive me into the yard
to dig holes as a way of working through you
as one might work through a sorry childhood
by riding the forbidden amusement park rides
as a grown-up until puking. Alas, I feel like
something spit out by a duck, a duck
other ducks are ashamed of when I only
tried to protect myself by projecting myself
on hilarity's big screen at the party
where one nitwit reminisced about the 39¢
a pound chicken of his youth and another said,
Don't go to Italy in June, no one goes to Italy in June.
Protect myself from boring advice,
from the boring past and the boring present
at the expense of an unnauseating future:
now. But look at these newly-socketed lilacs!
Without you, Hangover, they would still be
trapped in their buckets and not become
the opposite of vomit just as you, Hangover,
are the opposite of Orgasm. Certainly
you go on too long and in your grip
one thinks, How to have you never again?
whereas Orgasm lasts too short some seconds
and immediately one plots to repeat her.
After her I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum but Hangover, you make me aspire
to a saltine. Both of you need to lie down,
one with a cool rag across the brow, shutters
drawn, the other in a soft jungle gym, yahoo,
this puzzle has 15 thousand solutions!
Here's one called Rocking Horse
and how about Sunshine in the Monkey Tree.
Chug, chug, goes the arriving train,
those on the platform toss their hats and scarves
and cheer, the president comes out of the caboose
to declare, The war is over! Corks popping,
people mashing people, knocking over melon stands,
ripping millenniums of bodices. Hangover,
rest now, you'll have lots to do later
inspiring abstemious philosophies and menial tasks
that too contribute to the beauty of this world.

No, no, no. Ode to Hangover goes:

Uuueuh
eeeeuuugh
eeuuuu
uugghggh
uuuuggh

eeuh

I don't know about the hangover as the opposite of the orgasm, but Young's argument has fine moments. This turn,

. . . and immediately one plots to repeat her.
After her I could eat a car but here's
a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake
yum

in which Young registers that the narrator does "repeat her", is especially fine. The narrator "could eat a car", but instead says that "here's" something else—note how the verb places him in his present situation (as it were, in bed). He could eat a car, but he isn't going to eat anything at all, because "here's", then, a "pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake". O rly. The suggestive imagery is alluring, but not exotic or rarefied; new experience but nevertheless variations on classics; somewhat more vulgar than fine. Indulgent—like the vigorous, athletic, 'round-the-clock sex that establishes the beginning of romantic relationships . . . and followed by that perfect enjambment ("yum"), spoken in a voice that breaks with the narrator's voice, a lusty and dumbly monosyllabic, lip-licking declaration of joy.

Good lines about sex, but the hangover itself seems less successfully established, until that last pair of lines, which are awfully redeeming. "[T]hat too contribute to the beauty of this world": A person couldn't (and perhaps rightly shouldn't) believe that about himself while he is hungover; it's comforting to think, though, that it might nevertheless be true of whatever small works he can eke out of the day.

Constitutionally I cannot write about hangovers in literature without passing on the greatest description of a hangover ever written, by Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim:

Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

Poem Without Forgiveness

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt's stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn't it
electricity's blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer's type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I'll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you've had enough
doesn't mean you wanted too much.

—Dean Young, 2006

Barack, Beatnick

The Guardian reprints two poems by Barack Obama, recently discovered in a probably-better-off-lost college literary journal. Obama's deployment of the enjambment, an honest-to-God literary technique, sets his poetry apart from most of what I read as the editor of my alma mater's humble literary journal. But it's still familiar stuff: Pop is about a grandparent, which is the True North of collegiate poetry, the subject toward which every student knows to steer even without a compass. (The other pole being sex, a much less welcome topic, as these are written in hopes of squicking out the reader, often with alarming success. Toward the end, one of Obama's enjambs inadvertently crosses into this territory, but that's just a happy accident of bad writing.)

Pop

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I'm sure he's unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he's still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He's so unhappy, to which he replies . . .
But I don't care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I've been saving; I'm laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from
his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I've got on mine,
and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites
an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back;
'cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop's black-framed glasses
And know he's laughing too.

The (typo? neologism? slang?) word "shink" has been retained.

Obama's other poem, well, it makes no sense.

Underground

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

Courtesy of Ron Silliman.

The Love Song of G. Valerius Catullus

While shopping for a copy of Catullus's Poems for a friend's birthday, I decided to spend a little extravagantly and pick up one for myself. I knew I wanted to buy a version with the facing Latin for the gift, so I picked up the Peter Green translation. Here's Catullus's poem 7:

You'd like to know how many of your kisses
would be enough and over, Lesbia, for me?
Match them to every grain of Libyan sand in
silphium-rich Cyrene, from the shrine of
torrid oracular Jupiter to the sacred
sepulchre of old Battus; reckon their total
equal to all those stars that in the silent
night look down on the stolen loves of mortals.
That's the number of times I need to kiss you,
That's what would satisfy your mad Catullus—
far too many for the curious to figure,
or for an evil tongue to work you mischief!

Lacking the criteria to decide on the best English translation for myself, I settled on the Penguin Classics version, translated by Peter Whigman, because it was cheap and compact. Here is the same poem as it appears in this edition (formatted to match the text):

Curious to learn
how many kiss-
es of your lips
might satisfy
my lust for you,
Lesbia, know
as many as
are grains of sand
between the oracle
of sweltering Jove
at Ammon &
the tomb of old
Battiades the First,
in Libya
where the silphium grows;
alternatively,
as many as
the sky has stars
at night shining
in quiet upon
the furtive loves
of mortal men,
as many kiss-
es of your lips
as these might slake
your own obsessed Catullus, dear,
so many that
no prying eye
can keep the count
nor spiteful tongue fix
their total in
a fatal formula.

The Latin is, unfortunately, Greek to me, but I'll include it below the cut.

Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes
tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis
oraclum Iovis inter aestuosi
et Batti veteris sacrum sepulcrum;
aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
furtivos hominum vident amores:
tam te basia multa basiare
vesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nec pernumerare curiosi
possint nec mala fascinare lingua.

I'll of course appreciate your strong opinions about the relative merits of the translations, if you're inclined to offer them; the differences between most poems don't seem so stark. I'll only note that the italics at least seem superfluous in the Green, and the formatting irritating in the Penguin, before begging off on this subject of translations from languages I can't read. Having posed the burning classics question, I'm off to take in Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane, surely a seminal text of our times.