I ran into an article online (which I didn’t actually read)
that had the phrase in the title “The Blunt Force Trauma of the MFA.” I fully
get the inference. The MFA is about honing one’s craft, but it’s also about
developing a thicker skin because you better believe it’s a tough world out
there for a writer. I figure that this poem, like probably most of these Dream
Songs anyway, would have been blackjacked out of an MFA workshop seminar room
in about 30 seconds. Unfocused. Self-indulgent. Lecturely and didactic. The
Spanish are thoroughly odd? The Japanese are formal? Americans are normal? It
doesn’t mean that much beyond loose adolescent rambling, the kind of
list-making and categorizing that smart teenagers do in idle moments as they’re
trying to wrap their heads around the bafflements of the world they just got
thrust into. I don’t care though. It’s fine. Whatever. I’m used to it. The
first two stanzas do probably deserve a good, solid workshop thumping. The poem
kind of lurches from section to section. Nothing we’re not used to. But
something really interesting arises in the third. From “We should have lowered
the boom / on ourselves in our mother’s womb,” to “My baby chatters.” She didn’t
lower the boom on herself either, and the juxtaposition is telling: Babies are
innocent, and so were you too, pal. No boom lowering on your historical naïve self
so easily. It’s not the fault of that kid-you-were that things evolved to this
juncture in your life. It grew bit by bit, and it wasn’t all bad either. The
movement to your work is easy enough too, another of your creations. It moves through
that recognition of your approaching death, but you’ll also be leaving behind
this other creation, this “child.” Straight out of your loins too, sort of. And
yes, it’ll baffle lots of people.
There then comes a touch of snide given to critics, and I
think there is a touch in the title too: “An Instructions” has this
condescending note to critics whom he knows in the end are so bound up in their
own interpretations and their own density of exclusionary jargon that they
wouldn’t even notice the grammar error. David Letterman was interviewing a professional boxer on
his talk show long ago, back when he was just getting started, and was so
openly contemptuous of the boxer’s English and the level of thinking underlying
it that he asked him, “And what do that mean?” He was sending his guest’s
incorrect English right back at him, really a vicious uppercut. I was in
college. My roommate and I looked at each other, said, “Did you just hear what
I just heard? This guy is dangerous!” We loved it though. I’m picking up something
like that in this poem’s title. More to the point is the poem’s final lines, that
really pull the poem together. This author, he’s saying, is right here in front
of you, but shadowy in all this linguistic mist and rain. Don’t bother. Live. Don’t
write rich critical prose, rather, remember what it felt like when you kissed
your cousin. She was so pretty and you know you both wanted to, and it was all
the more exciting because you’re not supposed to be doing that—except everyone
does it at that one stage anyway. I kissed my cousin, Martha, when we were both
about six, and we were still little enough that my mom and aunt and grandma
thought it was cute. No need to say anything more about how that felt. I
remember it though. The point is that that is something that matters. Keep in
mind how wonderful that was. All this literary output from a drunk descending
into twilight, like a third or fourth time into his grave, this time to stay?
What's the matter with you people? Well…Can
we remind Henry here that if his legacy and reputation are truly what matters
to him, then we might suggest that he’s biting the hand that feeds him? Oh,
right, it’s too late. Still... You will need these perplexed, probing critics
even long after you’re dead, Henry. You might try being nicer to them, and don’t
go farting at their efforts like you did in that one poem. Well, pfrrrt on
that, he says. Just don’t forget what matters. It’s not the tormented hallucinations
and self-absorbed clatterings of this old fool, which are everything and
nothing at once. Work honestly out of simple health. God, he must have been thinking,
I feel terrible. Well, it’s okay. Take a break, Henry. We got it from here.
I adore the last stanza. "You literary critics, you'll try to make too much of these poems to make yourself seem smart. Joke's on you. They're just 350 bitch sessions, and you need to get a life."
ReplyDelete