Evening at the Explorers' Club
· “I wonder if Simon has anything prepared. You know—”
“Yes, if he'll come in with something to show up Alfred again.”
“Last week it was a good-looking girlfriend, this week, who knows?”
“Maybe he'll arrive by helicopter,” said Hogg, “That would be something.”
No one replied. After a moment's silence, Hogg looked around and said:
“I said, Maybe he'll arrive by helicopter. Anyone think he might do that?”
“No”, came the laconic and somewhat negative reply.
“I don't know,“ continued Hogg. ”Maybe in the future everyone will --”
“No.”
At that moment Alfred came in wearing a fine silk hat, to everyone's delight.
“Beautiful!” they said. “I haven't seen a tile like that since --”
“Me neither, where on earth did you find it?”
But before everyone could have his say, Simon made his entrance. On his head, a silk hat, almost identical to his rival's, but many times larger, at least four feet tall.
“I guess this contest is over,” said Simon, “and we'll have to think about our voyage to the centre of the earth. And this time let's be serious.”
Suggestions for Reading
· The worst job might be having to go through the “suggestions” every month. Sure, it might be fun the first few times—all the wacky people with their sense of fun—but probably it would become so enervating that you would get ulcers just thinking about it.
While it is true that some people write pleasant and complimentary things, these people are, unfortunately, crazy. There are no two ways about that. Just think about it for a moment: there they are, minding their business, and somehow they decide to submit something nice for the “suggestions” box. What would make anyone do that other than incipient mental problems?
Actually, you just have to look at some to get an idea. Signs of mental disturbance are:
- Neat, microscopic, yet rotund handwriting.
- Giant smears of crayon.
- Stuff that has lots of abbreviations in it.
- Everything else.
The Latest Poets
· His effects were transparent and I was tired of them. He thought those stupid Mooooobius strips (or whatever) meant something; he thought sex meant something; he thought anyone's doing anything meant something; he thought television meant something. He was always trying to uncover the unique in the ordinary (and vice versa), and usually in a powerful way. He tried to be passionate and provocative, and then, finally, he went and did something or other with language and ritual, and that was the last straw: I had to slap him. Three, four times. And then I had to slap him some more. I had to slap him back and forth. It was a job of work.
“Stop it“, he said.
“No,“ I said, “I don't think so. I think we're just beginning to get somewhere“.
Despite myself, I end up imagining him at his desk, transcribing some notes and thinking: “This really seems to make no sense, but I think if I insert some commas it will at least be easier to read. And if I take some commas out, it will become a poem. And now I will go and teach others to do the same.“
Certain corrosion-
resistant steel sheet
products originating in or emanating from
the United States
of Amerika
- he writes, feeling good about the enjambement. It's so good when things work out. Emanating?
Of course, these were all his just-in-time poems. Yes. Centralized planning, decentralized initiative. Produced on demand. Immediately disposable. Both the poems and the paper they are printed on can be tossed and recycled without qualm.
He persists in sending me these poems. They would seem to concern some emotional contretemps he is supposed to have had. I can't tell, a woman that dumped him, something like that. It sounds at first as if he has been dumped by a series of women, and has done nothing in life other than get dumped, but a closer reading suggests that perhaps the culprit is a single woman acting alone. There's usually the name of some artist or poet stirred in. Dante. Cézanne. Chekhov. Then, a little way below the poem, the name of the place where it is meant to have been written, in italics: Bangkok. Prague. Uttar Pradesh. London. Did he go to all those places? I have to ask. What for? To write poems? Sometimes the date is noted there as well, as if that might add poignance for the knowledgeable reader. Sometimes famous bombings and massacres are dropped in. That's a bit like adding barbecue sauce to an otherwise tough and bland piece of charred stuff. It's a bit like one of his non-viable metaphors.
The poet lives in some place that you'll have heard of and enjoys parenting with his partner, So-and-So. Yet his book is dedicated to someone described as “my lover and companion“. What if his partner finds out about this lover and companion? She might be too busy parenting to read any of his dumb books, of course, but you never know when even the dullest person will surprise you, and it turns out they can pick up a book and read it. Let's not rule out the possibility that perhaps this lover and companion is actually his wife; he may just feel uncomfortable saying that. (Legal implications).
The poet teaches at the University. So there. He teaches creative writing. It's not that difficult. Give it a try. Lenin said that in the future a cook would be able to run the country, or something, and that everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes, so what's stopping you? Here's a good idea for a poem: refer to yourself as “i“, use the present tense, talk about something disturbing that happened to you.
He blames foreign intelligence operatives for the world's problems, and is very concerned about the world. All death and pestilence is obviously caused by the enemy. If there is anything to get angry about, it is the enemy. The enemy may be known among you because his value system is all screwed up. When will people learn? one asks oneself with a knowing but rueful shake of the head, time and again.
He gets angry with television and the media. “They keep selling us things!“ he cries in anguish. It's horrible, horrible, the way people buy and sell things and get rich, it shouldn't be allowed.
Angry, and just a little depressed, because once again the machinations of foreign intelligence operatives and their dupes are apparent in the latest deeds of our government and in events worldwide. It's sad, really.
But every evening ends with wine and Thai food at somebody's really nice apartment. What's a man supposed to do?