Well, Monumental Isn't the Word, but... I Put a Lot of Thought into It, Dave

The month of birthdays end on a High Egoslavian Holy Day, Chris Elliott, fifty-three today, one of only a few people born after me that gets an Egoslavian Holy Day. Twenty years give or take before I remembered that gag after two weeks of blogging ten years ago and made it Official Anthem of Autoblogography, Theme Song of Bleggalgazing and Apex of Fine Metaphors Abounding I harshed my lungs on a bong hit of very good Colombian laughing at the line in this post's title the first time I saw the skit, it makes me giggle like the first time each time. It is without doubt the most posted youtube on all iterations of this blog the past ten years (people can vouch, including one who may have been in the same room at the same time I harshed my lungs). I wouldn't be surprised if I don't comprise at a minimum 10% of that youtubes 8K+ views.

To celebrate the Holiest Day of Brazen Self-Indulgence and Ritual Revelations of Brazen Motives of Sloppy Look-at-Me-Fuckers as Superior Bleggal Sophistication (plus, for the accountant in me, the End of Bleggal Year 12-13 and the Start of Bleggal Year 13-14), one of this blog's most posted songs ever, one of the most posted poems ever, one of the most posted songs ever:






JUBILATE AGNO, FRAGMENT B

Christopher Smart

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
     quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon
     his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring
     eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness      he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit
     without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the
     spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of      the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God
     to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence
     perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven
     to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

I Would Open a Book and Could Decipher Nothing for Letters Faded and Disappeared from the Pages

Today is not an Egoslavian Holy Day, Lordy, what the fuck to blog about, everyone and everything still sucks and/or is same meh and/or is still unKind and/or Kind and/or terrible and/or wondrous. The three of us are seeing Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 tonight, I hadn't heard of it (I'd heard of him though I couldn't name a movie this moment beside 8 1/2 which I hadn't heard of until yesterday), I'm told it's a classic. I don't see movies. This is not a moral stance, this - once, still - is about I've enough obsessions already. This blog, thanks to the many Egoslavian Holy Days, thanks to my dwindling interest in or ability to re-sausage the daily duh, is what I do, read poetry, listen to music (solo piano, yo, whenever I'm Hey, Sailored,  Lordy, love), scribble in tablets. If I gave in to movies (and I want to give in to movies, it would be easy) I couldn't remain ram to the dam of poetry and music, I've only two ears, two eyes, one hard drive, so many hours. This is why I dress in black and STAND for ninety minutes for a stupidass soccer team, why until this past election I only voted straight Democratic tickets. This is why I write a sentence like the second one before this one. Anyway,

• I'll not review the movie. You're welcome.
• I have no idea why blogger doesn't embiggen on this site, and you probably don't want to anyway, but to see above poem to read it, go here, and click mosaic, yo, then click it again.
• Our post-racial society.
• James Comey ain't your homey.
• Federici's Feminist Critique of Marx.
• I know the owner of this blog.
• Serendipitously, this morning, after writing the monologue last night re: movies, I got an email from David Vaipan, a Kind reader out of Fresno California who asked me if I'd bump his Kickstarter for his new project You (Plural), a film adaptation of both Joyce's Ulysses and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Check it out.
• The killing of Wheaton.
• If USMNT gets to Brazil, it'll be via play-in game, and probably not even then. Psst. I don't care.
• I've kept up the the Newest Gag project over on blogroll left, a new site every day through May. I'm undecided whether it will run into June and if it does whether it will be the same blogroll or a new blogroll. Check out the new places.
• Auster and Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• The Milosz is in the mail.
• The weirdest album to ever go platinum?
• New Diamond Terrifier.
• Aereogramme was requested:

WOE!

Czeslaw Milosz

It is true, our tribe is similar to the bees.
It gathers honey of wisdom, carries it, stores it in honeycombs.
I am able to roam for hours
Through the labyrinth of the main library, floor to floor.
But yesterday, looking for words of masters and prophets
I wandered into high regions
That are visited by practically no one.
I would open a book and could decipher nothing
For letters faded and disappeared from the pages.
Woe! I exclaimed - so it comes to this?
Where are you, venerable one, with your beards and wigs,
Your nights spend by a candle, griefs of your wives?
So a message saving the world is silenced forever?

At your home it was the day of making preserves.
And your dog, sleeping by the fire, would wake up,
Yawn and look at you - as if knowing.

Born Ninety-One Years Ago Today

Iannis Xenakis. Play loud.

Persepolis one, two, three, four, five, six.

Bohor one, two.

Xenakis here before one, two, three. Can't find the rest.

Holyfuck, looking for past Xenakis I discovered I missed Satie's birthday two weeks ago. What the fuck is wrong with me?

The Complete Electronic Music of Iannis Xenakis.

A Friend from Boston Wrote Something to Me Last Week About Not Having the Intelligence to Take as Subject for His Poems Anything Other Than His Own Life

I said yesterday that May must have more Egoslavian Holy Days than any other month. Ligeti was born ninety years ago today. Xenakis is tomorrow, then a couple of days off, then the 31st, birthday of the  Patron Saint of Autoblogography (hint: look on Left Blogroll; without doubt the past, current, and future most posted youtube on this blog forever, amen). Serendipity, when Kind, is glorious, providing kayfabe-rich bleggal festivals to front-end the first weeks of the Blog Days of Summer and ease the pangs of seasonal bleg-ennui and blogblahs.

New stuff there, will be here tomorrow (or not) when I've not someone's birthday to blogwhoringly celebrate.

• I'm so fucking nuts I think it deliberate that within a week of Obama's speech on terrorism that news is leaked by officials that OFUCK! THE CHINESE!
• Teaching children to fear dissent.
• Disaster porn and elite panic.
• Data mining and digital death.
• Ken Cuccinelli, hard-right winger Virginia gubernatorial candidate, is absolutely correct to call Terry Motherfucking McAuliffe a carpet-bagger. He symbolizes Democratic Party decadence and corruption as well as anybody.
• MOCO parents upset with new report cards!
• Humans can be assholes.
• Things. Something he said reminded me of a favorite trick I do before starting any novel: open a novel more than one-third but not more than two-thirds and read one - only one - paragraph and then shut the book. When you come upon the paragraph in the regular course of reading a book get a cheap rush of deja vu. Fun!
• Catholicism, freedom, Patti Smith.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Lontano.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT RESCUE

M.L. Smoker

The time is important here—not because this   

has been a long winter or because it is my first   

at home since childhood—but because there is so much   

else to be unsure of. We are on the brink of an invasion.   

At a time like this how is it that when I left only a week ago

there was three feet of snow on the ground,

and now there is none, not even a single patch   

on in the shadow of the fence-line.   

And to think I paid a cousin twenty dollars   

to shovel the walk. He and two of his buddies,   

still smelling of an all-nighter, arrived at 7 am   

to begin their work. When I left them a while later   

and noticed their ungloved hands, winter made me feel   

selfish and unsure. This ground seems unsure   

of itself for its own reasons

and we do not gauge enough of our lives   

by changes in temperature.

When I first began to write poems

I was laying claim to battle.

It started with a death that I tried to say

was unjust, not because of the actual

dying, but because of what was left.

What time of year was that?

I have still not yet learned to write of war.

I have friends who speak out—as is necessary—

with subtle and unsubtle force.

But I am from this place and a great deal

has been going wrong for some time now.

The two young Indian boys who almost drowned

last night in the fast-rising creek near school

are casualties in any case.

There have been too many just like them

and I have no way to fix these things.

A friend from Boston wrote something to me last week

about not having the intelligence

to take as subject for his poems

anything other than his own life.

For a while now I have sensed this in my own mood:

This poem was never supposed to mention

itself, other writers, or me.

But I will not regret that those boys made it home,

or that thee cousins used the money at the bar.

Still, there are no lights on this street.

Still, there is so much mud outside

that we carry it indoors with us.

This REVISED NEW SYLLABUS Is Nothing New, but as Old as Sickness of the Spirit - Not a Revision of Anything, but a Repudiation of All That's Wholesome and Redeeming, or: Siouxsie Sioux Is 56 Today, John Barth 83

I could do the math and fuck that but I'd guess May is the birthday-iest month in Egoslavia, there are a couple more, including a High Holy Day still left to come. These are simultaneously my favorite posts and this blog's least read posts. Sweet. Today is Siouxsie Sioux's 56th birthday and John Barth's 83rd. Siouxsie was on the daily soundtrack for a decade and every time I hear a song I think of a special summer and a special girl. I would not read and think like I do if Gary Pittenger, English 101 professor at Montgomery College, had not pushed Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor into my hands in 1980. John Barth interview from 1985. PDF of Sot-Weed Factor. On Sot-Weed Factor, part one, part two. Discovering Sot-Weed Factor. The Case for John Barth. On Giles Goat-Boy. Here's the opening to my second favorite Barth novel, Giles Goat-Boy:

Publisher's Disclaimer

The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity. We ask him to believe in the sincerity and authenticity of this preface, affirming in return his prerogative to be skeptical of all that follows it.

The manuscript submitted to us some seasons ago under the initials R.N.S., and by us retitled Giles Goat-Boy, is enough removed from the ordinary and so potentially actionable as to make inadequate the publisher's conventional disclaimer: "Any resemblance to persons living or dead," etc. The disclaimer's very relevance-which we firmly assert-was called into question even prior to the manuscript's receipt, as has been everything about the book since, from its content to its authorship. The professor and quondam novelist whose name appears on the title-page (our title-page, not the one following his prefatory letter) denies that the work is his, but "suspects" it to be fictional-a suspicion that two pages should confirm for the average reader. His own candidate for its authorship is one Stoker Giles or Giles Stoker- whereabouts unknown, existence questionable-who appears to have claimed in turn 1 ) that he too was but a dedicated editor, the text proper having been written by a certain automatic computer, and 2) that excepting a few "necessary basic artifices" * the book is neither fable nor fictionalized history, but literal truth. And the computer, the mighty "WESCAC"-does it not too disclaim authorship? It does.

* The computer's assumption of a first-person narrative viewpoint, we are told. is one such "basic artifice." The reader will add others, perhaps challenging their "necessity" as well.

Frankly, what we hope and risk in publishing Giles Goat-Boyis that the question of its authorship will be a literary and not a legal one. If so, judging from the fuss in our office these past months, the book affords more pregnant matter for controversy. Merely deciding to bring it out has already cost us two valued colleagues, for quite different reasons. Five of us were party to the quarrel, which grew so heated, lengthy, and complex that finally, as editor-in-chief, I was obliged to put an end to it. No further discussion of the book was permitted. Inasmuch as the final responsibility was mine I requested from each of my four associates a brief written statement on the questions: should we publish the manuscript entitled Giles Goat-Boy? If so, why, and if not, why not?

Their replies anticipate, I think, what will be the range of public and critical reaction to the book. I reprint them here (with signatures and certain personal references omitted) not in the hope of forestalling that reaction, but to show that our decision was made neither hastily nor in bad faith:


Editor A

I am quite sensible that fashions have changed since my own tenure as editor-in-chief: marriage has lost its sanctity, sex its mystery; every filthiness is published in the name of Honesty, all respect for law and discipline is gone-to say nothing of proprietyand seemliness, whose very names are sneered at. Cynicism is general: the student who eschews cheating like the young girl who eschews promiscuity or the editor who values principle over profit, is looked upon as a freak. Whatever is old-a man, a building, a moral principle is regarded not as established but as obsolete; to be preserved if at all for its antiquarian interest, but got rid of without compunction the moment it becomes in the way. In the way, that is, of self-interest and the tireless sensualism of youth. Indeed fashions change, have always changed, and there's the point. Granted that every generation must write its own "New Syllabus" or re-interpret the Old one, rebel against its teachers, challenge all the rules-all the more important then that the Rules stand fast! Morality like motion has its laws; each generation takes its impetus from the resistance of its forebears, like runners striving against the ground, and those who would abolish the old Answers (I don't speak of restating or modifying them, which is eternally necessary) would turn the track underfoot to quickmire, with fatal consequences for the race of men.

This Revised New Syllabus is nothing new, but as old as sickness of the spirit- not a revision of anything, but a repudiation of all that's wholesome and redeeming. It is for us to repudiate it. Publishing remains despite all a moral enterprise, and is recognized as such in its heart of hearts even by the public that clamors for gratification of its appetites. The sensational, the vulgar, the lurid, the cheap the hackneyed-there is an innocence about these things in their conventional and mass-produced forms, even a kind of virtue; the novelists everyone purchases do no harm as they line our pockets and their own. They are not difficult; they do not astonish; they rebel along traditional lines shock us in customary ways, and teach us what we know already. Their concerns are modest, their literary voice and manner are seldom wild, only their private lives, which make good copy: in straightforward prose they reveal to us how it is to belong to certain racial or cultural minorities; how it is to be an adolescent, a narcotic, an adulterer a vagabond- especially how it is to be the Author, with his particular little history of self-loathings and aggrandizements. Such novels, I conceive, are the printed dreams of that tiny fraction of our populace which buys and reads books, and the true dwelling-places of art and profit. In serving the dream we prevent the deed: vicariously the reader debauches, and is vicariously redeemed; his understanding is not taxed; his natural depravity may be tickled but is not finally approved of; no assaults have been made upon his imagination, nor any great burden put on his attention. He is the same fellow as before, only a little better read, and in most cases the healthier for his small flirtation with the Pit. He may even remark, "Life is absurd, don't you think? There's no answer to anything"; whereafter, his luncheon-companion agreeing absolutely, they have another cocktail and return to more agreeable matters.

Consider the difference with R.N.S.: here fornication, adultery, even rape, yea murder itself (not to mention self-deception, treason, blasphemy, whoredom, duplicity, and willful cruelty to others) are not only represented for our delectation but at times approved of and even recommended! On aesthetic grounds too (though they pale before the moral), the work is objectionable: the rhetoric is extreme, the conceit and action wildly implausible, the interpretation of history shallow and patently biased, the narrative full of discrepancies and badly paced, at times tedious, more often excessive; the form, like the style, is unorthodox, unsymmetrical, inconsistent. The characters, especially the hero, are unrealistic. There never was a Goat-boy! There never will be!

In sum it is a bad book, a wicked book, and ought not-I will say must not-be published. No computer produced it, but the broodings of an ineffectual megalomane: a crank at best, very possibly a psychopath. As the elder, if no longer the ranking, member of this editorial group I urge that we take this opportunity to restore a part of the moral prestige that was ours when our organization was more dedicated and harmonious, if less wealthy; to reverse our lamentable recent policy of publishing the esoteric, the bizarre, the extravagant, the downright vicious. I urge not only that the manuscript in question be rejected forthwith, but also that the "Author's" superiors, his Dean and Department Chairman, be advised what they are exposing undergraduate minds to. Would the present editor-in-chief, I wonder, permit his own daughter to be taught by such a man? Then in the name of what decent principle ought we to make his scribbling available to all our sons and daughters?


Editor B

I vote to publish the Revised New Syllabus and agree with the Editor-in-chief that Giles Goat-Boy is a more marketable title for it. We all know what [A's] objections to the manuscript are; we also know why he's not editor-in-chief any more, after his rejection of __* on similar "moral" grounds.

* Not to injure unnecessarily the reputation of that splendid (and presently retired) old gentleman here called A, let it be said merely that his distinguished editorial career never regained its earlier brilliance after the day some years ago when, in a decision as hotly contested as the present one, he overrode the opinions of myself and several other of his protegé's to reject the novel here cited by B which subsequently made the fortune of our largest competitor. No further identification of the book is needed than that it concerns the adventures, sexual and otherwise, of a handsome, great-spirited young man struggling against all odds and temptations to fulfill what he takes to be his destiny- that the plot was admittedly not original with the now-famous author; and that the book bids fair to remain a best seller forever.

What I must add, at the risk of "impropriety," is that in addition to his predictable bias against anything more daring than Gay Dashleigh's Prep-School Days, he may have a private antipathy for this particular manuscript: his own daughter, I happen to know, "ran off" from college with a bearded young poetry-student who subsequently abandoned her, pregnant, in order to devote himself to sheep-farming and the composition of long pastoral romances in free verse, mainly dealing with his great love for her. Her father never forgave her; neither has he, it seems, forgiven bearded heterosexuality or things bucolic, and it is a mark of his indiscrimination that he makes a goat-boy suffer for a sheep-boy's sins. Much as I respect your request that these statements remain impersonal, and hesitate as a new employee to criticize my colleagues in addition to disagreeing with them, I must argue that the "personal" and "professional" elements are so bound together in this case (indeed, are they ever separable in literary judgments?), that to take a stand for or against Giles Goat-Boy is to do likewise on the question whether this organization will prosper in literary judgments?), that to take a stand for or against Giles Goat-Boy is to do likewise on the question whether this organization will prosper in harmonious diversity or languish in acrimonious dissension. In choosing to publish or reject a manuscript, one oughtn't to bear the burden of choosing professional friends and enemies as well. Where such has become the case, the new man's only choice is to follow his best judgment, laying his future resolutely on the line; and I respectfully suggest that the responsible administrator's best hope for curing the situation is to turn any threatening ultimatums (like A's) into opportunities for revitalizing and reharmonizing the staff.

The fact is, I happen to agree-I think we all do-that Giles Goat-Boy is tough sledding in places, artistically uneven, and offensive (we'll call it challenging, of course) to certain literary and moral conventions. Personally I am no great fan of the "Author's"; like [Editor C, whose opinion follows] I found his early work lively but a bit naïve and his last novel wild and excessive in every respect. I frankly don't know quite what to make of this one. Where other writers seek fidelity to the facts of modern experience and expose to us the emptiness of our lives, he declares it his aim purely to astonish; where others strive for truth, he admits his affinity for lies, the more enormous the better. His fellows quite properly seek recognition and wide readership; he rejoices (so he says) that he has but a dozen readers, inasmuch as a thirteenth might betray him. So far from becoming discouraged by the repeated failure of his novels to make a profit, he confesses his surprise that no one has tarred and feathered him. Apparently sustained by the fact that anyone at all has swallowed his recentest whopper, he sets about to hatch another, clucking tongue at the compass and bedazzlement of those fabrications. Plot, for the young novelists we applaud, is a naughty word, as it was for their fathers--storyto them means invention, invention artifice, artifice dishonesty. As for style, it is everywhere agreed that the best language is that which disappears in the telling, so that nothing stands between the reader and the matter of the book. But this author has maintained (in obscure places, understandably) that language is the matter of his books, as much as anything else and for that reason ought to be "splendrously musicked out"; he turns his back on what is the case, rejects the familiar for the amazing, embraces artifice and extravagance; washing his hands of the search for Truth, he calls himself "a monger after beauty," or "doorman of the Muses' Fancy-house." In sum, he is in a class by himself and not of his time; whether a cut above or a cut below, three decades ahead or three centuries behind, his twelve readers must decide for themselves.

My own net sentiment comes to this: the author in question has, I'm told, a small but slowly growing audience, more loyal than discerning or influential, of the sort one needs no expensive promotion to reach, as they have their own ways of spreading the word around: penniless literature students, professors in second-rate colleges, and a couple of far-out critics. Giles Goat-Boyisn't likely to make anybody rich, but if we can saturate this little group it should at least pay its own way, and may even redeem our losses on the man's other books. One day those penniless students may be pennied enough- those professors may rise to more influential positions; the far-out critics may turn out to have been prophets . . . Alternatively, the author's luck may change (rather, our luck, as he seems not to care one way or the other): by pure accident his next book might be popular, stranger things have happened. Meanwhile we may write off our losses to that tax-deductible sort of prestige associated with the better publishing houses; the thing to do is keep the advance and advertising expenses as low as possible while holding him under contract for the future, in the meantime exploiting whatever ornamental or write-off value he may have.


Editor C

I vote against publishing the book called The Revised New Syllabus, not for reasons of morality, law, or politics, but simply on aesthetic and commercial grounds. The thing won't turn us a profit, and I see no ethical or "prestigial" justification for losing a nickel on it. Publishing may be a moral enterprise, as [A] likes to claim, but first of all it's just an enterprise, and I for one think it's as unprofessional to publish a book for moral reasons (which is what young [B's] enthusiasms amount to) as to reject one for moral reasons. [A] quite obviously has personal motives for rejecting the book; I submit that [B] has motives equally personal, if more sympathetic, for pushing its acceptance. He's new to our profession, and knows very well that discovering fresh talent is a road to success second only to pirating established talents from the competition. He has a young man's admirable compassion for lost causes, a young scholar's sympathy for minor talents, and a young intellectual's love of the heterodox, the esoteric, the obscure. Moreover he's a writer of fiction himself and no doubt feels a certain kinship with others whose talents have brought them as yet no wealth or fame. Finally, it's no reflection on his basic integrity that on the first manuscript he's been asked his opinion of, he might be less than eager to oppose the known judgment of the man who hired him; but that circumstance probably oughtn't to be discounted-especially since his vote to publish is a "net sentiment" by his own acknowledging, arrived at over numerous and grave reservations.

I think I may say that my own position is relatively objective. I agree that there are inferior books which one does right to lose a bit of money on in order not to lose a superior author, and there are superior books (very rare!) which one publishes, regardless of their commercial value, merely to have been their publisher. But the book in question I take to be neither: it's a poor-risk work by a poor-risk author. It wants subtlety and expertise: the story is not so much "astonishing" as preposterous, the action absurd. The hero is a physical, aesthetic, and moral monstrosity; the other characters are drawn with small regard for realism and at times lack even the consistency of stereotypes the dialogue is generally unnatural and wanting in variety from speaker to speaker-everyone sounds like the author! The prose style-that unmodern, euphuistic, half-metrical bombast-is admittedly contagious (witness [A's] and [B's] lapses into it), even more so is syphilis. The theme is obscure, probably blasphemous- the wit is impolite, perhaps even suggestive of unwholesome preoccupations; the psychology-but there is no psychology in it. The author clearly is ignorant of things and people as they really are: Consider his disregard for the reader! Granted that long novels are selling well lately, one surely understands that mere bulk is not what sells them; and when their mass consists of interminable exposition, lecture, and harangue (how gratified I was to see that windy old lunatic Max Spielman put to death!), it is the very antidote to profit. Indeed, I can't imagine to whom a work like R.N.S.might appeal, unless to those happily rare, more or less disturbed, and never affluent intelligences-remote, cranky, ineffectual-from whom it is known the author receives his only fan-mail.

What I suggest as our best course, then, is not to "protect our investment" by publishing this Revised New Syllabus(and the one after that, and the one after that), but to cut our losses by not throwing good money after bad. My own "net sentiment" is a considered rejection not only of this manuscript but of its author. He has yet to earn us a sou; his very energy (let us say, inexorableness), divorced as it is from public appeal, is a liability to us, like the energy of crabgrass or cancer. Despite some praise from questionable critics and a tenuous repute among (spiritually) bearded undergraduates-of the sort more likely to steal than to purchase their reading matter-he remains unknown to most influential reviewers, not to mention the generality of book-buyers. In the remote event that he becomes a "great writer," or even turns out to have been one all along, we still hold the copyright on those other losers of his, and can always reissue them. But no, the thing is as impossible as the plot of this book! He himself declares that nothing gets better, everything gets worse: he will merely grow older and crankier, more quirksome and less clever; his small renown will pass, his vitality become mere doggedness, or fail altogether. His dozen admirers will grow bored with him, his employers will cease to raise his salary and to excuse his academic and social limitations; his wife will lose her beauty, their marriage will founder his children will grow up to be ashamed of their father. I see him at last alone, unhealthy, embittered, desperately unpleasant, perhaps masturbative, perhaps alcoholic or insane, if not a suicide. We all know the pattern.


Editor D

Failed, failed, failed! I look about me, and everywhere see failure. Old moralists, young bootlickers, unsuccessful writers; has-beens, would-bes, never-weres; failed artists, failed editors, failed scholars and critics- failed husbands fathers, lovers; failed minds, failed bodies, hearts, and souls-none of us is Passed, we all are Failed!

It no longer matters to me whether the Revised New Syllabusis published, by this house or any other. What does the Answer care, whether anyone "finds" it? It wasn't lost! The gold doesn't ask to be mined, or the medicine beg to be taken; it's not the medicine that's worse off when the patient rejects it. As for the Doctor-who cares whether he starves or prospers? Let him go hungry, maybe he'll prescribe again! Or let him die, we have prescription enough!

Let him laugh, even, that I've swallowed in good faith the pill he made up as a hoax: I'm cured, the joke's on him! One comes to understand that a certain hermit of the woods is no eccentric, but a Graduate, a Grand Tutor. From all the busy millions a handful seek him out, thinking to honor and sustain him- we bring him cash and frankincense, sing out his praises in four-part harmony, fetch him champagne and vichyssoise. Alas, our racket interrupts his musings and scares off the locusts he'd have suppered on the wine makes him woozy, he upchucks the soup; he can't smell the flowers for our perfume or hear the birds for our music, and there's not a thing to spend his money on. No wonder he curses us under his breath, once he's sober again! And thinking to revenge himself with a trick, he puts on a falseface to scare us away. We had asked for revelations- he palms off his maddest dreams. "Show us Beauty," we plead; he bares his rump to us. "Show us Goodness," we beg, and he mounts our wives and daughters. "Ah, sir!" we implore him, "Give us the Truth!" He thrusts up a forefinger from each temple and declares, "You are cuckolds all."

And yet I say the guller is gulled, hoist is the enginer: the joke's on the joker, that's the joker's joke. Better victimized by Knowledge than succored by Ignorance; to be Wisdom's prey is to be its ward. Deceived, we see our self-deception; suffering the lie, we come to truth, and in the knowledge of our failure hope to Pass.

Publish the Revised New Syllabus or reject it- call it art or artifice, fiction, fact, or fraud: it doesn't care, its author doesn't care, and neither any longer do I. I don't praise it, I don't condemn it- I don't ask who wrote it or whether it will sell or what the critics may make of it. My judgment is not upon the book but upon myself. I have read it. I here resign from my position with this house.

One sees the diversity of opinion that confronted me (I do not even mention the disagreement among our legal staff and such nice imponderables as the fact that it was Editor A who gave me my first job in the publishing field, or that Editor D-present whereabouts unknown-happens to be my only son); one sees further something of what either option stood to cost. One sees finally what decision I came to-with neither aid nor sympathy from the author, by the way, who seldom even answers his mail. Publishing is a moral enterprise, in subtler ways than my dear A asserted; like all such, it is spiritually expensive, highly risky, and proportionately challenging. It is also (if I understand the Goat-Boy correctly) as possible an avenue to Commencement Gate as any other moral enterprise, and on that possibility I must bank.

Herewith, then, Giles Goat-Boy: or, The Revised New Syllabus, "a work of fiction any resemblance between whose characters and actual persons living or dead is coincidental." * Let the author's cover-letter stand in all editions as a self-explanatory foreword or opening chapter, however one chooses to regard it; let the reader read and believe what he pleases; let the storm break if it must.


The Editor-in-Chief

* In the absence of any response from the author, whom we repeatedly invited to discuss the matter with us, we have exercised as discreetly as possible our contractual prerogative to alter or delete certain passages clearly libelous, obscene, discrepant, or false. Except for these few passages (almost all brief and of no great importance) the text is reproduced as it was submitted to us. [Ed.]

No, It Won't Do, My Sweet Theologians, or: Born Eighty-Seven Years Ago, or: United 0, Portland 2

Miles Davis was born eighty-seven years ago today. Thanks to Hamster for the playlist, it's last year's cped here because what worked last year works this year. I repeat myself: I've only so many hours and only two ears, I've huge gaps of knowledge lots of places, in this particular case jazz. Anyone wanting to add a song to this post please let me know.

I repeat myself: my soccer teams sucks, I mean really sucks, I mean historically sucks, I mean it's broken on so many and all levels. Is it time to fire St Benny of Olsen? Have some quotes: Coach Ben Olsen seethed about his team’s lack of toughness and again promised personnel changes. Captain Dwayne DeRossario voiced his anger about being benched and questioned Olsen’s handling of the roster. Others spoke in soft, disappointed tones, gutted by another dreary performance. “It’s embarrassing how soft we are, everywhere around the field,” Olsen said, his voice rising. “We had just a couple individuals really show up and show that this really [expletive] matters. I’ve had it with that part. “We’re going to get new guys in here because we are not good enough. It seems like we are always a player or two short every time I fill out my starting lineup. You can put that on me, but that is not going to continue.” Olsen’s decision to drop De Rosario from the lineup didn’t go over well with the veteran attacker. Asked if he was surprised by the move, De Rosario said: “ ‘Surprised’ is not the word. . . . I’m definitely not” happy. Neither am I - I recognize that my fandom has always been based on love of tribalism - the uniforms, the standing and chanting, etc and so forth - and as my tribalism in other areas of life has (mostly for the good) eroded, so has my ardor for soccer in general and United in particular. Five years ago I would never miss a game unless there were conflicts of schedule so dire as missing them would have caused grief at home, I've missed three games this year because, in one instance, I wanted to disc golf, in another because I was working in tablet. It doesn't help my case of noble de-tribalization that United is 1-9-2, has four points out of thirty-six, it'd be much more convincing a case if United was 9-1-2 with twenty-nine of thirty-six points and I was skipping games to disc golf. It'd be nice to give less of a fuck about something good than not giving a fuck about something shitty. Fine metaphors abound.

As for firing St Benny of Olsen, here's the thing: he's no more broken than the players, the front office, and especially the new assholes in ownership who don't give a flying fuck about anything but a new stadium in DC or elsewhere. A new coach isn't going to make Brandon McDonald (just to pick one player, not to single him out, he sucks no worse than anyone else) better, isn't going to make Dave Kasper smarter, isn't going to make Erick Thohir or Jason Levien give a shit about the product as long as it's based on East Capitol Street. But Benny is broken - his stomping his feet and screaming about effort act, which seems to be his only act, is now beyond useless, it's counter-productive. If he survives it'll be for no grander reason that ownership won't want to buy out his contract while paying the freight for a new coach too.

• What I said yesterday about the motives behind Obama's speech. 
• The New Newest Left and the Organization of Sadness.
• Modern conspiracy theory as mythologization of capitalism. 
• I can vouch this is the new scam.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Sex, Sex, Sex 1978.
• As inevitable as the sun rising.
• A tale of two leaders.
• Summertime.
• Four.
• Out of Nowhere.
• Cheryl.

WINDOW

Czeslaw Milosz

I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree translucent
in brightness.

And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with
fruit stood there.

Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of what
happened in my sleep.


THEODICY

Czeslaw Milosz

No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians.

Desire will not save the morality of God.

If he created beings able to choose between good and evil,

And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity,

Nevertheless, there is pain, and the undeserved torture of creatures,

Which would find its explanation only by assuming

The existence of an archetypal Paradise

And a pre-human downfall so grave

That the world of matter received its shape from diabolic power.

The Inexorable Sadness of Pencils

Paul Weller is fifty-five today. Lordy, I love that Style Council song, shoot me, and I like most of his post-Jam, post-Style Council solo stuff, and if The Jam hasn't aged well for me, oh well, consider the blogger who posts on the Saturday of the second slowest weekend of the year in Blegsylvania.

Two things: first, my offer of Collected Milosz (whose poems will return here soon, today is Roethke's birthday) stands through the weekend - I'm ordering a couple of other things Monday, you have until then for me to include your copy. Second, Tom, thanks very much for the email. You are correct, I don't regret it at all and it will help me kick through some doors I haven't opened here, there, everywhere. I was going to respond more fully - and ask if I could quote from your email - and I will respond more fully, just not here, in this post directly, but over posts. Third - OK, three things - Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true! and they have a home game tonight at seven (instead of Sunday afternoon at five) so stanchion porn tomorrow! or not.

• The Ruling Class as full-time sadistic torturers.
• Of course Obama was laying the justification and groundwork for normalizing more war.
• Progressive fawning over Obama's speech: a contest.
• Obama's advisers.
• Villager court jester brings the duh.
• British raciology.
• Notes on the novel, genre, Woolwich. 
• Anarchism is a fatalism.
• Proof Paul Krugman is an idiot.
• Five most horrifying things about Monsanto.
• Lordy, I love this song too:

• Blog bathroom stall graffiti.
• Dogs sniff out grammar.
• The three warning signs of merry minstrelsy. 
• Motherfucking history of swearing.
• Fuck off and die.
• Theodore Roethke was born 105 years ago today.
• By request:

DOLOR

Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Beginning a Phrase in the Middle or Ending It without a Comma, We Won't Read It Anyway

I've learned to try, I'm not very good at, I almost always fail, but I've learned to try to wait 48 hours before writing about political news - in this case Obama's speech - in hopes that I'll not write about it at all (at that I always fail), plus I'm busy, plus a friend sent me a long, thoughtful, and Kind letter regarding my name's unmasking here that I'd rather think about in the few moments I'm not directed elsewhere where I'd rather not be. So this: I am a book hoarder, if I see something I own and love and have two copies already but see a third on sale for $2 in a used book store I buy it, people responded positively to the Milosz I posted (and there's another below, and now that I'm re-addicted expect much more in the near future), I've two extra copies of the above, if you want one let me know, send me your address in an email.

UPDATE! One copy claimed, one remains, I've added a second poem to encourage everyone (and by everyone I mean the three of you) to move fast.

UPDATE! Second copy claimed, but fuck, if you're someone with a history of Kind toward me and this blog (or wish to start a history of Kind toward me and this blog, go ahead, I'm a rube), I'll buy you a copy if you send me your address and say please.







SECRETARIES

Czeslaw Milosz

I am no more than a secretary of the invisible thing
That is dictated to me and a few others.
Secretaries, mutually unknown, we walk the earth
Without much comprehension. Beginning a phrase in the middle
Or ending it without a comma. And how it all looks when completed
Is not up to us to inquire, we won't read it anyway.



PREPARATION

Czeslaw Milosz

Still one more year of preparation.
Tomorrow at the latest I'll start working on a great book
In which my century will appear as it really was.
The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.
Springs and autumns will unerringly return,
In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay
And foxes will learn their foxy natures.

And they will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armies
Running across frozen plains, shouting a curse
In a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tank
Growing immense at the corner of  street; the ride at dusk
Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.

No, it won't happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.
I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked with heavy boots; on fire and running
He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

I haven't learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.

The History of My Stupidity Will Not Be Written. For One Thing It Is Late, and the Truth Is Laborious

• I've blog-exhausted the past two days what I was tabletizing again last night, have some links and songs and poems. We are heading, by the way, into the second slowest weekend of the year in Blegsylvania (only Thanksgiving weekend is deader), the Memorial Day weekend the official start of the Blog Days of Summer, so while I am willing to aggregate please remember there won't be much to aggregate.
• Time regained.
• The challenge of theoterrorism.
• Power and paranoia in an age of fiber optics.
• Alternative modernities or countermodernities.
• Capitalism and Christianity. 
• Anarchism as common cause.
• The world turned upside-down.
• You don't have to be a monster to be a bigot. Kinsley as asshole, part one.
• Kinsley as asshole, part two.
• Talking heads.
• No, I don't believe she can.
• BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
• Eleven shows that wouldn't exist without Arrested Development. 
• This is true: I'd never seen Arrested Development until a week ago when Planet began her campaign for her and me to watch them in order from start to end in preparation for its return. I'm not a cult-boy yet, don't think I'll be a cult-boy, but it does make me laugh.
• Berbatov!
• While I don't think Marnie Stern's song title is an allusion to Infinite Jest, the song itself is excellent ear candy:

ACCOUNT

Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and Renata Gorczynski

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless towards the candle's flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
Of only my own - but no, not at all; alas
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing it is late. And the truth is laborious.

Screenshot 7:44 PM EDT May 22, 2013

Trolling and Trawling and Crawfishing and Crabbing

I'm keeping the name of the blog and will still byline and comment as BDR, but in the space of thirty seconds yesterday I decided to type in my name (it's weird, I'm hesitant this time) - Jeff Popovich - just before a half-hour appointment I couldn't avoid so to prevent me from changing my mind in the minutes before someone might read it. Beyond my prime explanation yesterday (that I'm nobody, that no one gives a shit, if I was someone of interest I would have many more readers witnessing me digitally self-incriminate myself shamelessly here, there, everywhere, and Corporate knows how to find me if its bots register word algorithms here that signal me as a threat), the immediate catalyst was the discovery that someone I dearly love who is much shier and much more private than me posts her art and signs her name, if she can, I can, I impulsively thought. I'd been thinking about this for months. I'm still working out the other reasons: they remain fascinatingly mysterious to me, multi-faceted, both ambitious and cowardly, I'll get back to you or not, you only think you get autobiography here, you've no idea how much I'd need give to explain. What this is not: it is not a call for others to end their anonymity nor an assertion of moral bravery on my part vis a vis anyone else. As with everything here, there, and everywhere, it's all about me. It had nothing to do with anyone who reads or links to or blogrolls this blog though it did have something to do with the stupid King of Anarchist contests raging since the infinitesimal paradigm shift: now that some on the professional left have moved towards obamapostasy it's vital for some - me included, of course - to remain lefter than thou. Yes, it has to do with what I do with this shitty blog. Yes, I realize this is only interesting to me. Plus, if someone gets what I did yesterday with the reveal and echoing Wright opening line, they'll know my name for a second then forget both the name and the gag.

• MomCat was on the front stoop this morning asking for food, so while the banner remains until I'm tired of it, the MomCat Signal is deactivated.
• Perpetual war.
• Ten warning signs of liberal imperialism.
• Police state.
• The uprising of the second tier in a time of late capitalism.
• Advanced bleggalgazing.
• Wednesday lazy linking.
• I've been keeping up, with a day or two oops, with the Newest Gag project, new stuff to read over in the left blogroll column. Suggestions solicited.
• Why you should care about the US Open Cup, which United will be done with next Tuesday night when they lose in Richmond to their farm club.
• Awareness is blotto.
• Lacan, for those of you who do.
• Anthony's always generous litlinks.
• Satie and Spicer.
• 1980 Soft Boys concert!
• Radulescu.
• I never got Wagner - I never got opera, to be honest, that's on me - but he was born 200 years ago today, and Hamster provides a playlist:
• Tristan und Isolde, Prelude (Furtwangler) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qoaioG2UA 
• Tristan und Isolde, Liebesnacht pt. 1 (Barenboim) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OA6tDasa6s
• Tristan und Isolde, Liebesnacht pt.2 (Barenboim) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMz3qkPbDcA
• Isolde’s Liebestod (Waltraud Meier) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SA2KsY0ZRI
• Isolde’s Liebestod (Maria Callas, 1949 recording) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPFggnOW5eU
• Die Walkure, Act 3- Opening (Boulez) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aKAH_t0aXA
• Die Walkure, Act 3 “Leb Wohl” Wotan’s Farewell (Levine)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1NyYT31Tw
• Das Rheingold, Prelude and First Scene (Levine) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-BrwJH3ypk
• Das Rheingold, Descent into Niebelheim (von Karajan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-BrwJH3ypk
• Das Rheingold, Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla (Boulez) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjqDic27Ook
• Gotterdammerung, Siegfried’s Rhinefahrt (Furtwangler) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV_WgomU5BY
• Gotterdammerung, Siegfried’s Death and Funeral March (Levine) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqZWd3_WhvM
• Gotterdammerung, Brunnhilde's immolation (Barenboim)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVfAGa8m_c
• Die Fliegende Hollander, Overture (Klemperer) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVHaFitnOwg
• Die Fliegende Hollander, Sailor’s Chorus (von Karajan)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1NyYT31Tw
• Parsifal, Complete Opera (Gatti) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAkUek7yOnE
• Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Complete Opera (von Karajan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKG8ZxEOdwE
• Siegfried Idyll (Celibidache) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=891JUSQplzU
• Wesendonck Lieder (Birgit Nilsson) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtgGBhZrxr0
• I, on the other hand, woke up with Swell Maps in my head, yo.

MAP

Atsuro Riley

Daddy goes.
         Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water and cane-poling for bream and shallow-gigging too with a nail-pointy broomstick and creek-shrimping and cooler-dragging and coon-chasing and dove-dogging and duck-bagging and squirrel-tailing and tail-hankering and hard-cranking and -shifting and backfiring like a gun in his tittie-tan El Camino and parking it at The House of Ham and Dawn's Busy Hands and Betty's pink house and Mrs. Sweatman's brick house and Linda's dock-facing double-wide and spine-leaning Vicki against her WIDE-GLIDE Pontiac and pumping for pay at Ray Wade's Esso and snuff-dipping and plug-sucking and tar-weeping pore-wise and LuckyStrike-smoking and Kool only sometimes and penny-pitching and dog-racing and bet-losing cocksuckmotherfuck and pool-shooting and bottle-shooting over behind Tas-T-O's Donuts and shootin' the shit and chewin' the fat and just jawin' who asked you and blank-blinking quick back at me and whose young are you no-how and hounddog-digging buried half-pints from the woods.  

The Nights Electrocute My Fugitive

• Was looking for the photo for the gag below, found that Planet photo of Fleabus in the same folder.  Fleabus, my favorite cat ever, she's eight now, she's still astonishing, this photo is six, seven years old, she still smiles like that, is fatter now like you and you and me. I've asked Planet for new Fleabus photos, we'll see.
• While I like the MomCat banner on the page, it's actually the MomCat Signal activated - see, it says so up there: since she crawled into my lap Friday night no one has seen her. Fine metaphors abounding are not always - are as often enough not - a good thing.
• Today's monologue is actually yesterday's theme song. I couldn't wait.
• My name, by the way, is Jeff Popovich - you could have found out if you'd wanted, I'd dropped enough clues, and you could have asked and I'd told you - and I'm nobody. The anonymity was never to hide but to signify.
• Let me get this out of the way: Ratfucking Obama, ratfucking Obama, ratfucking Obama, that's it until the next new level of the ratfucking you know Obama's enjoying. But.... Cuccinelli!
• Who has a running mate who couldn't more please Democratic Party central scripting, funny that.
• Eugene Robinson's obamapostasy will never be ready.
• Democracy can be rejuvenated?
• Burbocentrism.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• BRT!
• MOCO fail.
• I want to thank the Washington Nationals for reminding me not to give a fuck about them.
• Mal de coucou.
• Four foolproof ways to become a famous novelist.
• Likeable monsters.
• Calvino, for those of you who do.
• The health of poetry.
• Moment.
• Previously unheard Psycho Killer.
• We saw the new Star Trek movie Friday night, Indian food then movie with Earthgirl and Planet. I haven't seen the first one so I'm unclear and unconcerned about the timeline shift thingee re: millions upon millions of dollars on production to get to the reverse scene I'll not spoil here, but here's my takeaway: they spent millions and millions of dollars to get to the Bone's I'm a doctor, dammit, not a torpedo mechanic line, plus this was seed-bedding the product line.
• I swore off stupid-ass Star Trek allusions when professional progressive Yglesias lectured me on Star Trek, not Star Trek itself, and why should I let a motherfucking professional progressive keep me from posting stupid-ass Star Trek allusions I was asked, it won't forever, I said, in fact I give up now.

AT THE EXECUTED MURDERER'S GRAVE

James Wright

1

My name is James A. Wright, and I was born   

Twenty-five miles from this infected grave,   

In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave   

To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.   

He tried to teach me kindness. I return   

Only in memory now, aloof, unhurried,   

To dead Ohio, where I might lie buried,   

Had I not run away before my time.   

Ohio caught George Doty. Clean as lime,   

His skull rots empty here. Dying’s the best   

Of all the arts men learn in a dead place.   

I walked here once. I made my loud display,   

Leaning for language on a dead man’s voice.   

Now sick of lies, I turn to face the past.   

I add my easy grievance to the rest:

   2

Doty, if I confess I do not love you,

Will you let me alone? I burn for my own lies.   

The nights electrocute my fugitive,

My mind. I run like the bewildered mad   

At St. Clair Sanitarium, who lurk,

Arch and cunning, under the maple trees,   

Pleased to be playing guilty after dark.

Staring to bed, they croon self-lullabies.

Doty, you make me sick. I am not dead.   

I croon my tears at fifty cents per line.

   3

Idiot, he demanded love from girls,   

And murdered one. Also, he was a thief.   

He left two women, and a ghost with child.   

The hair, foul as a dog’s upon his head,   

Made such revolting Ohio animals   

Fitter for vomit than a kind man’s grief.   

I waste no pity on the dead that stink,

And no love’s lost between me and the crying   

Drunks of Belaire, Ohio, where police   

Kick at their kidneys till they die of drink.   

Christ may restore them whole, for all of me.   

Alive and dead, those giggling muckers who   

Saddled my nightmares thirty years ago   

Can do without my widely printed sighing   

Over their pains with paid sincerity.   

I do not pity the dead, I pity the dying.

   4

I pity myself, because a man is dead.

If Belmont County killed him, what of me?   

His victims never loved him. Why should we?   

And yet, nobody had to kill him either.   

It does no good to woo the grass, to veil

The quicklime hole of a man’s defeat and shame.   

Nature-lovers are gone. To hell with them.   

I kick the clods away, and speak my name.

   5

This grave’s gash festers. Maybe it will heal,   

When all are caught with what they had to do   

In fear of love, when every man stands still   

By the last sea,

And the princes of the sea come down

To lay away their robes, to judge the earth

And its dead, and we dead stand undefended everywhere,   

And my bodies—father and child and unskilled criminal—

Ridiculously kneel to bare my scars,   

My sneaking crimes, to God’s unpitying stars.

   6

Staring politely, they will not mark my face   

From any murderer’s, buried in this place.   

Why should they? We are nothing but a man.

   7

Doty, the rapist and the murderer,   

Sleeps in a ditch of fire, and cannot hear;   

And where, in earth or hell’s unholy peace,   

Men’s suicides will stop, God knows, not I.   

Angels and pebbles mock me under trees.   

Earth is a door I cannot even face.   

Order be damned, I do not want to die,   

Even to keep Belaire, Ohio, safe.

The hackles on my neck are fear, not grief.   

(Open, dungeon! Open, roof of the ground!)   

I hear the last sea in the Ohio grass,   

Heaving a tide of gray disastrousness.   

Wrinkles of winter ditch the rotted face   

Of Doty, killer, imbecile, and thief:   

Dirt of my flesh, defeated, underground.