 |
| Edwin Denby & Neil Welliver [pic by Rudy Burckhardt] |
The
Shoulder
by Edwin Denby
The
shoulder of a man is shaped like a baby pig.
It
terrifies and it bores the observer, the shoulder.
The
Greeks, who had slaves, were able to hitch back and rig
The
shoulder, so the eye is flattered and feels bolder.
But
that’s not the case in New York, where a roomer
Stands
around day and night stupefied with his clothes on
The
shoulder, hung from his neck (half orchid, half tumor)
Hangs
publicly with a metabolism of its own.
After
it has been observed a million times or more
A
man hunches it against a pole, a jamb, a bench,
Parasite
he takes no responsibility for.
He
becomes used to it, like to the exhaust stench.
It
takes the corrupt, ectoplasmic shape of a prayer
Or
money, that connects with a government somewhere.
[re
David Foster Wallace] never not epistemologically lost,
psychologically needy, humanly flawed
[re
J. D. Salinger] how his voice . . . talks back to itself, how it
listens to itself talking, comments upon what it hears, and keeps
talking. This self-awareness, this self-reflexivity, is the
pleasure and burden of being conscious, and the gift of his work —
what makes me less lonely and makes life more livable — lies in its
revelation that this isn’t a deformation in how I think; this is
how human beings think. I want work that, possessing as thin a
membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question
of how the writer solves being alive. . . .
Isn’t
this what all writing is, more or less — taking the raw data of the
world and editing it, framing it, thematizing it, running your voice
and vision over it?. . .
I
believe in art as pathology lab, landfill, recycling station, death
sentence, aborted suicide note, lunge at redemption.
Your
art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself.
That’s why I pick at my scabs.
Don’t
get over anything.
. . . This is the extent of my philosophy. Failure
is the only subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment