EP: Matt Hart
Poetics
Recently, in a context not so different from this one, a friend of mine asked: how will we stay alive in this world? Good question—and not one to be answered in the dark or with cynical cool getting in the way of a real answer. I take being "alive" here to mean something far beyond merely having a heartbeat/surviving. And it's a lot more active than simply plodding along accepting one's fate in the office or the clouds. In fact, to me staying "alive" has something to do with being intensely, brazenly, human in our time—it has to do with what it means to mean at all. Thus, the question is urgent, and I can't help thinking that if more people would give it serious consideration, we might become somewhat less addicted to self-destructing and slaughtering one another...
Now maybe you can already see where this is headed, but here it goes anyway: for me one of the fundamental (and best) ways to stay alive in this world is by making poems. But before you start thinking I sound like a self-help therapist, let me say that I take myself to be operating here on the basis of both necessity and poetic authority, i.e. I agree with Ted Berrigan's notion that writing poetry (or making art of any kind) is a natural, essential, and instinctively human activity. Furthermore, I think of every poem as a means of managing, interpreting and reinventing the world as we (a bunch of sad-sack human beings among a lot of other sad-sack human beings) find it. Thus (can I say thus again?), thus, by my lights, the charge of the poet is primarily a responsibility to demonstrate what living is all about—ordinarily, strangely, and essentially—and not just to some enclave of cool kids in Brooklyn either, but to the whole wide cosmos with its shoe laces on fire.
As such, a poem must 1) pay attention to the ideas and feelings of actual people, 2) amount to something beyond its poetics, as a fundamental connecting device between one human being and another, and 3) be rooted in the world—the one we live in, buy CDs in, drink vodka and kiss in. A poem exists in the space where one lives. That is, the poem starts at home, by which I mean, among objects and personalities, but also squealing in the head of the startling self and worming its way to the surface/the depths. This is why there's always a coherent and recognizable speaker—namely me—in my work—I'm speaking. I have things to say and to see, and poems allow me to do both. Let it be known, however, that I'm always attempting to say and see with other people in mind (people in addition to myself). I mean this literally. I write poems for the people I love and who love me, and hopefully somehow that intention toward love, and the attention toward another (my friend, my darling, my featherbed, the world) allows the poem to (forcefully) transcend the merely personal.
Clearly, I have high aims for poetry. I want it to speak to other people as crucially as it speaks through and for me. If this is romantic, nostalgic hoo-ha, or (worst of worsts in our postmodern time) flaggingly uncool, so be it. I didn't start writing poems to be hip and ironic or part of some ever-fading in-crowd. I was all those things already, and it was a pretty fucking empty way (not) to live.
So cheer up, it's not all dire. Staying alive in this world is easy, and I don't care if it does sound like disco. Poetry's power is in its ability to connect us below the surface (and sometimes even below the belt), to show us a way through the maze of so much meaningless messing around and images upon images, simulacra upon simulacra. One stays alive in this world via honesty and faith, work and breath, creativity and expression, but most importantly by helping others to stay alive. Poetry is a means toward all these ends. Toward all these beginnings and ends.
Matt Hart, Cincinnati 2005
Letter to a Friend Who I'll Never See Again
I keep scanning the sky for a glimpse of you spinning,
but after a few minutes when you don't appear
I go back to what Breton said about the magnificence
of waiting, and about the love of the irrational
and the irrational of love. From there, Wittgenstein's preface
in the Philosophical Investigations is a cake walk,
especially the part about going, "criss-cross in every direction
over a wide field of thought." With that in mind
I do hope you'll forgive me for ripping off your Paris poem.
Though this isn't a poem, it's a letter; I'm insisting.
No copies will be made. I will not send it out. But if I do
I will send it to you, where it can be appreciated
or ridiculed the most. How strange it is trying on
someone else's voice, and yet stranger that it's easier
than wearing one's own. I have only three pairs of shoes,
which is laughable, I know. And one of those is missing
its laces. I bet you have lots of shoes and all manner
of dresses, ones that anyone would be lucky to see.
In New York City, where you live, there are many sites
worth noting, your dresses being only one of them.
There's also the Statue of Liberty, The Met, and KGB
—if you're into that sort of thing. I haven't been
to New York in years, though the last time I was there,
my friend Flaviano punched a hole in a wall. But the story
of how that came to happen isn't nearly as interesting as the fact
that he punched a hole in the wall in a hole in the wall.
It was in the East Village at a club called Tony's or Strawberry
Pie Filling or something equally obvious and obnoxious.
Our band had just played, and the owner wouldn't pay us.
A month later, the place was closed. I like to think
it leaked to death, which probably isn't far from the truth,
as the owner was an intravenous drug user. Those guys
never win, but often they don't pay the bands that play
in their clubs either. It seems that hard drug use
doesn't preclude liking music, but it does dictate
what one does with one's money. I don't have any
money, but if I did, I would send you something other
than bootlegs and manuscripts. I'm not sure what—
maybe flowers, but in a week they'd be dead, and what kind
of a gift is that? I can't think of anything worse
than giving flowers, as always they point to garbage
and the end, which are things I try hard not to think about.
Patti Smith called Gregory Corso a flower when he died,
which sounds lovely at first and then descends quickly
into nonsense and loss. Corso, whose poetry nobody cares about
but me, said that, "Spontaneity in poetry is notes, not poems."
And I'm sure he'd say the same about gift-giving, letter writing, etc.
Like everything else, this started out with fire, but now I'm losing
steam. I'm tired of making the world up out of nothing. You said,
"Tell me what you believe in," in response to one of my poems.
I believe in nothing, and at the same time I believe that it's crucial
to believe in something in the face of nothing, and to live
with the consequences of that belief. Still, it's hard.
Even understanding that sentence is hard. I believe
in making indefensible statements and defending them
anyway. I believe in walking the blood red carpet. I believe
that art is about continuity and rupture and joy, and that
as James Longenbach says, "...poetry's greatest power
is to instill in us a craving for something other than poetry."
"I am the maker and destroyer of worlds,"—that's Shiva,
via Robert J. Oppenheimer. I have a million quotations
in my head: "Ruin is formal," "The slightest loss of attention
leads to death," "O bomb I love you," "There is no such thing
as a break down," "Everything turns into writing," "And I am
lost with you,"... I believe in every one of them, though
they don't amount to much. I apologize for all of this,
the letter-as-poem itself, but also for the apology
itself, because no one likes when performers either:
apologize for that which they're about to perform, or
apologize for that which they've already performed, or
apologize for that which they're in the process of performing.
Also, nobody likes quatrains. And I would never use them
in person. But in this letter I have found them to be
a necessity. I believe in the almighty zero. I believe
in inclusion rather than exclusion. I will be voting
for the Democrats in the upcoming election, even though
my own politics are much more left wing. As you know,
the trick to a letter like this is figuring a way to end it
that pushes the content forward, while simultaneously acting
as a summary of it. I cannot do this. I wouldn't know
where to start, and I'm far too impatient to think about it.
I'm not being clever, but rather just the opposite.
I'm telling you I love you, but it sounds like a rant.
It sounds like somebody plastered in Ohio.
This is how I've burned all my bridges.
Calm Poem
Of all the calm poems I've written
this calm poem
is definitely my favorite.
It came at the end of a calamitous day—
I couldn't remember what to say
during a lecture.
I cried while reading
a philosophical preface.
When I looked in the mirror
I saw pieces of a bluejay
and the world turned
my stomach
in the gathering dust.
Forget it, said the poem.
Now you're safe at home.
Many people love you.
No need to create a scene.
No need to punctuate
the roar of the page.
Go to sleep and dream
you're a giant paper snowflake.
There is nothing to be afraid of.
Let Us Understand on Our Heads
this new impulse, like a field of daisies dreaming.
In my lap the Eiffel Tower.
In my liver the Statue of Liberty.
As I prepare my afternoon tea
something's warning me to stay at home
and to avoid, at all costs, commingling in the market,
thus, throwing me back into secret
code-making: the sea/ the frowning/ the sea.
What I need is a flag to call my own
and a new way to display it superbly.
When I get this way I'm a bore.
My wife doesn't know what I mean.
The department store window in downtown Cincinnati
shows a man in a suit getting ready for a party/ to die.
Butterflies land on him, pay their respects.
Tomorrow he ships off to the land of sand.
What remains! What big teeth!
Sometimes a blood clot passes in the night.
Sometimes an incredible future.
In Fifteen Minutes
I'll see your blue dress and raise you
by your hair into the clouds, where we'll eat
peppermints and fall apart for no reason.
It won't hurt, but dizziness may occur, cough
drops may fall, birds may think we're crazy.
But what do birds know? At best they sing
only one or two songs. They pass over so many
construction sites, blood clots, tidal waves—
they don't have any idea what we go through,
what we commit ourselves to; I'm pale with it.
Getting anywhere in fifteen minutes is impossible,
so I applaud you for forcing my face through
the window. Unfortunately, I'm stuck.
I can only see fire and the aforementioned clouds.
It seems everything these days is merely fire and clouds,
clouds and fire in a full length mirror. Today at work
there was so little for me to do, I swept the floor
four or five times. One woman said she could see herself in it.
Later somebody spilled some water and somebody else
slipped and fell and started leaking. That's when I ran
to get the baking soda and subsequently missed
the flower delivery. That's when I broke
through the overwhelmed ceiling
and did what I could to get you alone.
Cosmology
"Ten minutes a day the machines haunt you"
Class dismissed." And having hit the wall, I grab
my coat and hit the door. What they don't know
is that I had planned to tell them how much
I admired what Jesse wrote about artists
falling into leaves. But she was absent again,
so I changed my mind. Instead I told the story
of how this morning I saved two silverfish
from the bathtub drain, but then Patrick
stomped a stray one with a size 12, which made
everyone feel hopeless and disgusted. Fortunately,
Amy composed herself enough to save the class
cockroach, which made us all feel better,
and soon we were able to finish our lunches
in the glow-in-the-dark beneath the outdoor
amphitheater. Thus it came to pass
that when Holly stood up to read her poem
in front of the class, I heard, "birdbath, white paint,
pain," very clearly. "It's as if a singer fell asleep
at her typewriter," suggested Dan. Then Kelly left
sick with overstated keeling. By the time Otis read
his poem, all I could fathom was intensity of feeling:
think of a piano being eaten by maggots,
the sound of some assembly required.
Personal Poem #10
(after Ted Berrigan's "Personal Poem #9")
It's 10:14 PM in Westwood it's Halloween
and it's probably 10:14 in Cincinnati
but I'm in Westwood. I'm eating blueberries and listening
to "The Magnificent Seven" by The Clash. The bass line
punctuating my mind like a signature. And I'm thinking
after reading Berrigan again that Westwood isn't like
Cincinnati without its two or three tiny skyscrapers it is Cincinnati
without any big buildings in the sky whatsoever. In fact I've never been
confused about it not once have I ever been
more certain than I am now about how to see the sky in Westwood.
But I never used to think
I'd end up on the West side at all with its conservative values and catholic churches
flower shops chili parlors and Mercy where Melanie went
to high school.
And I never thought Eric would be grinding
his teeth in his sleep the way my sister did or be on medication
for depression the way I am but neurochemistry is a funny
sort of burning inside us perhaps that's all we can say.
Regardless the fact is that
Eric is a genius and so much more courageous than all the rest of us even
at things like computer networks and Teach Yourself Postmodernism
which to me just read like an autobiography I'm not sure whose
and that stung a little because ridiculous
things do that.
For example when the door knocks
it's Mary Anne with her two little boys Hank and Oscar
ages 4 and 2 coming over to show us their Halloween costumes
(Tigger the Tiger and Elvis Presley respectively) and bringing us
more candy because we're running out instead of running over
and our neighbors too running out and so have started emptying
their pockets of change.
I used to think
by now I'd be rid of Halloween and sadness and the happy little faces
of children in costumes but then I realize I thought I'd be
a famous rocker like Joe Strummer who could never die but did
anyway heart attack just like that age 51
and had I been there
done that like he did I'd have been rocking for children in costume
because when you're young and listening carefully
to the things that rock stars say everyday is a new
set of inspired possibilities everyday is changing your clothes
into (maybe) this sharkskin leopard-print lampshade Mohawk
or this Cadillac with a cherry on top
and your life is falling over or falling fine or trafficking
marvelously in an alley in love all of it vivid peppermint
all of it underscored melody and countermelody
pumpkin vs. gourd who wins?
In Westwood, I pop
like a jack-in-the-box, writing and re-writing my two books
of poems, not at all magnificent, but wholly alive I guess
things could be a lot fucking worse.
Throatings
Sometime after midnight, Christian went home
and Melanie went to bed. But I stayed up listening
to the makeshift wind chimes that hang near
the back door—bits of a broken ceramic vase,
drilled-through and tied with craft wire, then hung
from a metal rod, which somebody (not us) mounted
to the brick of the house, brick that many landlords ago
was painted sky-blue and now peels. In the wind
the chimes sound like voices, but voices
in a language I can never make out, like the half-
electric throatings I'm listening to now, like
the green and blue bowls I'm washing,
banging together with three forks and a large pot,
the well-used skillet with the super-dented rim;
I don't feel so young anymore. But it's all good
because I don't feel particularly impossible either.
I'm somewhere between punk rock and a funeral.
And yet I have both in my head and chest at all times,
everything so centrally blown out of proportion
that living simmers completely in the present,
where now is always another truck of books
or playing "Serve the Servants" and singing along
until I'm light-headed, thinking of my wife, myself,
my friends, all of us existing in a singular quiet
saturation of incredulity and sadness.
When the rain begins to fall, it splatters in
on the white window sills.
I finish the dishes and talk to myself.
The end isn't anywhere.
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