Nothing but the Thing Itself in Poetry and Fiction

All right now, two things here, maybe three. Wallace Stevens, because he wore a suit. And given he was a proper executive, gave me permission, gave me the right to make my living selling brick for instance, and still be a poet. Myself, a sales guy persuading, acting friendly to people I would generally otherwise have little feelings for because of my writer-selfish nature. And now I am old as Stevens was old, but Stevens also did his best writing later in life which offers me hope that my best poetry is possibly still yet to come. As well, he did not wear the garb of the poets we see today beating the streets of our make-believe bohemian villages here in America. He did not ever resemble the stereotypical poet. He was a man in a suit. And he merely wrote it, poetry, that would knock your socks off, words that we can somehow feel in our bodies, all of those words and syllables getting inside and around each other, mixing it up if you know what I mean, on every page.

Interestingly, as far as knocking your socks off, the same goes for Emily Dickinson, the grand dame of the soiled absurd. And let's not forget Jack Gilbert and Casey Finch as well, the latter now dead too young from a surprise heart attack. Gilbert the still-living example of greatness, writing the unparalleled book of life on how to conduct the long affair. Okay, so now we come to the unknown obscure poet with the book title nobody knows about. But all that matters to him is the writing, the production of new poems the teacher says you'll all be coming for. And history clearly demonstrates that the smartest are not when it comes to the matter of discovering the great writer living among the masses.

OK, so if we get away from poetry and into fiction we have an even more intensely disgusting problem. There are fewer good fiction writers writing today than ever before. Perhaps the retirement of the teacher Lish has something to do with this present mediocrity. What has happened to his prior students? Are they caving in to temptation for success by writing words they, the official literati, are wanting? Are they now offering up to us more of the same predictable, awful gruel? Of course, we do have Cormac McCarthy who is still churning out magnificent work. And there is other hope. I have seen it and not a moment too soon. The inside outsider. Frank Lentricchia's, Lucchesi and the Whale. A brilliant novel more truth than fiction; changeable sails and masculine revealings of every inadequacy faced by a writer with no audience save one who matters. So now we can add Frank Lentricchia to our list of important fiction voices. He joins the lethal Gordon Lish, our brilliant madman of the pages.

And, so, we wait, as we have always waited, for the next revision of another life worth living. All of them fascinated by a language that clearly wanders, as Lentricchia writes, from quietness to quietude. And I have truly heard him, this Gordon Lish saying, "Speech can put your mother in your mouth".

M Sarki, Nothing But The Thing Itself In Fiction And Poetry, Associated Content