Pathetic Literature, page 53
Forgive me father for I have sinned.
it’s been two weeks?
Um - Since my last confession.
1. I lied in my last confession, I have dishonoured my
mother and father, um
I have um – hurt people that I care about.
Then Taylor is rolling us a spliff
Then i’m high - I’m always stoned - extremes of pleasure - this void of endless animation
I don’t know how to drop repetitions
Dismembered body
I find myself repeating
I’m not myself today
I’m mixing up my identities
a revolt I am no longer a body
Ego leaks onto the street / shed light on humiliation
Then i’m lost
Then my mom is lending me money
I’m no good at taking care of myself
Temptation /a new poison /blur the lines of intoxication
I’m no good at feeling bad
– Oh God, have mercy on me, your daughter, a sinner.
If u touch it it’s yours
These are bonds
One thing next to another doesn’t mean they touch
An unseen shape rotating and twisting
Touching something lightly
Display dramatic expression
Then Sam is reminding me cuteness is its own violence
colours that evolve
my goodness is insulting
Idk what life is
I want everyone to drown in my teenage dream
Then i’m at the reading and Darcie is asking me if i’m okay
Molly is handing me a coffee - black
Ben is giving me reassuring looks
I feel like my body will give out if I don’t smoke a joint
By the time I see your face
I’m the only Jesus in the room
Then we’re fighting and ur walking away from me.
Broken black bodies r really in right now
It’s a bummer nobody gets crucified anymore
I mean I’m trying
I want to care about art but I only care about people
Then Rachel is giving me a kpin
To stop the spasms
They fall in the Uber
I lower myself to the ground brush the pills into my hand and get high
Life is hard and I’m sorry
I’m sobbing & I can’t remember why now
being an person is hard and stupid
I suffer from that
Everything is embarrassing
Ugh this is getting out of hand
I can’t say no so don’t ask me
Fleshy animal
nothing is pure, invert yourself
TOTAL LOL
SOPHIE ROBINSON
RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW
that is how a dog goes that is how a dog goes
boom in the night that is how a dog slides
sideways that is how a dog lies down
in the grass and loafers and dies like the bad
dead dog it really is inside its orgied guts
& this is how we do it: in out in out
this is how we move inside the dogspace
this is how we are inside the dog I am the
dog head with my head in the dog
you are the dog end with your end inside the dog
we are a pantomime dog & this is how we do it:
left right left right that is how we walk
like the sick dogs we are that is how we fuck ourselves
inside out and our fur turns to mush this is how
we think of something to make us cry on purpose
this is how we be brave and glass over like a
sad dog’s eyes this is how we eat our own shit
and sing with a mouthful all night long:
RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW RAW
this is how we know ourselves & this is how
we hate each other this is how we sound
when we speak each others’ language & how
your pussy tastes on a hard day’s night I like
to suffer it’s good for us & makes us wet with pride
or raw with longing pulling at the leash – I might
die I might lie down and die you can dog me in
the park and I won’t let it lie – I’d screw you
five thousand times and still be happy in my
mummy skin in my daggy dogskin in my foxfur
mangy woof woof jacket. My skin is my life
jacket my skin has a hole in it my hole is round
and red my hole is my dog’s head I will die forever
in my sick dog head I will LOL forever in my
total bowl of meat I will LOL with my hole wide
open I will LOL all night to the tune of my howl
o I will place you in my snout and sing you all over
I will raw myself all up and down inside you lover forever
The Slow Read Movement
SPARROW
I moved from New York City to the hamlet of Phoenicia in 1998. Immediately, I became frustrated with the local “culture.” I grew up in Manhattan; I was like a bee in the hive of that island. The humming of the other inhabitants informed me, reassured me. Now walking alone, among mist-draped mountains, with no one nearby speaking Polish, Italian, Puerto Rican, German, French, Chinese, I felt stupid.
Luckily, Phoenicia has a first-rate thrift shop with a witty name: “Formerly Yours.” The prices are extremely low—some pants are 25¢—but there’s also a free table, and among its items are books. Formerly Yours is the opposite of a New York City bookstore: you must pay for romance novels, but Freudian Marxist essays are free. One day on the giveaway table, I found Moby-Dick (the Signet paperback, from 1978). Immediately I snapped it up. That night I lay in bed and opened my new acquisition:
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me onshore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
It was elegant, stately, poetic—but who could read it? This book demanded the intelligence of a Princeton professor and the patience of St. Jerome. It’s the goddamn Great American Novel! Moby-Dick’s as intimidating as . . . a massive white whale! Sadly, I cast the classic aside.
Three days later, however, I hit on a plan. In Phoenicia, there is infinite time. If I read a page a day, I’d eventually finish this gargantuan novel. So I began. Each day I read a section of the text, marking my progress with a pencil. Melville became my spectral companion, speaking to me daily:
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I did not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.
Moby-Dick is almost too great a book. Reading it burns your eyes. When you’re in the middle of an Agatha Christie novel, you won’t stop even to eat—even to drink a glass of water. Reading Melville is the opposite. Every three sentences, you must stare at the ceiling and wonder where your life went wrong. It’s the perfect book to read with tragical slowness.
One virtue of Moby-Dick: you’re not going to forget the plot. [Spoiler alert: It’s about a bunch of guys on a whaling ship, searching for a whale.] A startling discovery: The Great American Novel is not set in America (except for a brief introduction)! It follows a route through the Atlantic, around Cape Horn, into the Indian Ocean and on to the Pacific. Another discovery: Melville was such a visionary he wanted to SAVE THE WHALES 120 years before that bumper sticker was written.
For six years I sailed on the Pequod, checking on the progress of my ship every night between 8:00 and 8:30 PM. As a whaler slowly crosses the ocean, I reached page 150, then page 200, then page 238 . . . As Captain Ahab grew more obsessed with Moby-Dick, I grew more obsessed with Moby-Dick.
Some people skip the informational chapters on whaling, but not me. That would be like taking a shortcut in the Boston Marathon:
Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, in New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like scrimshander articles, as the wheelmen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.
[A “busk” is part of a corset.] In Chapter 95, Melville describes the penis of a whale the boat has slaughtered:
Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg.
It’s possible that Melville went a little bit insane writing the book. Here is Ahab speaking in Chapter 108 (angry that he must wait for the carpenter to fashion him a new pegleg):
Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek God, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as air; and I’m down in the whole world’s books. I am so rich, I could have given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman empire (which was the world’s); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag with. By heavens!
Just as the “Slow Food” movement reverses the momentum of modern life, emphasizing local ingredients and long meal preparation, my “Slow Read” movement pulled me back into the thoughtfulness of a world of lamps filled with . . . whale oil!
I didn’t know how the book would end. I never saw the 1956 film with Gregory Peck, and no one at a party ever said: “Weren’t you surprised at the ending of Moby-Dick? I couldn’t believe Ishmael went off with that mermaid!‡‡” After six years of reading, I reached the conclusion: “. . . and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” With vigorous, sustained mental effort, I’d conquered Melville! If I can do it, so can you. Find a weighty book, a sharp pencil, and join the Slow Read movement!
Lincoln’s Lost Speech
Abraham Lincoln’s “Lost Speech” was delivered on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois. Tradition states that the text was lost because Lincoln’s powerful oration mesmerized every person in attendance. Reporters laid down their pencils, forgetting to take notes. In 2006 a fragment of the Lost Speech was found in the archives of a Baptist church in Bloomington. Through a distant cousin, I obtained it:
A monarch provides security; it is comforting to bow to a Sire. But our nation was born of another wish. We are all part-kings here. If you bow to one man, you must bow to all . . .
* * *
‡‡ I’m not saying this is the actual plot of the book.
Inez, I Have to Gloat: You’re Gorgeous
SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ
Translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique
Inez, I have to gloat: you’re gorgeous
and you love me. All this
pleasure—I’ll never be the same.
When you’re jealous, I’m a trembling thread,
and when you flirt in front of me, I die.
You flaunt those hips to drive me wild.
One thrust, you’re squandering the honey
that makes me high—save it for me, Inez.
When you cover me with kisses, I’m transformed.
When you’re angry with me, I can’t breathe.
When you go out, I lie awake all night.
Still, Inez, none of this really matters.
Just take me to bed, where I like it,
with my wineskin and your succulent worm.
Inez, When Someone Tells You You’re a Bitch
Inez, when someone tells you you’re a bitch,
you’ve got a million comebacks. I’m supposed to think
you’re some old woman full of aches and creaks—
that’s your genius, dear: you cover your shit.
You have a dirty mouth; you love to use it:
once you start, no magpie can compete.
You’re louder than a string of firecrackers.
You thrive on noise, you love to make a stink.
You crank out lies until a girl can’t think.
Your charms are much exaggerated. Still, Inez,
the problem isn’t you, you cruel pussy.
The way I love you is a sin, I know it—
but the way you fuck me is no trick. Your hard-on’s real,
and I’m a field just waiting to be plowed.
Where I Left Off
SUSIE TIMMONS
If pillows were people they’d always be sleeping
in my library book there’s a man playing a bug
for his musical instrument
pillows and speckled navy enamel cup
you can’t even wave
good eye
an ochre
pyramid, big chief notebooks
pencils neatly sharpened, smokestacks
is turn, into, or ones with fire on their tip all night
with the fire coming in.
camisole, universe walking past Veselka
down Ninth Street, east, rainy January, 11 p.m.
jackals howling
translucent bottle containing disc preener
sable, lace caps
letters and stamps
the woodwork, expels an example
flying for humans, talking animals, reading minds
I can’t believe the bell here,
sick analog
ten flawless lines
the coast is a dream
at her bath and stuck gently on her forehead
Falling for You
TIM JOHNSON and MARK SO
questions
Inbox
12:55 AM (21 hours ago)
Eileen Myles
to Mark, Tim
so now I want to know what it is. How did you compose it. Did you take parts from some other text, texts, did you write it. I want to understand what I’m looking at.
Thanks,
Eileen
it’s the latest heap from my recycling vortex. i used to make lots and lots of reading tapes of various kind, and came a certain time i realize they were just reading lists. i think in a few moments i was actually typing them over. so i started thinking about a notebook like a tape, and recording by writing down bits and fragments while reading, usually between two books. it could mean anything, some electric connection within the moment, a memory, an observation, often something noticed about the act itself. the curving inner life of the word outside, registered line after line, somehow. you’ll remember we had a long talk about “the pathetic notebook” and that is this (also what i released on thursday night). you remember we talked about dante and virgil and liz with the headlamp. the start was the day before i left for marfa, which was the day after the blue notebook got filled out, july 15. it’s a bigger notebook than most of the little moleskin and ica ones, and somehow pathetic meant i had to contend with extra, like it or not: i made myself take down entire printed lines, not just the “best” suitable fragment. all the weirdness of an arbitrary break like that. and if what caught me hung over, then i’d have to take down the whole next line, like the smallest cuttable pixel was the whole printed line of whatever i was reading, carrying that whole heavy bundle of switches on my back. it starts out somewhere in ‘tell me how long the train’s been gone’ and the complete poems of elizabeth bishop. later marianne moore, and dante, john wieners, artaud, sawako nakayasu et al. just going a step further than treating language as something always at hand, to specify that it’s the language boxed in by these two books i’m reading, no matter what’s happening in life, and further, the language in front of me, the line i’m on when i go to write. just like the tape would always be looping, and you’d get wherever i was at, next to whatever else it happened to land by. this notebook was also self-consciously in response to your/tim’s ‘pathetic’ ask, an essay dwelling on being pathetic. i had cutely suggested that whenever the notebook was done, tim could illustrate it. i was thinking some selected typed pages, paired with some kind of typewriter poetry. but tim had this impulse to photocopy and type over, a most pathetic form of manuscript illumination and i really loved it.
TIMELY: UNTIMELY: MY NOTE: Tim Johnson
When Eileen asked me about Pathetic Lit, I thought of Mark’s notebooks. In them, he provides a date and then writes (by hand) some of what he reads during the day. The words come from books, poems and novels mostly, with sources changing as his interest does. Syntactically it’s loose, but it’s not random. It’s him, but musically. The persistence of Mark’s life in Mark’s selection gives the work an unassuming kind of coherence; the facts of place names and dates are its structure. It’s not much, but it’s enough. None of the words in the notebooks are Mark’s, but he put them there. Together: time and these words make one of his many forms of music. People might call this mode of working plagiarism, or pathetic, since it seems to avoid the effort of invention or because it avoids the usual tools and workplaces. I bet the same people consider it pathetic to be involved in many kinds of work, and to avoid work as well. Strong and savvy are reserved for the creative class now, and the innovators. Maybe the rest are pathetic, which doesn’t sound so bad. I wanted to perform a duet with Mark because I love his music. As such: I’ve selected words from the words Mark selected and typed them as I read them, in copies made from the first ten pages of his most recent notebook.
