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End of the sentimental journey

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End of the sentimental journey

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Content End of the Sentimental Journey
A Mystery Poem
Sarah Vap
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Contents
First Clue: Difficulty • Clue: Sorrow • Clue: Blueballs • Clue: Easy • Too Easy •
Clue: Intimacy • Clue: My Needs • No Intimacy • Variations on Ease • More
Variations on Ease • Variations on Difficult • More Variations on Difficult •
Variations on Ease • That Very Fine Line • Accessibility • Sentimentality • Clue:
Sentimental is Not Sexy • Fact: Sentimental • Helpful Guidelines I’ve Given
Myself for Writing Contemporary Poetry • Third or Fourth-Wave Feminist
Perspective • Negotiating Intimacy in Poetry: an Example • Nuance •
Dissatisfaction • Failure • Difficulty • Alarm • Defining Key Terms • Worry •
Audience • Helping My Audience • The New Continuum • Ease and Difficulty •
Writer • Sorrow • Helping the Writer • Back to the Mystery-at-Hand: Poems •
Clue: More Failure • Clue: Correctness • Irreverence • Clue: Irreverence: Less
Failure But Failure Still • At What Point • Experience and Language • Which
Came First: Experience or Language? • Continuums • What Is My Point Here?
Bad People • Against • Except • Clue: Goodness • Badness • Clue: All The
Things I’m Against • Against • Against • But Even More Than That • Naïve •
However • Clue: Freedom • Clue: Continuums • Against • Defining Key Terms •
Not Against • Defining More Key Terms • Danger • Danger • This Is What I’m
Against • Clue: Fuck • In the Original It Is Written in Cipher • In the Original It
Is Written in Cipher • In the Original It Is Written in Cipher • In the Original It Is
Written in Cipher: Clue: Cunt • My Seminary, My Low Country, My Wonderful
Lamp • In the Original It Is Written in Cipher, Cont. • Ciphers and Inner Circles
and Mystification • Fuck and Cunt, Cont. • Mystery: the Fuck and Cunt at the
Heart of Poetic Fashion and Unfashion • If Irony and Sentimentality Are
Feminine • This Is the Same University • What I Mean Is This: • University and
Power, Cont. • Don’t Get Me Wrong • Of a Silent District • Cradled There: •
Devoured • Destroyed • Monitored Which Is Worse (aka Better) • Monitor •
Monitor • Submit • Dog • Scalpel • Mystery • Mystery
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My mental life is completely shot through with petty doubts and unarguable certainties that are
expressed in lucid and coherent words. And my weaknesses are of a more trembling texture. They
are themselves nebulous and ill-formulated. They have live roots, roots of anguish that reach to the
heart of life. But they have not the turmoil of life. One does not feel in them the cosmic afflatus of a
soul that has been shaken to its foundations. They are the weaknesses of a mind that has not
pondered its weakness; if it had, it would render that weakness in dense and forceful words. And
there, sir, lies the entire problem: to have within oneself the inseparable reality and material clarity of
a feeling, to have them to such a degree that the feeling cannot but express itself, to have a wealth of
words and formal constructions which might join in the dance, might serve one’s purpose—and at
the very moment when the soul is about to organize its wealth, its discoveries, its revelation, at that
unconscious moment when the thing is about to emanate, a higher and evil will attacks the soul like
vitriol, attacks the word-and-image mass, attacks the mass of the feeling and leaves me panting as at
the very door of life.
--Antonin Artaud, to Jacques Riviere
Your last letters, in which the word ‘soul’ frequently replaces the word ‘mind’ arouse in me a
sympathy that is even graver, though more embarrassed, than the first ones.
--Jacques Riviere to Antonin Artaud
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This poem could also be titled: On Difficulty. Or, On Accessibility. Or, On Intimacy.
I could call this “Irony and Sorrow.”
First Clue: Difficulty
People often ask me: Do you mean for your poems to be so difficult? Why are they so difficult?
A shadow of a response that I always have: Why do you want them to be easy?
But what I mean is: What is “difficult” anyway? and, What is easy?
I begin to feel a little bit worried. (Am I am difficult?)
And then I wonder: Does that mean that other people are easy?
Hours later I might be asking myself: Is there such a thing as “good-difficult” and “bad-difficult”?
“Good-easy” and “bad-easy”? And who gets to decide.
Over the years, however, I have actually given one or more of the following answers to the question:
1) I feel terrible, and I’m sorry.
2) Not my problem.
3) No, I don’t mean for them to be difficult— I don’t mean for them to be anything in particular.
4) Oh! No no no— that poem’s not difficult. Let me show you why….
5) Are you trying to tell me that you hate me?
6) I have had a long theory on very personal first-languages that each of us has uniquely…
which we spend our lives both translating into and refusing, to some degree or another, (the
nonexistent) Standard American English.
But I’m becoming less and less inclined to give or believe these answers. And I’m becoming more
and more inclined to think this is a conversation about gender.
And about sex. And about money.
Specifically, this is a conversation about you having sex with me. And more generally, about poets
having sex with each other.
But let me go back for a minute.
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Clue: Sorrow
When someone says that a poem is difficult, does he or she simply mean that the language of the
poem, or the mind of the poem, or the sentiment of the poem is not like his or her language or mind
or sentiments?
Or do they mean that they have had to spend a lot time and effort figuring the poem out? That the
poem is hard work for them?
Or do they mean that they did the work, they “understood” the poem, and they just don’t like what
they ended up with— all that work for little reward.
Or perhaps they are saying, saddest to me, that it has been simply impossible for them to connect
with the poem at all.
Personally, at times like this—when I have read a poem, tried very hard to connect, and failed—I
have felt, simply, sad.
But when I hear a poem called difficult— it often seems like the person is saying that the poem,
itself, is somehow wrong.
In some cases, difficult sounds like we’re accusing the poem. That the poem has been bad. Difficult.
As if the poem was supposed to give the reader something wonderfully satisfying, and didn’t.
And this makes me think of blueballs.
Clue: Blueballs
And blueballs make me think that a difficult poem is one that won’t put out.
Or at least not the way I like it.
I’m starting to guess here, but the analogy works for me.
What I mean is that I’m not sure what is meant by difficult!
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I’m actively suspicious of what is meant by difficult.
Clue: Easy
But perhaps I do understand what “easy” is-—easy is something that does not challenge,
uncomfortably-strongly, my mind or my language or my sentiments. Easy is something that is kind of
like me, but just a little bit different— and different in a way that I love.
Better than me, but not too much better.
And if the poem is not too much different than me, and if it is satisfyingly different than me— then
I perceive an intimacy—an intimacy that I enjoy—between the poem and me. An ease between the
poet and me.
That poet and I, we go satisfyingly to bed together.
Too Easy
Or, the poem might be too easy—so easy that it’s not as good as me. Compared to me, the poem is a
little dumb and slutty.
I wanted a bigger game, a better chase, an evasive treasure that I didn’t exactly deserve, but somehow
captured. Not this easy poem!
Clue: Intimacy
I mean this: I feel like what we are really talking about when we talk about “accessibility” and
“difficulty” and “ease” is intimacy, and a desire for intimacy. Practically a demand for intimacy— and
of just the exact degree and flavor that we desire.
There is an unspoken agreement between a poet and a reader that, by reading the poem, we will both
feel less alone.
By writing a poem, someone will eventually read it who will understand something profoundly
important about us.
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By reading and reading and reading more poems, we will eventually identify someone out there who
is like us, but a little bit better.
To some degree or another, we believe that a poem could put us on the knowing-edge of someone’s
heart or mind. To some degree or another, we believe that our poem could put someone on the
edges of ours.
This is part of intimacy, right?
These moments of intimacy are why I read and write.
But not exclusively.
Clue: My Needs
What I also need in poetry (and I need these just as much as I need those moments of intimacy):
rejection, humiliation, shame, distance, reprimand, being totally ignored, being dumped, being
crapped on, being inappropriately solicited, pity, being sought after to no avail, seeking after to
no avail, intrigue, mystery, no mercy, make-up sex, fistfights, fisting, being told to put my
fucking clothes back on, just a friend, strangers, loneliness, artificiality, superficiality, having the
door slammed on my face, not being invited to the party, not showing up to rush, getting
kicked out of the honors program, an STD, being the only girl in fourth grade without a best
friend, being the new kid everyone ignores, travel without knowing the language, dry-humping,
pull-out-method, born-again virgins, constipation, bad reputations, unconvincing dominatrices,
false rumors.
But I also need:
grandparents, parents, children, childbirth, death, ribbons, rainbows, ponies, music boxes, solar
systems, summer dresses, blood, guts, history, tradition, no history, no tradition, no human
beings at all, no objects at all, God, Goddess, no gods, no goddesses, solar system, no solar
system, everybody being nice to me, everybody understanding me, everybody missing me
when I’m gone.
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Sometimes, I want a poem to be so difficult that I don’t connect at all.
Sometimes, I want a poem that I don’t even like.
A poem that antagonizes me and pisses me off. A poem that disgusts me. One that I want to throttle,
or tease mercilessly. Sometimes I want to read a poem that I coldly reject.
Or… a poem that is way too good for me.
No Intimacy
Sometimes, when someone says that a poem is difficult, what I feel is: you want that poem to intuit
your most private fantasies and just play along!
Sometimes, when I hear someone say that a poem is difficult, I think: But maybe that poem didn’t
want to date you in the first place. Maybe it’s exceedingly happily married, thanks, and would never
even consider it.
Maybe, if you were the last person on earth, that poem would hump a rock.
And maybe what I feel, when I am the one to call a poem difficult, is that the poem is leading me on.
The poem is an ice queen. Maybe I’d think that that’s a frigid, inaccessible, impenetrable poem. That
poem thinks it’s too good for me. Too smart for me. Too exotic for me or too sophisticated.
I wanted to love that poem, and that poem just shit all over me.
Variations on Ease
But if the poem did put out right away? I’d call it easy.
Some people want an easy poem. Very often I want an easy poem. Other times, we like a little bit of
a challenge— but not so much of a challenge that it’s difficult.
More Variation on Ease
But hardly anyone likes to be called easy.
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Maybe what is better meant by ease is that someone has an incredible talent for writing in exactly the
way that the reader can most profoundly hear. Maybe what is better meant by ease is a poet who is
drawing upon a personal or a cultural tradition of factual and emotional clarity. Maybe what is better
meant by ease is a writer who has the confidence and grace not to have to throw a bunch of verbal
fireworks around in order to get the attention of the reader.
Maybe what is better meant by ease is actually a nearly invisible subversiveness.
Variations on Difficult
Being called difficult is no party either!
Maybe what is better meant by difficult is a writer who endeavors to engage with the endless
simultaneities and complexities that are consciousness. Maybe what is better meant by difficult should
be a discussion related to line, or tone, or perspective, or diction, or lineage, or subject, or register.
Maybe what is better meant by difficult is actually a palpable subversiveness.
More Variations on Difficult
Similarly, every now and then, I want to read a poem that tells secret after secret to itself. I want to
read a poem so mysterious that I feel myself to be what I am: stupid. Unwanted.
I want to read a poem, at times like these, that would never ever have sex with me.
Sometimes when we talk about “accessibility” and “difficulty” and the “unrelatability” or the
“impenetrability” or the “obscurity” of a poem, I think we’re actually talking about withholding. Or
restraint. Or refusal.
If a poem refuses or withholds, then it is difficult. The smaller the audience, the fewer people who
can “understand” a poem, the more difficult it is.
If a poem doesn’t refuse or withhold, then it is not difficult— it is easy. The larger the audience, the
more people who can “understand” a poem, the easier it is.
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Sometimes I think that when we talk about a poem being difficult, we are talking about getting our
feelings hurt, being shut out, being unloved.
But who is it that is left out? And who is the larger audience, really? Who is the smaller audience,
really?
And if something is easy, haven’t you learned this yet?, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it loves you.
Variations on Ease
Also, remember, if something is not having sex with you right this minute, that doesn’t mean it’s got
“sexual problems.”
That Very Fine Line
I think we’re talking about that very fine line between putting out, but not being a slut.
And I have never figured that one out!
Accessibility
I get suspicious when we talk about the difficulty of a poem.
I get suspicious when we talk about accessibility.
I get suspicious whenever “ease” or “difficulty” is used, without great explanation, in relationship to
poetry.
When I hear a poem called “inaccessible” I know for certain this is not a good thing—I know that
the poem is in trouble. It has crossed a line by refusing to let you cross the line. This poem, I think,
should not have refused.
To me, the poem feels like a bad little kid, and the reader feels like the scolding adult. And a kid never
gets to decide, not really, how much access we get to it.
The adult gets to choose.
A poem should be accessible. But why, and what happens if it is not, I’m not at all sure.
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Luckily, I do have another theory that might help.
Sentimentality
Theory: Maybe the opposite of difficult is not easy, but sentimental…
and maybe the continuum I am trying to identify is not stretched between the two extremes of
Difficult ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Easy,
but between the two extremes of
Difficult ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sentimental.
Maybe Easy is, instead, just a tiny point somewhere between Difficult and Sentimental:
Difficult-------------------------Easy---------------------------------------------------------------Sentimental
or
Difficult------------------------------------------------------Easy-----------------------------------Sentimental.
Because if Difficult is withholding intimacy, then Sentimental is giving us just too much intimacy— and
not how we like it.
Clue: Sentimental is Not Sexy
Sentimental is something that is trying to be sexy for us, but we don’t find it sexy. It’s embarrassing!
Like a bad pole dance! Like someone whispering dirty words into your ear but they are the wrong
dirty words!
Sentimental is the opposite of sex—sentimental is a church-lady poem.
Sentimental is our grandma writing a poem for us about how much she loves church ladies.
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Sentimental is a poem that fell in love with us when all we wanted was a raunchy fling.
Sentimental is childish, or very old-fashioned, or quaint.
Sentimental is babies.
Sentimental is a praise god! poem and a look at all the pretty birds! poem, when we wanted to
explode that goddamn bird tree.
Sentimental is without irony.
All the above subjects (babies, grandmas, religion, nature) are wonderful if treated ironically, but
babies, grandmas, religion, and nature without irony are greeting card material.
Fact: Sentimental
Sentimental is so much worse than difficult!!
Helpful Guidelines I’ve Given Myself for Writing Contemporary Poetry
As a woman and as a mother (two major identity crutches, both of which risk both difficulty and
sentimentality) I have to pay close attention to certain land mines.
Here are some helpful guidelines I am developing:
1) My poem should put out, but not be a slut.
2) My poem should cook like your mom cooked, but wear something slutty in the kitchen.
3) If my poem wears barbed-wire panties, it’s wearing them for you.
4) My poems should hint at sexual availability, but I’m a mom! That’s disgusting.
5) My poems should not be “mom poems” at all, or, if they must, then there should be as few
as possible and they’ll all be ignored until they are once again cooking like your mom while
dressing slutty.
6) My poems should not believe in gods or be new-agey. Or if they are, should actively and
ironically work against that.
7) My poem should not fall in love with you.
8) My poem should not be so personal that it is difficult, or so impersonal that it is difficult.
9) My poem should never be impenetrable or inaccessible.
10) If my poem is impenetrable or inaccessible, it should be so while wearing a strap-on.
11) My poem should never refer to children or childhood without irony.
12) Hopefully my poem is not embarrassingly lumbering toward sexy when you find it
unattractive.
13) My poem should never grow old.
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Third or Fourth-Wave Feminist Perspective
What I’d rather do, though, is be very specific and very honest with you.
In this age of the third or fourth-wave of feminism, I’d like to write exactly what I want to write and
how I need to write it as the fully complex human being that I am.
And I’d like you to respond to my complexity however you will, yet with generosity and respect, from
your complexity—and all of this while remaining within the eternal matrix that is cultural
construction and massive institutional violence.
In other words, I’d like to fully embrace the entire spectrum from Sentimental to Difficult!
Negotiating Intimacy in Poetry: an Example
Ideally, then—using this third or fourth-wave full spectrum of human experience, and using an ultra-
contemporary vocabulary of intimacy— a conversation about any given poem could go something
like this:
Reader 1: That poem is like Tea-Bagging, and I actually prefer something a little more difficult, like a
Cincinnati Bowtie.
Reader 2: I had a slightly different response. That poem, to me, is much too difficult and much too
dirty. It’s like receiving a Pasadena Steamer or worse, an Angry Dragon.
Reader 3: Oh my God! My response was just the opposite! To me, this poem is like spooning and
musk-scented candles and I have married it.
Reader 4: I’d agree with Reader 2. I think this poem is difficult, but I think it is actually wonderfully
difficult— like a successful Alligator Fuckhouse.
Reader 5: Do you think so? An Alligator Fuckhouse is a good analogy. But I think this poem is
attempting something even more difficult and more subtle than that—perhaps a Glass-bottomed
Boat. I just don’t think it succeeds, because honestly, reading it felt more like being given a Donkey
Punch.
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Reader 2: And it is nowhere near as satisfying as that wonderful Blumpkin of a poem over there.
Reader 1: I agree. I once thought a Glass-Bottomed Boat was satisfying until I participated in a
Blumpkin. Blumpkining is a magnitude more satisfying and difficult than a Glass-Bottomed Boat.
Believe me, this poem is no Blumpkin. [Applause].
And so on.
Nuance
You’ll notice that the readers are being as specific as possible about what exact spot on the Difficult-
Sentimental Continuum that they believe the poem to inhabit.
This is a very complex, very nuanced discussion. I think this is an improvement!
Dissatisfaction
But somehow, I still feel unsatisfied.
I still feel (why?) so suspicious.
Failure
And I worry that this poem is failing.
So let me start over.
Difficulty
Thesis: When I say that the question of “difficulty” or “sentimentality” in poetry is really a
discussion of poets having sex, what I actually mean is that I believe it to be a gendered discussion.
And perhaps it is also a discussion about monitoring what poets of certain identities can and can’t
say.
I mean that it might really be the discussion about who can say and think what and how they can say
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it and think it.
Alarm
I worry that what is difficult is actually just an internalized alarm that gets triggered when certain
people deviate from certain languages and certain subjects.
I think that often we’re calling poets difficult for using a language very different from the (masculine,
“economically stable,” white, super straight) language we’re all “used to.” It’s not a new idea.
Or, I think that often we’re calling poets easy for using the (masculine, “economically stable,” white,
super straight) language we’re all “used to” when that person isn’t masculine, or economically stable,
or white, or super straight. Also not a new idea.
Particularly in this poem I think that we’re often calling poets sentimental or difficult or impenetrable
for writing poems that touch more on women’s lives than on men’s lives.
I’m just surprised at how much I feel these unspecified words like “difficult’ and “sentimental” as
pressures in the world of contemporary American poetry.
I’m surprised at how much I want to think that there are some things about poets and about poetry
that we don’t get to choose.
Defining Key Terms
I always forget to do this! Halfway through writing a poem I find myself with my nose stuck in the
dictionary.
To clarify my key terms—these contemporary terms of intimacy— I’ve consulted with the online
Urban Dictionary. Today (I specify, because the dictionary is constantly being written and re-written
by its readers),
Blumpkin is fairly uniformly defined, across all the definitions, as “the delicately balanced art of
getting your cock sucked while taking a dump.”
To me, this seems easy.
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Blumpkin is quite distinguished from the Glass-Bottomed Boat, which, according to almost all the
definitions, is some version of placing plastic wrap on someone’s face, then taking a shit on it.
A little bit more difficult, I think, for either party.
The concept of shitting and sex is endlessly nuanced, however. For example,
a Hot Lunch is “the act of shitting in clingfilm stretched over someone’s open mouth then fucking the
mouth and at the point of ejaculation bursting through the clingfilm giving the recipient a mouthful
of shit and spunk.”
To me, this would be much more difficult. Especially since I don’t ejaculate as described, and would
therefore be the mouth.
Whereas an Alabama Hot Pocket, apparently, is either simply (Definition One) “the art of separating
the vagina lips and taking a shat inside (and possibly having sex with it afterwards,” or more
elaborately (Definition Two):
a special fetish maneuver that roughly involves taking a shit into a woman's vagina,
typically followed up by a good ole fuckin'. The term "Alabama" originated from a
lesser known, but crucial additional practice that involves "Porky Piggin" the female
who has received the Hot Pocket. In Alabama, you see, good old redneck boys,
when bored, would fuck pig troughs or large, wet piles of mud. To properly
perform the Porky Piggin' follow-up procedure, one must take a massive shit onto
the vagina WITHOUT spreading the lips. This creates a core that enters the woman,
and then dregs that explode out all over her. By randomly stabbing with the cock,
one will successfully Porky Piggin' the girl... repeating, naturally, the action that
would normally be associated with screwing a pile of mud or animal trough.”
If I had the time or the will I could, in this poem, work through each of these shit-related intimacies
and determine their placement on the Difficult-Sentimental Continuum.
I am certain which of these, so far, I’d find most the most difficult, the easiest.
But moving on from the shit,
a Donkey Punch is also fairly uniformly defined in the Urban Dictionary as some version of hitting a
woman in the back of the head just prior to orgasm to get her anal or vaginal muscles to contract.
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Some definitions insist that the woman must be hit so hard she’s knocked unconscious. Another
writer warns the potential feminazi to chill out, insisting she’s probably a virgin or just doesn’t get laid
often enough to know what a good a deal this is for her partner. Some of the definition writers
delineate exactly where at the base of the skull to hit her, and how to use the term in a sentence: “I
donkey punched Meredith last night, and it was awesome!”
Though there is some variation in technique or degree of rage one must feel in order to perform a
successful Donkey Punch, I feel like I know just where to place Donkey Punch on the continuum.
The continuum placement, however, becomes a little more confusing with some of the other terms.
For example, an Alligator Fuckhouse is “a daring sexual maneuver: mid-coitus, one person bites the
neck of the other, locks their arms and legs down and goes into a deathroll, all while maintaining
insertion. Like downshifting a car!” Okay! Easy enough.
But the second definition of Alligator Fuckhouse “consists of placing the female lying down on her
side, opening her legs like the powerful jaws of the mighty crocodile, and imitating the courageous
tamer of these fearsome beasts.... ramming your entire head into her vagina.”
If I were to privy this definition of it, Alligator Fuckhouse would be extremely difficult.
And the third definition of Alligator Fuckhouse is “the state of having completed the following tasks
successfully:
1) For your birthday, you demand of your girlfriend that she make for you all the foods that she hates, but
you love, and she complies. 2) You bring yourself to climax in front of her, and thus ejaculate on all the food. 3) You demand that she consumes all the food. 3a) If she is unable to eat all of the food in one sitting, she must save it in Tupperware and it eat it later.
Note: if your girlfriend consumes the entire meal, you are required by law to ask her to marry you.
The final definition of Alligator Fuckhouse feels most sentimental— to me. And really, totally
unrelated to any of the other definitions of Alligator Fuckhouse.
These three definitions vary greatly! Really, they vary so much that they nullify any clarifying nuance I
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thought I had achieved in the poetry discussion above. With such varying definitions, I’m unsure
where or how to place Alligator Fuckhouse on the Difficult-Sentimental Continuum.
I am no longer sure what, exactly, Readers 4 and 5 really think of the poem.
Honestly, I no longer have any idea whether the poem that they were discussing is easy, or sentimental,
or difficult.
I really have no idea!
Worry
It’s about here that I start to worry that my continuum’s still fucked up.
Audience
And I worry that I’m losing you as a reader because my poem has disintegrated into gratuitous,
misogynist, and sexually violent material.
Helping My Audience
But perhaps it would be easier for you to read this gratuitous, misogynist and sexually violent material
knowing that my very young sons are playing sweetly with their Grammy literally inches away from
me as I write it?
Or, perhaps, it is easier for you to take the sweetness and more sweetness of knowing that my very
young sons are playing with their Grammy literally inches away from me as I write this if you know
that I am spending my time detailing sexual fetishes?
So maybe, then, the opposite of Sentimental is not Difficult, after all.
Perhaps the opposite of Sentimental is actually Ironic.
The New Continuum
Ironic------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sentimental
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Ease and Difficulty
And perhaps Difficulty and Ease are just points on this continuum:
(or)
Ironic---------------------Easy/ Difficult-------------Easy/ Difficult-----------------------------Sentimental
Writer
And at this point in my poem, you might find me, the writer, to be ironic. (Which is good—to be
ironic is much better than to be sentimental.)
Sorrow
And therefore I’m glad that you haven’t been able to see me while I looked through some of these
definitions on the Urban Dictionary!
Sorrow, clearly, is sentimental.
And not very funny.
Helping the Writer
But if I consider, truly, someone shitting in my vagina, stabbing me with their cock as if I’m a
trough, or hitting me so hard I lose consciousness during sex…. you can imagine how hated I might
feel.
And how the contemporary vocabulary of intimacy has failed me!
Back to the Mystery-at-Hand: Poems
Poems are made out of language.
Language mediates experience.
So poems always fail. Because language is always an approximation of something else.
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Because language isn’t, at least not always, the thing we’re actually conveying.
Clue: More Failure
If, right now, I am testing all my words for this poem by placing them on the continuum between
history and present moment (as represented by the Online Etymology Dictionary and the online
Urban Dictionary), it must be acknowledged that once I tested my words on quite a different
continuum.
When I first began “seriously” writing poems, I was at the intersection of two major language
traditions in my life: Catholicism and Political Correctness.
I was suspended between those two extremes of heightened awareness and strict rules in thought
and in language.
I was at the end of my 12 years of Catholic schooling; I was at the end of 17 years of attending
Catholic masses two or three times a week. And I was at the beginning of four years of the extremely
secular, left, politically correct language of my university.
The weeklong orientation we received my freshmen year at university consisted, quite literally, of
role-playing, training, and monitoring on how to speak “correctly.” It felt, I realized, just like the
training I’d been receiving from Catholicism on how to speak and think correctly. I felt equally
anxious and worried and tip-toey about both of the traditions. I felt that both traditions, though
monitoring different thoughts and different words, both wanted me to be “good.”
And I felt truly “bad” if I botched the language, botched the words, botched the thoughts, of either.
Moving back and forth between home and university for those first couple of years was an exercise
in bilingualism. Obviously, neither the (conservative) very rigid vocabulary and mind of the Catholic
church, nor the (liberal) very rigid vocabulary and mind of political correctness, made any allowance
for the other.
And neither of them, alone, allowed me to say what I wished I could say.
Neither of them felt expressive of my interiority, my exteriority, etc.
! 21
Holy language and correct language, for me, were empty of my experiences. Empty of my private
articulations. I felt monitored in mouth, and monitored in mind.
Holy language and correct language, for me, were empty of the nuances that I couldn’t begin, at
seventeen, to articulate.
Nonetheless, these were the poles I strung my continuum between. It was against these poles that I
tested my thoughts, my words, my ideas, my experiences.
While I honored and respected much of both traditions, I wavered between feeling, on the one hand,
enraged at the internalized monitoring, and, on the other hand, feeling a rather extreme desire to get
the language of either correctness just exactly right.
Clue: Correctness
Poets, who love and work in language, are either the least susceptible to wanting to be correct in
language,
or, they are extremely susceptible to wanting to be correct in language.
Irreverence
I waver, still, between wanting to be very, very correct, and wanting to completely disregard
correctness.
But what I know I enjoy even more than correctness is irreverence.
Clue: Irreverence: Less Failure But Failure Still
I consider irreverence to be a kindness.
I consider antagonizing correctness, especially the most powerful correctnesses, to be a
tenderhearted instinct.
I’ve always appreciated a good tear of cussing. I appreciate a shit-talker. I appreciate someone who
says shocking things. I appreciate humor.
! 22
I appreciate the language where permission to attempt and fail exists for almost everyone. I seek out
the language where almost all the experiences of life and mind might be able to exist.
Irreverence in language rings true to me. However, just a moment ago I said “almost everyone” and
“almost all the experiences of life and mind.” So, which experiences do I not want represented in
language?
Who, exactly, do I not want fully expressing themselves?
At what point should the monitoring begin.
At What Point
At what point do I want to control other people’s poems.
Experience and Language
Marjorie Perloff says: "...poetry is not... the expression or externalization of inner feelings; it is, more
accurately, the critique of that expression. A poetics of everyday life is thus not simply the empirical
record of the actual words of this or that person - a record whose interest would be minimal - but a
critique of everyday life.”
Or, as Artaud says: "All writing is pigshit. People who leave the obscure and try to define whatever it
is that goes on in their heads, are pigs."
And Rukeyser says in the first line of the first poem in her first book: “Breathe-in experience,
breathe-out poetry :”.
What I mean is, there is a strong relationship between language and experience. Pigshitish as that
must be.
Which Came First: Experience or Language?
Do the expansiveness and rigidities of the language that I use and am surrounded by determine the
expansiveness or rigidities of the experiences I have, or allow myself to have?
! 23
Or, do the expansiveness and rigidities of my experiences determine the expansiveness and rigidities
of my language, or the language I will allow to surround me?
Language and experience mutually and simultaneously create each other. Language (law, treaty,
advertisement, television, blog, poem) largely determines experiences. It makes sense that we want to
control the poems:
I understand!
It might seem like I’m getting off-course, but thankfully, I’ve got a few more continuums to bring
these cattle home.
Continua
We started here:
Difficult-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Easy
Shifted more accurately to:
Difficult----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sentimental
Which we further nuanced to:
Ironic-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sentimental
Agreed that both
Correct Language-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Incorrect Language
and
Language--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Experience
exist together in relationship.
! 24
Included within those ideas:
Reverence-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Irreverence
which we considered along with:
Kindness---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Monitoring
after which we reflected upon writing:
Correct Poetry--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Incorrect Poetry
based upon which we will decide whether we are:
Good People---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bad People
What Is My Point Here? Bad People
By the transitive and inverse-transitive properties of continuums, I think I am trying to say that I
want poets to be more bad, as people.
Against
Perhaps my point is that I’m not against anything in poetry.
Except
I’m against poets being too concerned with being good. Or right. Or correct. Or admirable. Or
writing the right way about the right things.
Clue: Goodness
As a friend of mine once said: Sometimes I’m ashamed at how much I want to be good.
! 25
Good friend. Good daughter. Good girl. Good mom. Good politics. Good thoughts. Good
consumer. Good wife. Good poet. Good citizen. Good brain.
I’m not sure if I want goodness to have anything to do with poetry.
Badness
But maybe badness.
Bad citizen. Bad consumer. Bad thoughts. Bad brain. Bad poem.
Bad capitalist. Bad obedient. Bad devotee. Bad ass.
Clue: All The Things I’m Against
Therefore I’m both for and against Sentimentality, which, at its worst, is a manipulative and
determined ignorance of the complexities of the world.
But I’m also for and against Irony, which, at its worst, is also a manipulative and determined
ignorance of the complexities of the world.
Against
I’m against being against Sentimentality and Irony because sometimes there exists a sentimentality
and an irony that one has fought for.
Against
I’m against any one tenor of language becoming so beloved, so performed, so privileged, that it
becomes—like the holy language of Catholicism of my childhood and the correct language of
political correctness of my young adulthood— ineffectual.
Without the capacity to express a wide range of human situations, foibles, intentions, or experiences.
I’m against poets trying to be good poets on the terms of one or another over-determined
vocabulary or set of values or perceived rewards.
! 26
I’m against any language becoming so necessitated by the opinion-makers of the time that it topples
underneath whatever it is that desperately needs to be said.
But Even More Than That
I’m against a poetic language that becomes so good or so right that not only is it unable to express
one’s experiences or ideas— but that the correct language itself begins to limit the experiences and
ideas that one is able to or willing to have.
Obeying right language. Obeying right ideas.
Obeying right poetic language. Obeying right poetic ideas.
Obeying the points on the continuum that are deemed the right points, at that particular time, in that
particular place, by one or another group or system of language and thought.
I’m against obeying, for example, simply in order to receive the prizes and the travel grants and the
contests and the panels and the conferences and the publications and the residencies and the
acceptance from one of the various camps that largely determine contemporary correct poetic
language.
And therefore determine right poetic thought.
And therefore determine right poetic subject.
And therefore determine right poetic experience.
Once
Once, at an anti-war demonstration, I saw a person with a sign that read: “Keep your criticism out of
my poetry panties!” But then I saw another person with a sign that read: “Spelling cunts! Get a brain,
morans!”
Naïve
It is, however, naïve for me to suggest it is good, or that it is even possible, for poetry to exist apart
from the values of the time and place in which it is written.
! 27
However
I’m against the belief that poetry and poetic experiences and poetic languages do not exist outside of the
groups that have access to the most resources right now.
Though, believe me, I am not against resources for poets.
Clue: Freedom
Perhaps I’m simply for a vast and unregulated freedom in the mind of each poet!
Clue: Naïve
But this is also naïve.
Everything is regulated! Everyone is regulated!
Clue: Continuum
Perhaps I’m against all continua.
Or perhaps, more specifically, I’m simply against each of the individual points on every continuum.
Against
More likely, I’m against all unreasonable obedience.
I’m against whatever is determining correct poetic language right now.
I’m against obedience, for example, to the university.
Defining Key Terms
As an educated poet, I have obviously taught my fair share of English 101’s. I am well versed in the
rules of modern writing— so it’s time once again to define some terms!
! 28
All of the following are from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Granted, I can’t decipher what it all
means, but it is by far my favorite place to look up a word online.
University: c.1300, "institution of higher learning," also "body of persons constituting a university," from Anglo-Fr.
université, O.Fr. universitei (13c.), from M.L. universitatem (nom. universitas), in L.L. "corporation, society," from
L., "the whole, aggregate," from universus "whole, entire" (see universe).
Uni: comb. form meaning "having one only," from L. uni-, comb. form of unus (see one).
Verse: c.1050, "line or section of a psalm or canticle," later "line of poetry" (c.1369), from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr.
vers, from L. versus "verse, line of writing," from PIE base *wer- "to turn, bend" (see versus). The metaphor is of
plowing, of "turning" from one line to another (vertere = "to turn") as a plowman does.
Ver, Verity, Verus: late 14c., from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr. verite "truth," from L. veritatem (nom. veritas) "truth,
truthfulness," from verus "true" (see very).
I am already beginning to understand the echo chamber of history within the word University: one,
truth, corporation, poetry, and wholeness;
a single, poetic, corporate society that determines what is most:
Right: "morally correct," O.E. riht "just, good, fair, proper, fitting, straight," from P.Gmc. *rekhtaz (cf. O.H.G.
reht, Ger. recht, O.N. rettr, Goth. raihts), from PIE base *reg- "move in a straight line," also "to rule, to lead
straight, to put right".
Correct: mid-14c., "to set right, rectify" (a fault or error), from L. correctus, pp. of corrigere "to put straight, reduce to
order, set right;" in transf. use, "to reform, amend," esp. of speech or writing, from com- intens. prefix + regere "to
lead straight, rule".
Good: O.E. god (with a long "o") "having the right or desirable quality," from P.Gmc. *gothaz (cf. O.N. goðr, Du.
goed, Ger. gut, Goth. goþs), originally "fit, adequate, belonging together," from PIE base *ghedh- "to unite, be
associated, suitable".
This helps, this defining of terms!
! 29
I feel this poem turning!
Not Against
I know, for example, that I am not against the number one. I’m not against truth categorically. I’m not
against plowmen turning in a field. I am not against turning in general or lines of poetry. I’m not
against wholes and I’m not against learning.
And now I know, too, that while I most probably am against each and every point on a continuum,
I’m not against the continuum, itself, because:
I also am not against hanging together, or holding together, or continuing. (Nor, it should be stated,
am I against falling apart, falling away, or interrupting.)
I am not against containers, unequivocally:
Continuum: 1650, from L. neut. of continuus. (see continue). The plural is continua.
Continue: mid-14c., from O.Fr. continuer (13c.), from L. continuare "make or be continuous," from continuus
"uninterrupted," from continere (intransitive) "to be uninterrupted," lit. "to hang together" (see contain).
Contain: ate 13c., from O.Fr. contenir, from L. continere (transitive) "to hold together, enclose," from com- "together"
+ tenere "to hold" (see tenet). Related: Container (c.1500).
But what I am against is only one container ever.
Or a bunch of containers but a rule that says that everyone can only use one container.
Defining More Key Terms
This has been so helpful that I am going to look up a few more.
For: O.E. for "for, before, on account of," from P.Gmc. *fura (cf. O.S. furi, Du. voor "for, before;" Ger. für "for;"
Dan. for "for," før "before;" Goth. faur "for," faura "before"); see fore. A common prefix in O.E., where it could be
intensive, destructive, or perfective.
! 30
Against: early 12c., agenes "in opposition to," a southern variant of agen "again" (see again),
Again: O.E. ongean "toward, opposite, against," from on "on" + -gegn "against, toward," for a sense of "lined up
facing, opposite," and "in the opposite direction, returning." For -gegn, cf. O.N. gegn "straight, direct," Dan. igen
"against," O.Fris. jen, O.H.G. gegin, Ger. gegen "against, toward," Ger. entgegen "against, in opposition to."
Obey: late 13c., from O.Fr. obeir, from L. oboedire "obey, pay attention to, give ear," lit. "listen to," from ob "to" +
audire "listen, hear" (see audience)
Well, unfortunately, you can see how standard requirements of contemporary writing, such as
“defining key terms,” can fuck up a perfectly-honed argument.
Having just defined “for” “against,” and “obey,” I now can say that these words have not, all this
time, meant what I imagined them to mean.
I am excited, though now also confused, by the prospect that by having been “for” certain things, I
was, among other things, approaching them intensively, destructively, or perfectively. I had thought it
simply meant I wanted them to exist even more.
I am also warmly surprised that “against” is historically related to the word “again” — and I happen
to be actually very partial to things like repetition and infinity. That something so determinedly soft as
an “again” is embedded in my stern “against” makes me feel proud. Secretly enlightened. It’s as if by
being “against” so many things I have, in fact, been doing something that feels much more fleshed
out, robust, rotund, whole…. I have been facing something. I have been returning to something.
And though I hesitate to embrace “obedience,” I am inclined to think that this kind of an obedience,
especially in writing, that intends giving an ear to something, listening, hearing, and an attention to
audience, seems, well, good.
Right? Correct?
And if
Audience: late 14c., "the action of hearing," from O.Fr. audience, from L. audentia "a hearing, listening," from
audientum (nom. audiens), prp. of audire "to hear," from PIE compound *au-dh- "to perceive physically, grasp," from
base *au- "to perceive" (cf. Gk. aisthanesthai "to feel;" Skt. avih, Avestan avish "openly, evidently;" O.C.S. javiti
! 31
"to reveal")
means something like the group of people with the ability to hear, to listen, to perceive, to grasp, or
to reveal… (I am not against revelation! I am for hearing, listening, perceiving, and very often I am
for grasping)….
and if that Audience is the University, in the sense of the word at its center:
Universe: 1589, "the whole world, cosmos," from O.Fr. univers (12c.), from L. universum "the universe," noun use of
neut. of adj. universus "all together," lit. "turned into one," from unus "one" (see one) + versus, pp. of vertere "to
turn" (see versus). Properly a loan-translation of Gk. to holon "the universe," noun use of neut. of adj. holos "whole"
(see safe).
And if the Universe is the whole world, the cosmos, which is One in the sense of “all together” or
“turned into one,” or “to turn” whole in the sense of holos, which is whole in the sense of
“safe,” (and which also sounds pleasingly both like “holes” and “halo”) — well, I can’t say that I’m
altogether, let’s say,
against togetherness. I’m not altogether against halos. I’m not against holes. Or turning.
I’m certainly not against the whole world listening and perceiving and revealing!
I’m not against, not altogether, being safe.
Danger
But I’m also not against danger.
Not altogether. (Altogether: M.E. altogedere, a strengthened form of all (also see together); used in the sense of "a
whole".)
Danger
But nonetheless, I am (in the sense wishing that less of it existed, which is what I thought the word
“against” meant before I looked it up) against certain universifications of language.
! 32
It’s related to this:
2
nd
Lt. Richard Vandegeer was a helicopter pilot who assisted in the evacuation of the U.S. embassies
in Saigon and Phnom Penh at the end of the official U.S. involvement in the Indochina War.
While he was deployed, he recorded and mailed cassette-letters to his best friend back home. He was
killed right after he helped to evacuate Phnom Penh.
Ten years after the evacuation, on April 29, 1985, National Public Radio’s show All Things
Considered aired a story that included many excerpts from Vandegeer’s cassettes. Aired his own
voice, speaking quietly, sadly, intimately with his best friend. Talking about horrible things, talking
about horrors. Actually communicating the incommunicable things.
And NPR, in this airing, bleeped out the cuss words.
This Is What I’m Against
NPR fucking bleeped out his fucking cuss words.
Danger, Cont.
Derrick Jensen, in his book A Language Older Than Words, dedicates his first chapter to silencing.
During the nineteenth century, many vivisectionists routinely severed the vocal cords before operating
on an animal. This meant that during the experiment the animals could not scream (referred to in
the literature as emitting “high-pitched vocalization”). By cutting the vocal cords experimenters
simultaneously denied reality— by pretending a silent animal feels no pain— and they affirmed it
by implicitly acknowledging that the animal’s cries would have told them what they already knew,
that the creature was a sentient, feeling (and, during the vivisection, tortured) being.
Jensen notes that 1 in 4 women are raped during their lifetimes. That 150 million children are
enslaved. That “normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of fellow normal men in the last fifty
years” (R.D. Laing). And notes that unfortunately for the earth, it does not speak a human language.
It does not, let’s say, emit a high-pitched vocalization that we are more inclined to hear.
What I mean is, there are some things we are willing to hear, and some things we are unwilling to
hear. And we have very complicated strategies, even (or especially) in poetry, for not hearing what we
don’t want to hear.
! 33
We have complicated strategies for cutting vocal chords.
Clue: Fuck
Fuck: a difficult word to trace, in part because it was taboo to the editors of the original OED when the "F" volume
was compiled, 1893-97. Written form only attested from early 16c. OED 2nd edition cites 1503, in the form fukkit;
earliest appearance of current spelling is 1535 — "Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" [Sir David
Lyndesay, "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits"], but presumably it is a much more ancient word than that, simply one
that wasn't likely to be written in the kind of texts that have survived from O.E. and M.E. Buck cites proper name
John le Fucker from 1278. The word apparently is hinted at in a scurrilous 15c. poem, titled "Flen flyys," written in
bastard L. and M.E. The relevant line reads:
Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli
"They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely." Fuccant is pseudo-Latin, and in the original
it is written in cipher.
In the Original It Is Written in Cipher
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
In the Original It Is Written in Cipher
Or, as they might write it now:
Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep
In the Original It Is Written in Cipher
Or, as the earth might say— as the cut-open dog might say— as millions of people and creatures all
around us are saying:
In the Original It Is Written in Cipher: Clue: Cunt
! 34
When I look up the word “sentimental” on the Online Etymology Dictionary, this is the
(abbreviated) list of words that it pulls up:
Sentimental: 1749, "pertaining to or characterized by sentiment," from sentiment (q.v.). At first without pejorative
connotations; meaning "having too much sentiment" had emerged by 1793 (sentimentalist).
Soppy: "very wet," 1823, from sop; meaning "sentimental".
Corny: 1570s, "full of corn, pertaining to corn, from corn (1). Chaucer used it of ale (late 14c.), perhaps to mean
"malty." Amer.Eng. slang "old-fashioned, sentimental," is from 1932 (first attested in "Melody Maker"), perhaps
originally "something appealing to country folk."
Icky: 1935, Amer.Eng., probably from icky-boo (c.1920) "sickly, nauseated," probably baby talk elaboration of
sick.
Mawkish: 1668, sickly, nauseated, from M.E. mawke "maggot" (see maggot). Sense of "sickly sentimental".
Sticky: 1727, "adhesive," from stick (v.). An O.E. word for this was clibbor. First recorded 1864 in the sense of
"sentimental;" 1915 with the meaning "difficult."
Mushy: "sentimental," 1870, from mush + -y (2). Mush, in a transferred sense of "sentimentality.” .
Sappy: "full of sap," Late O.E. sæpig, from sæp (see sap (n.1)). Fig. sense of "foolishly sentimental" (1670) may
have developed from an intermediate sense of "wet, sodden."
Sob: c.1200, probably of imitative origin, related to O.E. seofian "to lament," O.H.G. sufan "to draw breath,"
W.Fris. sobje "to suck." Sob story is from 1913. Sob sister "female journalist who writes sentimental stories or advice
columns" is from 1912.
Lackadaisical: 1768, from interjection lackadaisy "alas, alack" (1748), an alteration of lack-a-day (1690s), from
alack the day. Hence, "given to crying 'lack-a-day,' vapidly sentimental."
Cunt: "female intercrural foramen," or, as some 18c. writers refer to it, "the monosyllable," M.E. cunte "female
genitalia," akin to O.N. kunta, from P.Gmc. *kunton, of uncertain origin. Some suggest a link with L. cuneus
"wedge," others to PIE base *geu- "hollow place," still others to PIE *gwen-, root of queen and Gk. gyne "woman."
The form is similar to L. cunnus "female pudenda," which is likewise of disputed origin, perhaps lit. "gash, slit," from
PIE *sker- "to cut," or lit. "sheath," from PIE *kut-no-, from base *(s)keu- "to conceal, hide." First known
reference in Eng. is said to be c.1230 Oxford or London street name Gropecuntlane, presumably a haunt of
prostitutes. Avoided in public speech since 15c.; considered obscene since 17c. Under "MONOSYLLABLE"
Farmer lists 552 synonyms from English slang and literature before launching into another 5 pages of them in French,
German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. [A sampling: Botany Bay, chum, coffee-shop, cookie, End of the
Sentimental Journey, fancy bit, Fumbler's Hall, funniment, goatmilker, heaven, hell, Itching Jenny, jelly-bag, Low
Countries, nature's tufted treasure, parenthesis, penwiper, prick-skinner, seminary, tickle-toby, undeniable, wonderful
lamp, and aphrodisaical tennis court. Du. cognate de kont means "a bottom, an arse." Du. also has attractive poetic
slang ways of expressing this part, such as liefdesgrot, lit. "cave of love," and vleesroos "rose of flesh." Alternative
form cunny is attested from c.1720 but is certainly much earlier and forced a change in the pronunciation of coney
(q.v.), but it was good for a pun while coney was still the common word for "rabbit": "A pox upon your Christian
cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.' " [Massinger, 1622]
Sentimental, it seems, across the ancient history of the word, begins with too much emotion, gets
wet, gets hokey, turns sick, gets sicker, gets maggot-infested, turns difficult, gets wetter, starts to suck,
! 35
gets sticky, still wet, now lacking, now sobbing, now crying, and then ends on the huge entry for cunt:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
I am comforted, if by nothing else, that sentimentality ends in the body.
Ends with my body, my experience, my cunt.
My penwiper, my jelly-bag, my tufted treasure.
My Seminary, My Low Country, My Wonderful Lamp
My, holy fucking shit— it’s right there in the etymology of “cunt”— my End of the Sentimental Journey.
In the Original It Is Written in Cipher, Cont.
When I look up the word “irony” on the Online Etymology Dictionary, however, the entries are
much simpler.
This is the graph and the list of (only 2) words that Irony pulls up:
Irony: c.1500, from L. ironia, from Gk. eironeia, from eiron "dissembler," perhaps related to eirein "to speak" (see
verb). Used in Gk. of affected ignorance, especially that of Socrates. For nuances of usage, see humor.
Humor: 1340, "fluid or juice of an animal or plant," from Anglo-Norm. humour, from O.Fr. humor, from L. umor
"body fluid" (also humor, by false assoc. with humus "earth"), related to umere "be wet, moist," and to uvescere
"become wet." In ancient and medieval physiology, "any of the four body fluids" (blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy
or black bile) whose relative proportions were thought to determine state of mind. This led to a sense of "mood,
temporary state of mind" (first recorded 1525); the sense of "amusing quality, funniness" is first recorded 1682,
probably via sense of "whim, caprice" (1565), which also produced the verb sense of "indulge," first attested 1588.
"The pronunciation of the initial h is only of recent date, and is sometimes omitted ...." [OED] Humorous in the
modern sense is first recorded 1705. For types of humor, see the useful table below, from H.W. Fowler ["Modern
English Usage," 1926].
device HUMOR WIT SATIRE
SARCA
SM
INVECT
IVE
IRONY
CYNICI
SM
SARDO
NIC
motive/aim discovery
throwin
g light
amendm
ent
inflictin
g pain
discredit
exclusive
ness
self-
justificat
ion
self-
relief
! 36
So when I follow the clues I find (just as I did with Sentimental) the cunt to be at the heart of Irony,
because:
1.) Irony is associated with the dissembler (one who speaks concealingly or misleadingly— i.e. women
with cunts);
2.) Irony, as a humor, gets wet, moist, bloody, and phlegmy (as do cunts);
3.) And finally, according to Fowler, the motive or aim of Irony is “exclusiveness,” the province of
Irony is “statement of facts,” the method of Irony is “mystification,” and the audience of Irony is
“an inner circle.” All of these things I associate with cunts!
Ciphers and Inner Circles and Mystification
That both irony and sentimentality are etymologically centered inside of a human cunt— this
reassures me!
That they are both perceived to be so sick and bloody in the female body— may or may not reassure
me.
That my cunt, then my whole body, then my mind, then my language, then my poem,
are asked in eternal-history and in the eternal-present to control themselves by walking the endless
fine-lines, or to carefully remain upon whatever spot on the continuum is most popular, correct….
(comfortable, pleasingly-dangerous, but not threatening) —
this is not comforting to me.
province
human
nature
words
&
ideas
morals
&
manners
faults &
foibles
miscond
uct
statement
of facts
morals adversity
method/
means
observation
surpris
e
accentua
tion
inversio
n
direct
statement
mystificat
ion
exposur
e of
nakedne
ss
pessimis
m
audience
the
sympathetic
the
intellig
ent
the self-
satisfied
victim
&
bystand
er
the
public
an inner
circle
the
respecta
ble
the self
! 37
I am confused by and deeply interested in whether or not I believe these inner-circles and
mystifications to be something that I hold, like my “aphrodisiacal tennis court,” inside of myself,
or something to which I am subject.
Fuck and Cunt, Cont.
So, having just consulted the Online Etymology Dictionary about Fuck and Cunt, I will now consult
The Urban Dictionary, which explains:
Cunt: Derogatory term for a woman. Considered by many to be the most offensive word in the English language. A
synonym for a woman's genitalia, vagina, pussy, etc.
And then uses it in a few sentences to further clarify:
My ex-girlfriend is a fucking cunt.
She has the preetiest [sic] cunt :-) I want to fuck her cunt. You fucking cunt! I want to eat her cunt. The two women were fucking each other's cunt.
And
Fuck: This is the infamous F-word. The first swear word anyone learns. It is the most versatile word in the English
language, with most of its definitions not within the English language. It can be used any way you like, insert it in
between any word, sentence, letter. It probably fits. 1. v. To have sex: I like to fuck. 2. n. The act of having sex: That was a good fuck. 3. adj. with suffix -ed. General derogatory meaning: He is fucked. 4. A general insult: Fuck you. 5. n. Attention or care of (usually lack thereof): I don’t give a fuck. 6. v. To disregard, ignore (used with -it, -that): Fuck that. ! 38
7. v. To mess up, destroy, mangle, etc. (used with suffix -up): He fucked up the car really badly.
8. Exclamation of emotion: Oh, fuck! 9. Derogatory dismissal: Fuck off. 10. Expression of confusion: What the fuck? 11. Very, extremely: That was fucking amazing. 12. n. A person you don't like: He’s a fucker. 13. Bother, agitate: Are you trying to fuck with me? 14. v. To be in distress: I’m fucked.
And another contributor to the definition of “fuck” writes:
Fuck: The only word in the English language that can form a grammatically complete, stand-alone sentence.
And uses it in the sentence: Fuck, fucking fuckers fucked.
Or, as might have been written:
OOOOO, OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Or,
Bleep Bleep Bleep, Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep
Or,
Mystery: at the Heart of Poetic Fashion and Unfashion
I feel like the Agatha Christie of Poetry!
I am fascinated to find that the suspicion I had at the beginning of the poem— that the
entanglements many people have with sentimentality, irony, accessibility, difficulty, ease, etc. in poetry are
gendered entanglements— has been proved maybe irrefutably true by this poem!
! 39
I am fascinated that after following more and more clues in my attempt to decipher poetic fashion
and unfashion, that I keep circling and returning—one way or another—to cunts, to fucking, and to
women in general.
Etymology is like the DNA left on the scene of the word.

And contemporary definitions are, deliciously, like the interviews with all the seedy ex-boyfriends and
girlfriends of the murdered word.
If Irony and Sentimentality Are “Feminine”
at least in my investigation of them in this poem—
then the essay is “masculine.” The kind of thought-pattern that an essay represents as taught in, say, a
typical English 101 class is—on the continuum between feminine and masculine— at the masculine
end of thinking:
Masculine----------Essay----------------------------------------Irony----------Sentimentality--------Feminine
The essay, in our culture’s educational system, is the most common and most rigidly-enforced form
of training most people will receive in writing, reading, and “critical thinking” — and, most often,
the essay of the university ensures that we keep talking about the points on a continuum, or perhaps
even the continuum, itself—
but certainly the essay of the university will not, except rarely, cover the points that are, simply, off
the continuum.
This Is the Same University
however, that often radically supports and radically teaches poetry, both on and way off the
continuums.
This is the same University, as we already know, that also cuts the vocal cords of the dog. It is the
funding, the study, the experiment of the University to either hear, or not hear, the “high-pitched
! 40
vocalizations.”
That dog, Poetry, in the University, (one could poetically say)— is lending itself— willingly!
ambitiously! —to vivisection by a (“masculine”) critical tradition.
The screams? The ciphers? The bleeps? Look off the continuum. Wherever that is.
What I Mean Is This:
What I mean is that within the University there could exist a relationship with word, language,
thought, tradition, and power that might run counter to the relationship a poet might want to have
with word, language, thought, tradition, and power.
University and Power, Cont.
And further, in their required classes on essay-writing, the University teaches each and every student
who walks through its doors, to some degree or another, just how to enter that power relationship
with language.
A relationship that intends to be quite monitored and self-monitoring. Very much on the continuum,
and in fact, determining the continuums.
A relationship that is often more reverent than irreverent.
More masculine than feminine.
More white than black or brown.
More straight than queer.
More rich than poor.
Though work has been done and is being done to make this less so,
and though the students’ thinking and reading and writing can be improved by these classes,
the university might promote a relationship with language that runs completely counter to the
relationship we hope our poetry to have with language.
! 41
Don’t Get Me Wrong
Universities are among my favorite things in the world.
I have, in fact, spent years teaching and taking classes in colleges and universities which have almost
always felt as if there was something “secret” and “real” happening in them, something “human” or
“soft” or “off-syllabus” or outside of the new education-as-product and University-as-Corporation
dynamic. Something that, if The University (as Corporation) knew about, would no longer be
allowed. Something too interior. Too unmonitorable. Too uncontrollable. Too, whatever this means:
un-academic.
Academic: 1580s, "relating to an academy," also "collegiate, scholarly," from L. academicus, from academia (see
academy).
Academy: late 15c., from L. academia, from Gk. Akademeia "grove of Akademos," a legendary Athenian of the
Trojan War tales (his name apparently means "of a silent district"), whose estate, six stadia from Athens, was the
enclosure where Plato taught his school. Sense broadened 16c. into "any school or training place."
Of a Silent District!
That the Academy was originally named after Akademos, whose name meant, it turns out: “of a
silent district” — this, to me, is most comforting.
That within the heart of the academy, within the name, itself, of Academy, of what is Academic, of
what is Academia: there is the silent district. The cipher. The bleep. The scream that—vocal chords
cut or not—is still a scream.
The scream is right there: secretly central.
Is the most hopeful discovery of the poem? Or the most ominous?
That the cipher is devoured there, whole?
Or is it cradled there— protected and held at University’s center— that silent or silenced thing.
Cradled There:
! 42
Elaine Scarry writes in her book On Beauty and Being Just, and I believe it to be true:
This willingness continually to revise one’s own location in order to place oneself in
the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself
to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in
the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.
And she writes, which I also believe to be true:
To misstate, or even merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is
one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that
can be destroyed.
Devoured
I have been devoured by many universities, and come out the other side a person I preferred to the
one I was before.
Is a poem, like a university, a location that we should move ourselves into willingly in order to be
devoured.
Is a poem, like a university, the place where we go to submit to another mind so that we might be
shown a certain patch of sky.
Destroyed
Should we devour the university, or should the university devour us.
Should we devour the poem, or should the poem devour us.
Do we submit to the poem, or does the poem submit to us.
Monitored
Are we to monitor poetry,
or is poetry to monitor us.
! 43
Which is Worse (aka Better)
That we demand poetry to perform for us, or
that we perform for poetry. Or—.
Monitor
What monitoring, exactly, will I accept for myself? Will I internalize, for example, all sexism or
misogyny that might actually be meant when a poem is called “difficult” or “sentimental”?
Monitor
What monitoring of others’ language will I allow myself to do? My job has been to teach writing at a
university, after all.
This entire “poem” is my effort to monitor the ways in which certain people use certain words, after
all.
Submit
I will submit myself to— and will be devoured and destroyed by— some poems,
but not every poem, after all.
Submit
But I worry about the dog that is being dissected. I worry that its screams are being interpreted as
high-pitched vocalizations. Or as sentimental.
Or too easy. Or difficult.
Dog
But who is that dog, cradled?
! 44
Scalpel
And who is the vivisectionist.
Mystery
I could posit that it is within a masculine tradition to solve, those dicks, the mystery.
I could posit that it is within a feminine tradition to abide, those mystifiers, in mystery.
So how, then, to end this poem? What of all those points between masculine and feminine? What of
all those points off of the gender continuum, altogether.
What to do with all these continuums, now that they are made?
Pile them on top of each other
___________
____ ____
___________
like the hexagrams of the I-Ching.
Or add them all to each other to form some kind of neverendingly long thread.
An actual clew to lead us from the labyrinth.
Or place them, one after another, down and across the abdomens of whatever it is we want to know
more about.
Like the incision of a vivisection.
Mystery
Or add them, one after another, to each other until they’ve formed their logical conclusion:
The cipher. The spiral. The cunt.
! 45
! 46
Acknowledgments:
For this essay, thanks and no thanks to the contributors to Urban Dictionary, some of whom I quoted in full,
some in part, including asdf, Havoc, Captain Fantastic, Gil, Alligator Fuckmaster, selekta, Fusion Chamberlain,
Sheck, DrewP , gingernyc, SWC, Vlorg, Mh, Harrythepotter, Mac, sideshowbob, Agrabarian, bread infection,
Von Hayes, Morbog. Thanks to NPR, Urban Dictionary, and Online Etymology Dictionary.
Thankful for a series of Facebook postings that first made the link between Perloff and Artuad, whose
author(s) I have lost track of.
Special thank you to Christina Davis, whose invitation to participate in the panel “Poetic Fashion & Unfashion:
On Sentiment,” at Harvard University, inspired some of this, and to Joy Katz, whose invitation to participate
on the panel “Hot/ Not: Sentiment in Contemporary Poetry,” at AWP , inspired some of this. Thank you to
fellow panelists and thinkers about these questions, Sally Ball, Jenny Browne, Mark Bibbins, Miranda Field,
Annie Finch, Kevin Prufer, & Rachel Zucker.
Thank you also to Cate Marvin, Cody Todd, Bonnie Nadzam, Jeff Encke, Ira Sadoff, and Todd Fredson.
Thank you to the universities, including University of Southern California, Arizona State University, Brown
University, etc.
Notes:
Artaud, “All Writing is Pigshit”
Perloff, Wittgenstein’s Ladder
Rukeyser, The Collected Poems
Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words
Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
! 47
Viability

Sarah Vap

! 48
! 49
The more torture went on in the basement, the more insistently they made sure the roof rested on columns.
– Adorno.
Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love.
—John of the Cross ! 50
These poems appeared, sometimes under different title or in a different form, in the following publications.
Grateful acknowledgment to:
American Poetry Review, Court Green, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Marooned, Packingtown Review, Starting Today
Anthology, Fire On Their Tongues Anthology, Poem-A-Day, Interim, Lingerpost, New Census Online Feature ! 51
The splintered log filled me mouth to groin. And growing—growing, the emerald was blood. The stones in the
water were eyes and I was not recognized by either the givings or the killings that will make a woman a mother,
that will make a mother a moon dropped to the water and carving out her own eye. Our family was afraid for
itself until we were worn. And became, at evening’s porcelain quality, like even the dead dog’s bones, silent and
white. The infant and the carriage, frozen below the firepond— they held themselves, were alone. We looked
down at them through thick ice while they ripped him from me in the single, performed loneliness.
! 52
Bloodletting: A period marked by severe investing losses. Bloodletting may occur during a bear market, in
which the value of securities in many sectors may decline rapidly and heavily.
! 53
The body below my head is exploded, memory bloodlets. Remembrance, rapidly and heavily.
! 54
Hysteresis: From the Greek term meaning “a coming short, a deficiency.” Hysteresis, a term coined by Sir
James Alfred Ewing, a Scottish physicist and engineer (1855-1935), refers to systems, organisms and fields that
have memory. In other words, the consequences of an input are experienced with a certain lag time, or delay.
One example is seen with iron: iron maintains some magnetization after it has been exposed to and removed
from a magnetic field. In economics, hysteresis arises when a single disturbance affects the course of the
economy.
! 55
Hysterical stitched together it used to be something else I don’t know what. Oozing parted roughly it used to
be something else I don’t know what. Pulling itself toward me something needs help I don’t remember what.
Does it hum, it does. I listen to it hum. Does it hum, it does. I listen to it hum. Does it hum, it does: I will listen
to it hum.
! 56
Hold him. An infant can’t love himself, I think. Plum, magenta reversals of light—a cloth ball to roll to the
infant. His is the more decent dark radiance—he is still an infant picking through a pile of yarn. He might
watch the beautiful things of this world disappear. Yet where my remembrance joins his reminiscence—as
scraps of paper on the floor, or a few purple tiles. Who, on the advice of her soul alone, could be the
counterweight of his plain light. But the final color is different, as something permanent is. As an heir to
memory is, or as a love that will hurt us.
! 57
Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love. Where there is no memory, put memory— and you
will find memory. Where there is no pull, put iron filings, put metals, put bindings, put jaw-traps wide open,
and there you will find the pull. -John of the Cross
! 58
Leading Lipstick Indicator: An indicator based on the theory that a consumer turns to less expensive
indulgences, such as lipstick, when she feels less than confident about the future. Therefore, lipstick sales tend
to increase during times of economic uncertainty or a recession. Also known as the “lipstick effect.”
This term was coined by Leonard Lauder (chairman of Estee Lauder), who consistently found that during
tough economic times, his lipstick sales went up. Believe it or not, the indicator has been quite a reliable signal
of consumer attitudes over the years. For example, in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks,
lipstick sales doubled.
! 59
Breathing loaf of wild animal, give, I said to you once. Paint my eyes black at their edges. Blue powder that
glows in the grease. Did I say it when I held our son up above my head laughing so hard my milk fell out of his
mouth to the edge of my eye. But who would hear of blackened milk or of this joy, we are tired of women and
children. Tired of a woman’s painted eye which has not stopped us, and God has not stopped us. The
possibility is different where free and wild have lived in the adoring mind. The blackening woods at evening are
beside me, pulling rabbits. Pulling rabbits.
! 60
What do we mean by “efficiency”? Essentially, we shall mean a comparison of the return from the use of this
form of capital—Negro slaves—with the returns being earned on other capital assets at the time. Thus we
mean to consider whether the slave system was being dragged down of its own weight; whether the allocation
of resources was impaired by the rigidity of the capitalized labor supply; whether southern capital was misused
or indeed drawn away to the North; and, finally, whether slavery must inevitably have declined from an inability
of the slave force to reproduce itself.
! 61
Where there is inability, put worth dragging down one’s own weight. Where capital is misused and drawn away,
put more inability. Slavery’s failure is the fault of slavery—put much more fault, put membranes between the
faults, and there you will find your inability. –John of the Cross ! 62
To survive this, she whispers, this world. Her love lasts into the slipped marriage of her precisions— Latin,
precis, is prayer. Precarios: the precious thing. Does the precious thing hum, it does. Does the precarious thing
hum, it does.
! 63
In what ways was slavery allegedly responsible for the drain of capital from the South? The major avenues by
which wealth is said to have been drained from the cotton states were the excessive use of credit and the
“absorption” of capital in slaves.
! 64
I was looking for ways to help my family. This broker knew I was looking for work. He said he could find me a
job in Thailand. All I had to do was pay a 12,000 baht fee. There was probably around 700 of us. Old men,
teenage girls, everyone. We travelled in a convoy in pick-up trucks. Then we trekked for days through the
jungle. There was no food. Some died on the way, others got left behind. When I saw the fishing boats, I
realised I’d been sold. ! 65
Where there is no doubling, put rabbits—put lipstick. There you will find increase. Where lipstick, put
absorption. Where absorption, put women. There is no reason to make this more difficult than it is. In what
way is slavery responsible for the drain of capital from the South? Is this the question? Want increase, put
increase, find increase. –John of the Cross
! 66
Bo Derek: A slang term used to describe a perfect stock or investment. In the 1979 hit movie 10, actress Bo
Derek portrayed the “perfect woman,” or “the perfect 10.” This term was used more often in the early 1980s,
after the movie 10 first came out. Nowadays, the name of a more current celebrity, like Jennifer Lopez, might
be used in finance jargon.
! 67
Was the southerner his own victim in an endless speculative inflation of slave prices?
! 68
It seems that the parlous state of fish stocks and the pressure to monitor supply chains for sustainability has
made the issue of slavery visible. Two retailers who did not wish to be named said that when they started to
look at where fish for prawn feed was coming from, it became clear that the boats engaged in illegal fishing
were also likely to be using trafficked forced labour.
! 69
Where there is no love, put information. There you will find the algorithm. Put even more information. The
algorithm will increase. Everything you want will increase. –John of the Cross ! 70
Where there is no speculation, put inflation—and you will find love’s victim. Put the victim. Put operations all
across the victim. Put very quiet calls for each other. If I understand, what we want here is an increase. - John
of the Cross
! 71
Night, two months along. I wanted an infant, I put an infant, and so there I will find an infant. I imagine we are
together right now. Your fingers, we will sleep. Our daydreams—wishing for you across all of time’s thickness
—across all of dark water and into entire night. Toothless and devout, the wormhole you could slip through.
No light at all untelling our quietest calls for each other within the small time that we could be given. Darkness.
Quiet. A speed, excessively given. Infant, our worlds are almost held together, will help be given.
! 72
The halo effect: A term used in marketing to explain the bias shown by customers towards certain products
because of a favorable experience with other products made by the same manufacturer or maker. Basically, the
halo effect is driven by brand equity. The opposite of the halo effect is “cannibalization”.
! 73
Where there is no cannibalization, put wire—and you will find wire. Where there is no cannibalization, put
memory—and you will find mind. Where there is no wire halo, put wire wrapped tightly around a mind. Put
wire wrapped tightly around a torso. Put wire wrapped tightly around many bodies at the same time. Where
there are no saints, put cannibalization— put body upon body—and there you will find even more. -John of
the Cross
! 74
Daydream: The infant becomes several large fish inside me, my mouth tastes like fishwater. I ooze fish, feel the
fish churn and surge from vagina to tonsils they are becoming desperate. They want to escape out my throat I
gag and I want, I whisper to you, to puke large, whole fishes. I want fishes up my throat and out my mouth. I
want all my teeth to scrape at the scales as the fish swim up my throat and out my mouth. I want a paste of
scales and blood to gather along the backs of all my teeth as the fish move up my throat and out my mouth. I
am convulsing with maniac fish when the heat of my body turns on: the fish are stilling. The fish are boiling.
The fish are dying I am the one doing it.
! 75
To the extent that profitability is a necessary condition for the continuation of a private business institution in a
free-enterprise society, slavery was not untenable in the ante bellum American South.
! 76
Extensive overfishing in the Gulf of Thailand has forced Thai fleets to travel further afield for longer periods
to meet market demands. According to UN estimates, roughly 40% of all Thailand’s seafood is now being
caught in foreign waters, from Malaysia and Indonesia all the way out towards Papua New Guinea to the east
and Bangladesh to the west.
Coupled with mounting petrol prices, this overfishing has led to ever-decreasing profit margins for Thai boat
captains, says Human Rights Watch’s Robertson: “What motivates is not concern for fishermen’s welfare, but
rather maximising catch and ensuring profitability, and that means 18- to 22-hour work days and martial
discipline to keep men working.
! 77
Untenable? Where there is no love, put continuation or put increase or put proliferation—and there you will
find the love untenable. Language is not infinity. Language is not hopeful. There is no rapture in language.
Language is always doing. Language is never undoing. I admit that I had hoped to “love” and “be loved.” –
John of the Cross
! 78
Skirt Length Theory: The idea that skirt lengths are a predictor of the stock market direction. According to
the theory, if skirts are short, it means the markets are going up. And if skirts are long, it means the markets are
heading down. Also called the Hemline Theory.
The idea behind this theory is that shorter skirts tend to appear in times when general consumer confidence
and excitement is high, meaning the markets are bullish. In contrast, the theory says long skirts are worn more
in times of fear and general gloom, indicating that things are bearish. Although some investors may secretly believe in such a theory, serious analysts and investors—instead of
examining skirt length to make investment decisions—insist on focusing on market fundamentals and data.
! 79
The actual bear is in a skirt. The actual bull is a saint. The actual fish is a multibillion-dollar industry. The actual
skirt is a fundamental. What do you secretly believe in? What do you secretly want? Me—if I could conceive, I
could increase. –John of the Cross
! 80
Where there is no information, put information—put operations—the algorithm is unbreakable. The algorithm
is thinking. –John of the Cross ! 81
I examine the infant for breathing does it hum, it does. I examine my father for breathing does he hum, he
does. There is a hum, therefore, at each end of my memory, and where there is memory there is the love
cannibalizing the memory. My father is dying my infant is still living. They are both in the same doorway. They
are in the same light. ! 82
Cash Cow: 1. One of the four categories (quadrants) in the BCG growth-share matrix that represents the
division within a company that has a large market share within a mature industry. 2. A business, product, or asset that, once acquired and paid off, will produce consistent cash flow over its
lifespan. A cash cow requires little investment capital and perennially provides positive cash flows, which can be
allocated to other divisions within the corporation. These cash generators may also use their money to buy
back shares on the market or pay dividends to shareholders.
Cash Cow is a metaphor for a dairy cow that produces milk over the course of its life and requires little
maintenance. A dairy cow is an example of a cash cow, as after the initial capital outlay has been paid off, the
animal continues to produce milk for many years to come.
! 83
This launch around my throat’s warm collapse—and love’s holler collapsed… mouthful, full of the warming,
oh, valentine. Long, and left better collapsed along the lover. Warm, and left better, collapsed along the caw.
The caws, thermonuclear, left open left seeping around us.
! 84
Of the 15 current and former slaves the Guardian interviewed during the investigation, 10 had witnessed a
fellow fisherman murdered by his boat captain or net master. Ei Ei Lwin, the Burmese fisherman, claims he
saw “18 to 20 people killed in front of me.”

! 85
But where are the animals of actual praise. Where are the animals of actual mercy. Where is the coin in the
animal. Where is the coin in the infant and where is infant in the infant animal. – John of the Cross
! 86
I want fusion, as in a joining together. As in confusion. As in thermonuclear. I want to become mixed together
with something infinite, together at my smallest and my greatest part. Fused, for example, with exponential
growth. Fused with exponential decay—or fused with the passage of fish across time. Fused with the generous
field, leaning always toward me. Or fused with the animals of increase. – John of the Cross
! 87
! 88
From the standpoint of the entrepreneur making an investment in slaves, the basic problems involved in
determining the profitability are analytically the same as those met in determining the returns from any other
kind of capital investment. The acquisition of a slave represented the tying-up of capital in what has
appropriately been called a roundabout method of production. Like the purchase of any capital, a slave
purchase was made in the anticipation of gaining higher returns than are available from less time-consuming or
capital-using methods. This model is particularly applicable in the present case, because slave investments, like
the forests or wine cellars of classic capital theory, produced a natural increase with the passage of time.
! 89
Daydream: Wire is wrapped around my torso— line exactly under line exactly under line from my collarbone
to my hips. No skin shows the wire is so exactly wrapped and I can just barely expand my lungs to breathe.
With the natural passage of time the infant will grow. This is a kind of natural increase. As the infant grows it
will be crushed. The wire will not give and I will not give.
! 90
Stillborn God, will you rip your own body to hold your share of what hurts— as Columbus ran the Santa
Maria aground a reef of Hispaniola. On Christmas day she foundered, and Columbus built La Navidad, a
military fortress, from her remains. So even in human terms we are no longer what we were. The comfort we
need is inhuman. The curtain of water, incessant. The curtain of water, incessant.
! 91
! 92
Goodwill: An intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a
premium value. The value of a company’s brand name, solid customer base, good customer relations, good
employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology represent goodwill. Goodwill is considered an
intangible asset because it is not a physical asset like buildings or equipment. The goodwill account can be
found in the assets portion of a company’s balance sheet.

! 93
Where there is no goodwill, put acquisition. Put incessant proprietary technology. Where there is no goodwill,
put cannibalization. Put host. Put incarnation. Put transmutation. Where there is no love, put abstract animals.
Where there is no love, put lipstick. Put mascara. Put lipstick down the rat. Hairspray up the nose of the rat.
Where there is no love, put lipstick on abstract animals. -John of the Cross
! 94
Either the infant is assimilated or else he is annihilated. Either the infant is extracted or else he is disgorged.
Asleep on top of me his mouth is soggy and open. My heart hurts. A fetal curl pressed into me, face in my
armpit because if he can’t smell me he can’t sleep. He roots, grunts, until my nipple is in his mouth. Still asleep,
he rubs my other breast while he sucks. He is not hidden from me because I won’t understand but hidden from
me absolutely.
! 95
Jennifer Lopez: A slang technical analysis term referring to a rounding bottom in a stock’s price pattern. This
term got its name from Jennifer Lopez’s curvy figure; she is often criticized (or praised) for her round bottom.
Traders like the rounding bottom in a stock pattern because it can be an indication of a positive market
reversal, meaning expectations are gradually shifting from bearish to bullish.
! 96
Some were shot, others were tied up with stones and thrown into the sea, and one was ripped apart, he says. He
hated his captain and tried to beat him to death. But the captain escaped by jumping into the sea. The other
captains came and pinned the fisherman down. Then they tied up his hands and legs to four separate boats and
pulled him apart. ! 97
There is a pink light through Tamar’s veil. There is a stone quality to time —when the poorest cannot make
their bodies good. A woman’s body is a list of hard facts. How it feels and what it has done shivering with seed,
I am his mother. Also lifted, also laughing, also smeared across the substances.
! 98
A bear’s body is a list of hard facts about her body. A bull’s body is a list of hard facts about her body. A man’s
body is a list of hard facts about her body. A man’s body should outperform its competition. –John of the
Cross
! 99
Angelina Jolie Stock Index: An index made up of a selection of stocks from companies associated with
actress Angelina Jolie. Seen as one of the world’s most influential celebrities, some analysts believe that
companies connected with Jolie will outperform their competition.
The index was created by Fred Fuld of Stockerblog.com; it includes the stocks of movie studios and producers
that have had a connection with Angelina Jolie, such as Sony (NYSE: SNE), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Time
Warner (NYSE: TWX). Because Jolie’s films usually earn large box-office revenues, the companies that produce
these movies should have higher profits.

! 100
Index, put actual bears, put actual bulls, put actual cows, put actual lipstick on the actual animals of real earth. –
John of the Cross
! 101
Index, put the shivering seed, put the climbing vine around the torso of the golden goose, put Jack on the
doorstep of the giant or put infants in the pot of actual earth. –John of Cross
! 102
Index, I don’t have the authority. –John of the Cross
! 103
The inefficiency argument is not supported very securely. There were slaves employed in cotton factories
throughout the South. Slaves were used in the coal mines and in North Carolina lumbering operations. In the
ironworks at Richmond and on the Cumberland River, slaves comprised a majority of the labor force. Southern
railroads were largely built by southern slaves. Crop diversification, or the failure to achieve diversification,
appears to have been a problem of entrepreneurship rather than of the difficulties of training slaves. In the
face of the demand for cotton and the profits to be had from specializing in this single crop, it is hardly
difficult to explain the single-minded concentration of the planter. ! 104
Index, in the face of the difficulty of training slaves, put crop diversification. In the face of the difficulty of
training slaves, put demand for cotton, put single-minded concentration. Put a body between four boats. Put
your hands in the gesture of prayer. Put your body in the gesture of cowering. Put your face in the expression
of an animal. –John of the Cross
! 105
In the glow of the planet earth night-light the infant has dissolved earth’s favor: he is a speck among the specks
we’ve missed. The crystal fringe of the wedding dress is a simple column of glass blown from the volcano—
infant. He who could emerge whole into the world. Earth, the sky is the white knight—his hands are cupped
toward you in the ancient gesture of need.

! 106
! 107
Globalization: The tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic and national
markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnectedness of different markets.
Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing not only international trade, but also cultural exchange.
The advantages and disadvantages of globalization have been heavily scrutinized and debated in recent years.
Proponents of globalization say that it helps developing nations "catch up" to industrialized nations much
faster through increased employment and technological advances. Critics of globalization say that it weakens
national sovereignty and allows rich nations to ship domestic jobs overseas where labor is much cheaper.
! 108
Daydream: I am lying naked on my back on the floor. Strangers walk through the room, one after another,
and step on my belly. They are wearing white clothes and no shoes and some balance, bounce, then step off.
Some stomp. My belly is huge. Exposed. I am giant and made up almost only of my own eyes. As the they pass
over us, another, another, I can feel the infant’s legs arms head push out into my lungs and into my throat and
against the cage of my bones stressed almost to cracking, another. Another in the light of the doorway. The
line of people extends as far as I can see. At each step we are deformed. The room is dark the strangers are
endless and I don’t seem to stop them.
! 109
“Ghost boats” – unlicensed replicas of properly registered and licensed boats – make up as much as half of
Thailand’s true fishing fleet, according to a 2011 International Organisation for Migration report.
“There’s a technique,” a high-ranking marine police officer in Kantang, on the Andaman coast, told the
Guardian. “If you have 10 boats, you buy a licence for just two or three boats. Then you’ll have two boats with
the same name, and two with no name.” He chuckles. “If they get stopped, they have a licence to show the
authorities, but really it’s a fake licence.”
! 110
Lady Godiva Accounting Principles: A theoretical set of accounting principles under which corporations
would have to fully disclose all information, including that which often doesn’t get reported to investors under
generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). These principles include disclosure of the following: -all off-balance sheet items -how new goodwill accounting rules (introduced in 2002) impact earnings per share (EPS) -the impact on EPS of stock options issued in lieu of salaries -how pension expenses are accounted for
This buzzword was coined by financial analyst Rick Wayman after the Enron bankruptcy. According to legend, Lady Godiva was a woman who rode a horse naked through Coventry, England, in the
11
th
century in order to get her husband, the Lord of Coventry, to lift the heavy taxes on his people. The idea
of LGAP is that just as the Lady provided “full disclosure” to help her fellow citizens, corporations must do
the same thing with their financial disclosures to maintain their credibility with investors.
! 111
Daydream: Amidst all this lovemaking God and animals must enter, if she then crosses her thighs it becomes a
“circle.” If, in the “mare’s trap” which can only be done with practice, she grasps him like a mare so tightly that
he cannot move.
! 112
Where there is no God, put full disclosures. Where there is no circle, put full-disclosures, full-disclosures so
tightly that you cannot move. -John of the Cross
! 113
Slave longevity corresponds, of course, to the period for which a slave investment was made. Looking back at
the data in Table 1, there is no reason to expect twenty-year old Massachusetts Negros to have a lower life-
expectancy than Massachusetts whites, though both clearly lived longer than southern Negroes of the period.
Taking all these factors into account, an estimate of thirty to thirty-five years of life-expectancy seems most
plausible for twenty-year-old Negroes working as prime cotton hands on southern plantations in the period
1830-50, and a thirty-year life-expectancy will generally be used in the succeeding calculations. ! 114
Gush, the long pink ribbon. The long skin-pudding shaken out— my sympathy comes from my body. The
baby’s old brain and new brain, without the sense burnt or built, are terrible into the light—or thoroughly we
believe otherwise. The catastrophe of my body for the body I surround—the fish-human with a fever mark on
its cheek. These are the years, “childbearing,” when things will live or die and inside of us. How still is this
reciprocity: to let alone something that I might have touched.
! 115
This is capitalism at its worst, and it is supported by a dramatic alteration in the basic economic equation of
slavery. Where an average slave in 1850 would have cost the equivalent of $40,000 in modern money, today’s
slave can be bought for a few hundred dollars. This cheapness makes the modern slave easily affordable, but it
also makes him or her a disposable commodity.
! 116
Gadfly: A slang term for an investor who attends the annual shareholders meeting to criticize the
corporation’s executives. A gadfly addresses many issues for the shareholders, often grilling the management by
asking difficult or embarrassing questions.
Named after small insects that bite and annoy livestock, the gadfly looks to irritate a corporation’s management
until it acts on shareholder concerns. Questions regarding executive compensation or inconvenient annual
meeting locations are often brought to light by a gadfly. A gadfly adds value for other shareholders by
vocalizing their concerns and inciting action.
! 117
! 118
With one glass I’ve trapped a roach over the drain. While it thinks, I crawl on the floor searching for the rattle
and bits of the other glass that I broke—their secret alignments, I know you have heard this: a secret. It feels
like a secret I’ll carve out more deeply with this infant. To talk to you of the infant is to talk to you about God
with the awe spinning or dropping from the mother of this house. You won’t forget me, when I lift this glass,
and I won’t forget you.
! 119
It is also frequently argued that slavery gave southern planters a taste for extravagant, wasteful display, causing
the notorious lack of thrift and the relative lack of economic development, compared to that experienced in
the North and West. This is a doubtful inference, at best. Slavery did not make the Cavalier any more than
slavery invented speculation in cotton.
! 120
Slavery did not make the Cavalier! Slavery does not make extravagance! Slavery does not reproduce itself
quickly enough. Slavery does not make the Southern planter do anything he doesn’t already want to do—does
slavery have that kind of Index? –John of the Cross
! 121
Is the Index actually a woman who could love us? Think about it that way. – John of the Cross
! 122
How does the Index love us? The Index loves us like we are its infant and its meal. The Index loves us like we
are its labor and its fuck. The Index loves us like we are its information and its surface upon which to reflect.
The Index loves us like we are its lipstick and its mother. The Index loves us like we are slaves with the ability
to reproduce ourselves. –John of the Cross
! 123
Eva Longoria Stock Index: A stock index comprised of companies related to the actress Eva Longoria.
Some analysts believe that Eva Longoria has enough influence over consumers that her endorsements will
materially affect product sales.
On the popular television show “Desperate Housewives,” Longoria often promotes consumer goods. Outside
of acting, she has endorsement deals with companies such as Hanes (NYSE: HBI), Bebe (NASDAQ: BEBE),
and L’Oreal (NASDAQ: LRLCY) These companies are included in the Eva Longoria Stock Index, under the
premise that her fans will increase the revenues of the promoted products.
! 124
Put all of your money in the Eva Longoria Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Angelina Jolie Stock
Index. Put all of your money in the Lindsay Lohan Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Jennifer Lopez
Stock Index. Put all of your money in the Paris Hilton Stock Index. Put it in the tender membranes of their
Index, pink membranes, weapons-grade membranes, civilized membranes holding our worlds together. –John
of the Cross
! 125
A single membrane separated me from the infant whose horizon was simple: a sheet of light. The surface that
held our worlds together. Strong fat legs—he stands. But the other who left in the blood, left while you
wrapped the leftover cake in the old cloth diaper that we use for a rag.
! 126
After being warned for four consecutive years that it was not doing enough to tackle slavery within its borders,
Thailand now risks being downgraded to the lowest ranking on the US State Department’s Human Trafficking
Index, which evaluates 188 nations according to how well they combat and prevent human trafficking. A
relegation to Tier 3 would put Thailand on a par with North Korea and Iran, and could lead to a downgrade in
Thailand’s trading status with the US.
According to the Global Slavery Index, nearly 500,000 people are believed to be currently enslaved within
Thailand’s borders – and a significant number of them are likely to be out at sea. ! 127
We said that love is an almost-unimaginable proliferation, is the daughter-product. Love, we said, yields. Love is
the generous field that bends toward me, the radiance during the blast. We said that love increases as memory
increases. We measured love in tiers and tables and in equivalent megatons. We measured love, and love
increased.

! 128
Absolute Advantage: The ability of a country, individual, company, or region to produce a good or service at
a lower cost per unit than the cost at which any other entity produces that good or service. Entities with
absolute advantages can produce a product or service using a smaller number of inputs and/or using a more
efficient process than another party producing the same product or service. Here is an example of how
absolute advantage works: Jane can knit a sweater in 10 hours, while Kate can knit a sweater in 8 hours. Kate has an absolute advantage
over Jane, because it takes her fewer hours (the input) to produce a sweater (the output). An entity can have an absolute advantage in more than one good or service. Absolute advantage also explains
why it makes sense for countries, individuals, and businesses to trade with one another. Because each has
advantages in producing certain products and services, they can both benefit from trade. For example:
Jane can produce a painting in 5 hours while Kate needs 9 hours to produce a comparable painting, Jane has an
absolute advantage over Kate in painting. Remember Kate has an absolute advantage over Jane in knitting
sweaters. If both Jane and Kate specialize in the products they have an absolute advantage in and buy the
products they don’t have an absolute advantage in from the other entity, they will both be better off.
! 129
Less, and less, to love. Of ourselves, too. We have tried everything. Children waiting in a horoscope, the tips of
a ministerial light—Temperence crossed by the knight in our Tarot. Very soon, his teeth will emerge one by one.
You will pound them in a circle to the side of the barn, and wait for the sun to strike it. To mark it with
another B.
! 130
Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love. Put wire. –John of the Cross
! 131
Where there is no love, put wire—and you will refine love. –John of the Cross
! 132
Falling Knife: A slang phrase for a security or industry in which the current price or value has dropped
significantly in a short period of time. A falling knife security can rebound, or it can lose all of its value, such as
in the case of company bankruptcy where equity shares become worthless.
As the phrase suggests, buying into a market with a lot of downward momentum can be quite dangerous. If
timed perfectly, a buy at the bottom of a long downtrend can be rewarding—both financially and emotionally
—but the risks run extremely high. This term implies that the investment will never be a good one again.
! 133
Daydream: I am grotesquely huge so that when I lean over to pick up my teacup the pressure makes the blood
of my body fall out my mouth. Fall smoothly, like buckets of blood simply falling. My body deflates as the
pressure of all the blood falling increases: now blood from my mouth like blood from a fire hose— blood
sprays and my face is thrown back from the force. Now I’m heaving blood. I’m heaving and my mouth, open
wide, is pouring—pausing—pouring. The teacup in my hand as blood is falling. Blood down the walls and over
the floor. I’m soaked with blood and the room is soaking up blood when human teeth fill the blood.

! 134
The price of slaves fluctuated widely, being subject to the waves of speculation in cotton. Furthermore, the
price depended, among other things, upon the age, sex, disposition, degree of training, and condition of the
slave. In order to hold these variables roughly constant, we shall confine our present analysis to eighteen-
twenty-year-old prime field hands and wenches. Some summary data on slave prices were compiled by U. B.
Phillips on the basis of available market quotations, bills of transactions, and reports of sales in most of the
important slave markets of Georgia. His estimates of the best averages for several years between 1828 and
1860 are presented in Table 2. On the basis of these date it would appear that both the median and the mean
price for prime field hands were in the range from $900 to $950 in the period 1830-50.
! 135
Where there is no love, put infants in Table 2. Put angels in Table 1. Where there are no angels, put infants or
put no infants—and there you will find no love. There is some increase in infant radiance. –John of the Cross
! 136
Angel investors are high net worth individuals who deploy their own funds to provide startup capital to
promising early stage ventures. Silicon Valley, where many of the world’s biggest technology companies got
their start, is home to numerous archangels. ! 137
One had his start when he was carved quietly out, and the other, his little trucks covering the table while we
wait. Is it better to say lost than to write it— the burn until he cooled inside of a hospital, inside cure’s
humiliations.
! 138
Life on a 15-metre trawler is brutal, violent and unpredictable. Many of the slaves interviewed by the Guardian
recalled being fed just a plate of rice a day. Men would take fitful naps in sleeping quarters so cramped they
would crawl to enter them, before being summoned back out to trawl fish at any hour. Those who were too ill
to work were thrown overboard, some interviewees reported, while others said they were beaten if they so
much as took a lavatory break.
! 139
Put acute exposure. Put luminosity at a maximum. Put official registration, put a conglomerate, put annual
revenue of more than $30bn, put 500,000 tonnes of shrimp a year, put an Ocean Health Index. –John of the
Cross

! 140
Where there is no infant, put Americium—there you will find the infant radiating. –John of the Cross
! 141
Americium (pronounced AM-ə-RISH-ee-əm) is a radioactive transuranic chemical element with symbol Am and
atomic number 95. This member of the actinide series is located in the periodic table under the lanthanide
element europium, and thus by analogy was named after another continent, America.
The longest-lived and most common isotopes of americium,
241
Am and
243
Am, have half-lives of 432.2 and
7,370 years, respectively. Therefore, any primordial americium (americium that was present on Earth during its
formation) should have decayed by now.
Existing americium is concentrated in the areas used for the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted
between 1945 and 1980, as well as at the sites of nuclear incidents, such as the Chernobyl disaster.
! 142
Love Money: Seed money or capital given by family or friends to an entrepreneur to start a business. The
decision to lend money and the terms of the agreement are usually based on qualitative factors and the
relationship between the two parties, rather than on a formulaic risk analysis.
! 143
Storm. You pronounce it out loud, like to a dog—stop. Turn. Unstoppably, the living one sleeps. His rest was as
bare as my memory of that snow, or as a warning— and the whole tree sparkles across the road. We are trying
to return home from the hospital when irrigation pipes also curl over the roads like we imagine the DNA curls.
The road is pure gold glass at sunset. He is silent behind us, the monsters of his sleep are gone, the sky is
buried, finally, everything gone.

! 144
! 145
Seasons: The current stage of a proposed business idea or concept. Seasons is a slang term that is generally
used among venture capitalists. The seasons are spring (infancy), summer (adolescence), fall (maturing) and
winter (mature).
! 146
But, despite the fact that the problem is ostensibly one in economic history, no attempt has ever been made to
measure the profitability of slavery according to the economic (as opposed to accounting) concept of
profitability. This paper is an attempt to fill that void. ! 147
Where there is void, there you will find the Index. There you will find relentlessness. There you will find
proliferation. But was that a void to be filled? That was not a void to be filled. Did you think that was a void to
be filled? Is this what the Index told you? –John of the Cross

! 148
Sentiment Indicator: A graphical or numerical indicator designed to show how a group feels about the
market, business environment, or other factors. A sentiment indicator seeks to quantify how various factors,
such as unemployment, inflation, macroeconomic conditions, or politics influence future behavior. ! 149
Root, relentless. Little dream, you offer your ghost of an answer… are you pitiless? I have called you. Come.
We’ll all —that I cannot, right now, remember we will.
! 150
Billionaire: An individual who has assets or a net worth of at least one billion currency units such as dollars,
euros or pounds. Each year, Forbes magazine publishes a list of the world’s billionaires. When Forbes produced
the first list in 1987, there were 140 names on the list. Twenty-five years later, in 2012, the list had grown to
1,226, an all-time high. Twenty-four of the billionaires on the original 1987 list remained on the list for 2012.
According to the 2012 Forbes report, there are billionaires from 58 countries, with the most coming from the
United States, Russia and mainland China. As of 2012, some of the world’s wealthiest billionaires included
Carlos Slim Helu (net worth: $69 billion, source: telecommunications), Bill Gates ($61 billion, Microsoft),
Warren Buffett ($44 billion, Berkshire Hathaway) and Bernard Arnault ($41 billion, LVMH).
! 151
Monster coined, and the persistent thought at the back of the mind, at the front of the mind: what about
the money. What about the health. What about the money. What about the health. What about the actual
care for the actual infant. What about the actual health. What about the money to buy the animals to feed the
infant.
! 152
The infant will in time rub clean, old gold coin smoothed of its ruler. Of almost mythical completeness. A
simple cut. A severing will follow the slope that returns him to the shame of all real love. Operation, if this
were meant to happen gently. Operation, if the infant has a shelf-life. If the infant has a half-life. If the infant
becomes irrelevant. If a billionaire becomes the love, radiating.
! 153
Anti-Fragility: A postulated antithesis to fragility where high-impact events or shocks can be beneficial. Anti-
fragility is a concept developed by professor, former trader, and former hedge fund manager Nassim Nicholas
Taleb. Taleb coined the term “anti-fragility” because he thought the existing words used to describe the
opposite of “fragility,” such as “robustness,” were inaccurate. Anti-fragility goes beyond robustness; it means
that something does not merely withstand a shock but actually improves because of it.
For example, he describes an anti-fragile trading strategy as one that does not merely withstand a turbulent
market but becomes more appealing under such conditions. Another example he gives is weight lifting, which
trains muscles not just to withstand heavy lifting but to develop increased strength as the body repairs the
muscle fiber tears.
! 154
At various points along the way, checkpoints are passed and officials bribed – with Thai border police often
playing an integral role.
“Police and brokers – the way I see it – we’re business partners,” explains the broker, who claims to have
trafficked thousands of migrants into Thailand over the past five years. “We have officers working on both
sides of the Thai-Burmese border. If I can afford the bribe, I let the cop sit in the car and we take the main
road.”
! 155
Lindsay Lohan Stock Index: A stock index comprised of companies associated with actress Lindsay Lohan.
Investors might correlate the popularity of Lohan with increased sales surrounding her related products. Firms
involved with Lohan endorsements, advertising or movies are included in the index.
Fans may see Lindsay Lohan use a certain product, such as her Mercedes Benz, and rush to purchase one for
themselves. The increased demand will usually drive up a company’s sales, merely for being associated with
Lohan. Companies involved in the index include Disney (NYSE: DIS), who produce many of Lohan’s films,
Daimler Chrysler (NYSE: DCX), and Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT). As with most celebrity-related terms, buzz words such as this usually have a shorter shelf life and may become
irrelevant.

! 156
Where there is no love. Where there is no love. Where there are no super-angels. Where there is no blast wave.
Where there is no cooling pool. Where there is no half-life. Where there is no trash-fish. Where there is no by-
catch. Where there is no inedible or infant species of fish. Where there is no love. Where there is no curve.
Where there is no Index. Where there is no woman. Where there is no price. Where there is no infant. Where
there is no price. Where there is no animal. Where there is no infant in the cooling pond. –John of the Cross
! 157
The evidence employed in this debate has been provided by the few, usually fragmentary, accounting records
that have come down to us from early plantation activities. The opposing parties have arranged and rearranged
the data in accordance with various standard and sometimes imaginary accounting conventions. Indeed, the
debate over the value of the different constituent pieces of information reconstructs in embryo much of the
historical development of American accounting practices.
! 158
Where there is no embryo, put bikinis. Where there is no embryo, reconstruct the Embryo of American
Accounting Practices. Put actual animals into the embryo. Put bears. Put cows. Put chickens. Put all the inedible
and infant fish into the embryo. Put shrimp into the embryo. Put animals in bikinis. Put americium into the
embryo. Put High-Level Waste into the embryo. Put uranium-235 into the embryo. Put plutonium-239 into the
embryo. Put tritium into the embryo. Put Bikini Atoll into the embryo. Radiate the embryo and there you
will find the Embryo of American Accounting Practices. –John of the Cross
! 159
Night, the three of us watch, holding hands, a children’s roller coaster in the shape of a dragon, and you say:
as if someone could disappear without residue. Without a stain of love somewhere on earth. Christ salted his
fish. He tore the column of bones out along its back—perhaps I once believed you were knowable. You tell
our son the story of the talking babydoll, cooked into a loaf of bread that hollers Mama, Mama from the oven.
The babydoll the dragon and Jesus, you say, are each the other’s world entire. It’s better, simply, to say that now
we know each other. To say that now I can whisper something to you, and it didn’t hurt.
! 160
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking broker explained to the Guardian how Thai boat owners
phone him directly with their “order”: the quantity of men they need and the amount they’re willing to pay for
them. ! 161
Animal Spirits: A term used by John Maynard Keynes used in one of his economics books. In his 1936
publication, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the term “animal spirits” is used to describe
human emotion that drives consumer confidence. According to Keynes, animal spirits also generate human
trust.
There has been a resurgence of interest in the idea of animal spirits in recent years. Several books and articles
have been published on this topic. Keynes believed that animal spirits were necessary to motivate people to
take positive action.

! 162
From this statement of the problem, it is obvious that the following information is needed to determine the
profitability of slaveholding from the slaveholder’s point of view: (a) the longevity of slaves; (b) the costs of
slaves and any necessary accompanying capital investments; (c) the interest rate; and (d) the annual returns from
slave productive activities, defined to include both field labor and procreation.
! 163
Daydream: Whimpering is a nasal sound, rising above the throat and nose, sweetly echoing. Groaning is like the
deep rumble of a cloud, coming out of the throat. Crying is well known, and should be heart-rending. Panting
is another name for ‘sighing.’ Explain babbling, shrieking, and sobbing. These seven are indistinct sounds.
Modes of slapping and the accompanying moaning. There are eight kinds of screaming: whimpering, groaning,
babbling, crying, panting, shrieking, or sobbing. At this I babble. With sounds inside my mouth, and I sob.
! 164
! 165
Our fuck descends in a heap. You say: leave it in the story. You say: don’t talk about the infant that way. We say
what is relentless versus what is eternal. We say: what is eternal versus what is relentless.
! 166
Weak Sister: An element that undermines the entire system. Weak sister can either refer to a single individual
or a specialized group considered to be the weak link in an integrated process.
Usually referring to an undependable member of a group environment, the weak sister can also be a
malfunctioning part of a team-oriented task. For example, the slowest member in an assembly line or a slow
marketing team, which hinders the overall performance of operations, is referred to as the weak sister. ! 167
The flock descends in a heap. As a major part of moaning she may use, according to her imagination, the cries
of the dove, cuckoo, green pigeon, parrot, bee, nightingale, goose, duck, and partridge—whose complaints are
incessant but also whose complaints are eternal.
! 168
War Chest: A colloquial term for the reserves of cash set aside or built up by a company to take advantage
of an unexpected opportunity. While a war chest is typically used for acquisitions of other companies or
businesses, it can also be used as a buffer against adverse events during uncertain times. A war chest is often
invested in liquid short-term investments, such as treasury bills and bank deposits, which can be accessed on
demand.
! 169
Dear Index, lift me, lift my dress. Index, I want to know you. Index, increase and increase me. Radiate inside
me. — John of the Cross

! 170
War Risk: 1. The possibility that an investment will lose value because of a major, violent political upheaval.
War generates uncertainty in the financial markets and causes many investors to panic and sell, which leads to a
decline in prices.
2. The possibility that an individual or company will experience a major financial loss related to the destruction
of property caused by a major, violent, political upheaval.
Standard insurance policies do not always cover acts of war; in some cases, it may be necessary to purchase
separate war risk insurance.
! 171
Smear a small red spider a cleaning fire. If the world begins with a word, it will end with someone reciting her
memory—love lasts. The infant’s breath moves with my father’s breathing machine. His fat hand is curled tightly
around the cord. My father turns his head, laughs in his sleep, gently to my son’s ear.

! 172
Suicide Pill: A defensive strategy by which a target company engages in an activity that might actually ruin the
company rather than prevent the hostile takeover. Suicide pills are extreme actions that differ from situation to
situation, some of which result in dissolving the company; however, the underlying intent is to avoid the hostile
takeover of the firm by any means necessary. Also known as the “Jonestown Defense.”

! 173
And to the extent that the old planting aristocracy used the profits to maintain the real or fancied magnificence
of the preceding century, capital was absorbed. Slavery made this possible, so long as the natural increase could
be shipped off.
! 174
They mean infants. When they say “natural increase” they mean infants. They mean the proliferation. –John of
the Cross
! 175
Dog: One of the four categories or quadrants of the BCG Growth-Share matrix developed by Boston
Consulting Group in the 1970s to manage different business units within a company. A Dog is a business unit
that has a small market share in a mature industry. It therefore neither generates the strong cash flow nor
requires the hefty investment that a Cash Cow or Star unit would (two other categories in the BCG matrix).
The term Dog may also refer to a stock that is a chronic underperformer and hence a drag on the performance
of a portfolio. ! 176
Daydream: There are two knives, one point-down, one point-up, inside the balloon. The kids were removed
and rocks instead were sewn inside the wolf ’s bag. Collapses of water from the balloons, thrown one after the
other, against the barn. Worms, strands, paper globes strung and lit at night — chains of lightning. The infant
is no longer the string of zeroes folded into water, folded below water. The water in drops in strings— in this
bag, simply falls.
! 177
White Knight: A white knight is an individual or company that acquires a corporation on the verge of being
taken over by forces deemed undesirable by company officials (sometimes referred to as a “black knight”).
While the target company doesn’t remain independent, a white knight is viewed as a preferred option to the
hostile company completing their takeover. Unlike a hostile takeover, current management typically remains in
place in a white knight scenario, and investors receive better compensation for their shares.
The white knight is the “savior” of a company in the midst of a hostile takeover. Often, a white knight is
sought out by company officials—sometimes to preserve the company’s core business, and other times just to
negotiate better takeover terms. An example of the former can be seen in the movie Pretty Woman when
corporate raider/black knight Edward Lewis (played by Richard Gere) has a change of heart and decides to
work with the head of a company he’d originally planned on ransacking. In addition to white knights and black knights, there is a third potential takeover candidate called a gray knight.
As one might guess, a gray knight is not as desirable as a white knight, but more desirable than a black knight.
! 178
I didn’t know, when I’d never made love, the sounds that I would make then—like that, I didn’t know the
sound of my fear: cry like the faraway animal. Deep animal moan from somewhere else and a quiet stay, stay
chanted where the coin’s gold edge and the warm night meet. When I was a child I knew the details of each
foal’s birth—the chestnut, catching her first breath in her mother’s shit-covered tail. Her hooves, still soft and
curled underneath as a human ear, pawed at the dead udder. When the sun rose on her I thought: could any
light be pale lapping onto this world. Could any surface glossed—a bed of snow, the bed of the river—fall flat
against the world that holds us in?

! 179
Sleeping Beauty: A company that is considered prime for takeover, but has not yet been approached by an
acquiring company. A company may be considered a sleeping beauty for a variety of reasons, including large
cash reserves, undervalued real estate, undervalued share price, attractive assets or strong growth and earnings
potential. A takeover, or acquisition, is typically characterized by the purchase of a smaller company by a larger
firm. The acquiring company generally offers a cash price per share, thereby purchasing the target outright for
its own shareholders.
In relation to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a sleeping beauty is a company that is “sleeping;” that is, one
that is ripe for takeover to achieve its full potential. A sleeping beauty might be a new company that has great
potential but has not yet been noticed, or it could be an established company that has not been managed well,
and is therefore not maximizing its potential. A sleeping beauty essentially lies in wait until a takeover occurs, at
which point the company theoretically would be able to live up to its potential. ! 180
You laugh sometimes, loving me, you are that happy. And the weather, somewhere. And the milk—it comes in
around us. The children we still have are still alive. In the middle, love is temporary.
! 181
There is actually very much fragility. –John of the Cross
! 182
Lady Macbeth Strategy: A corporate-takeover strategy with which a third party poses as a white knight to gain
trust, but then turns around and joins with unfriendly bidders.
Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most frightful and ambitious characters, devises a cunning plan for her
husband, the Scottish general, to kill Duncan, the King of Scotland. The success of Lady Macbeth’s scheme
lies in her deceptive ability to appear noble and virtuous, and thereby secure Duncan’s trust in the Macbeths’
false loyalty. ! 183
When the infant is still in me and you are also in me and you pull from me and you are covered in blood, I am
the blood and we are all three of us blood— then this is our marriage, held. This is our marriage, flipping and
warm in the teeth of the infant.
! 184
! 185
Furthermore, it would appear that slave prices fluctuate less than do cotton prices. This and the less clear-cut
lag of the slave prices make it difficult to accept the image of unwary planters helplessly exposing themselves
in a market dominated by speculators. It would make more sense to argue simply that the rising trend of slave
prices coupled with a growing slave population is in and of itself strong evidence of the profitability of slavery.
! 186
Profitability as in infants. As in animals. As in fear. As in chicken. As in fish. As in four boats. As in lipstick. –
John of the Cross

! 187
Index, deliver me. Deliver me from. Index, could you ever hold yourself toward me. —John of the Cross
! 188
Someone delivers the infant while hands wailing follow some other part. Hands of genuine sadness—hands
spreading again, granting the body of our four rich handfuls. Earth, this infant is made of you. Like you, he
will die interminably. Earth, I hold myself open toward you. Infant, I am utterly reaching toward you. Earth,
someone is holding the infant toward you in the ancient gesture of need.
! 189
! 190
Daydream: I could say it as simply as this: it was never over. I could say it as simply as this: love is never over. I
could say it as simply as this: fragile. Could say: exquisite. Could say: incessant. Could say: the body exploded
into bits. I could say it as simply as this: that is what the teeth are for, that is what the bones are for. I could say
the years felt fragile. I could say the infants have all felt fragile. I could say the light fell down.
! 191
For a male field hand the returns considered will be limited to the sales of products realized form his field
labor; in the case of a female hand, an addition must be made for the returns realized on the labor and sale of
her children. Because of these basic differences in the production functions for the two sexes, they will be
treated separately.
! 192
Knowledge Economy: A system of consumption and production that is based on intellectual capital. The
knowledge economy commonly makes up a large share of all economic activity in developed countries. In a
knowledge economy, a significant part of a company’s value may consist of intangible assets, such as the value
of its workers’ knowledge (intellectual capital). However, generally accepted accounting principles do not allow
companies to include these assets on balance sheets. ! 193
Could I say: the waters washed us clean. Could I say: the world was irradiated and then it turned to glass. Could
I say: what counted gave birth to the Index, and we increased. —John of the Cross
! 194
Invisible Hand: A term coined by economist Adam Smith in his 1776 book An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In his book he states: Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally
neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it ... He intends only his
own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no
part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of his intention. By pursuing his
own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to
promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. ! 195
Daydream: I coin the lavender infant while what is stitched together of our lives, it approaches us. Then worse,
the infant is blue while what is attached to our lives proliferates. Then worse, the infant is gray while what is
severing from our lives also proliferates. Then worse, the infant’s wire cuts and the more appropriate faith spills
from us.
! 196
Slave-breeding and slave-trading were not generally considered to be high or noble types of activity for a
southern gentleman. Indeed, many plantation owners would stoop to all sorts of subterfuge to disguise the fact
that they were engaging in any part of the slave trade or breeding operations.

! 197
At the marriage bed the places for kissing are also for biting, except for the upper lip, the inside of the mouth,
and the eyes. Teeth of good quality are even and of the right size, with shiny reflective surface, sharp edges, no
chips, and the ability to retain colors. You are coming into us who cannot withstand you. You are coming into
us who never wanted to withstand you.
! 198
! 199
Paris Hilton Stock Index: A stock index comprised of companies associated with the socialite Paris Hilton.
Some investors conceive her influence on the consumer spending habits of her fans is material enough to give
these companies a competitive advantage.
The concept behind the Paris Hilton Index resides in her endorsements and product lines. Ideally, Hilton’s fans
see her using certain products or releasing her own brands and flock to purchase the goods. As a result, the
companies behind the products experience increased sales. Companies included in this index are Parlux
Fragrances (who manufacture Hilton’s brand of perfumes) (NASDAQ: PARL), News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS),
Time Warner (NYSE: TWC), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). ! 200
Daydream: A string of a billion zeroes in outer space or a string of billion zeroes in water. The field is a field
pulled out of itself and this field will not help us. This infant had a father and this infant had a mother and this
infant had a story and the story had infants and the infants were incessant and the infants were relentless and
the infants were unending and the infants were interminable and the infants were insurmountable and the
infants were not only in outer space or in this still water.
! 201
! 202
You didn’t marry me, my teeth trembling against the doorknob. You didn’t feel the same point of the
floorboard, or curtains fervent at night—window open—against the low tide. I was moved. Moved to the same
latched gate, the same turning, of me, away at the night I curved through. Like no house. It’s like no house
curves through you.
! 203
Under the tinny roof of Songkhla’s commercial port, on Thailand’s south-east coast, the imperial-blue cargo
boat that brought Myint Thein back to shore is unloading its catch, barrel by barrel. The day’s international fish
trading has just begun, and buyers are milling about in bright yellow rubber boots, running slimy scales between
their fingers, as hobbling cats nibble at the fishbones and guts strewn across the pavement.
! 204
To make the calculations in this rather complex situation manageable, the following assumptions will be made:
1. Each prime field wench produced five to ten marketable children during her lifetime.
2. The prime field wench was one-half to two-thirds as productive as a prime field hand when she was actually
at work in the field.
3. The wench’s children began to be productive field labor at age six, with the males becoming self-sustaining
by age nine (that is, they then earned the adult maintenance charge of $20 per year), while females became self-
sustaining by age thirteen.
4. The typical female wench had as many male as female children.
5. Nursery costs were about $50 per successful pregnancy. The maternity costs have been included in the
annual charge for the children’s upkeep; similarly, the $16 decline every other year for the first few years in the
wench’s own field returns represents the allowance for time lost because of pregnancy.
! 205
No one was looking for you and then grew forgotten. Put the listening that reached you—no one was also
looking at you. What requires you is exactly what you’d like—put the grim one, and then your mother’s soul
whips. –John of the Cross
! 206
Daydream: The infant’s head, softened, pushed down through my torso and out my vagina. Then the neck
turning. My brains flowing. My bones softened and split apart. It is the gesture of utterly reaching.
! 207
Where the natural increase is shipped off, where the infants are shipped off, where people are shipped off,
where animals, where there is no reaching. – John of the Cross

! 208
! 209
Wench, my love, my heart, as if goodness didn’t hurt to hold. As if opacity didn’t hurt to hold. As if pure
goodness could not split you, hold you, and then force your deepest part.
! 210
But these qualifications do not change the principal conclusion that slavery was apparently about as
remunerative as alternative employments to which slave capital might have been put. Large or excessive returns
were clearly limited to a few fortunate planters, but apparently none suffered excessively either.
! 211
Where there is no excessive suffering. Where there is no excessive suffering. Where there is none, put suffering.
Where there is no table, put food, put people. Where there is no table, I am inside the table of excessive
suffering. I am in the gesture of utterly reaching. Did the Index do this to the table. Did the Index do this to
the suffering. Did none suffer excessively. –John of the Cross

! 212
The membrane we need is inhuman. The earth we need is inhuman. The virus we need is inhuman. The
algorithm we need is inhuman. The mind we need is inhuman. The mycelium we need is inhuman. The
rhizome we need is inhuman. The animal we need is inhuman. The begging we need is inhuman. The prophet
we need is inhuman. The increase we need is inhuman. Index, is this who you are. Is this what you are pointing
us toward. –John of the Cross

! 213
On solar system bedsheets, there, behind the sunlight, is the long pressure of an infant’s love. Becoming mute
with the infant’s love. Long influence of stars touched by the hand wrapped, asleep, in the newly laundered
sheets. I check: each is alive in his sleep. You are also asleep, at the end of the yarn they are weaving around the
edge of a pink paper heart fattening—if quieter, now.
! 214
Some spoke frankly about Virginia as a “breeding state,” though the reply to such allegations was generally an
indignant denial. Whether systematically bred or not, the natural increase of the slave force was an important,
probably the most important, product of the more exhausted soil of the Old South. The relationship between
the prices of men and women in the slave market, when compared with the ratio of hiring rates for male and
female field hands, gives an even stronger indication that the superior usefulness of females of breeding age
was economically recognized. The price structure clearly reflects the added value of females due to their ability
to generate capital gains.

! 215
! 216
The Index we need is inhuman. Need actual radiation. Need the different kind of mind. - John of the Cross
! 217
Competitive Intelligence: The process of collecting and analyzing information about competitors’ strengths
and weaknesses in a legal and ethical manner to enhance business decision-making. Competitive intelligence
activities can be basically grouped into two main types:
1) Tactical, which is shorter-term and seeks to provide input into issues such as capturing market share or
increasing revenues; and
2) Strategic, which focuses on longer-term issues such as key risks and opportunities facing the enterprise.
! 218
Put exhaustion. Put depression. Put unendingness. Put relentless. Put algorithms and put operations. Put them
everywhere you turn. You will become the field gesturing. You will become fishbones and guts, you will
become strewn across the pavement. You will become the bruises along the mind. You will become the
weapons-grade membrane. You will become the animals of actual mercy. You will become actual dead animals.
You will become dead. –John of the Cross
! 219
Notes:
“The comfort we need is inhuman” from Bill McKibben
“The horizon is simple: a sheet of light” from Todd Fredson
“Take us the foxes” from Song of Songs. (KJB)
“The baby” includes a line from Bernadette Mayer
“This is capitalism at its worst” is from Kevin Bales
“You weren’t meant for pleasure, you were meant for joy” from Thomas Merton
“Smear a small red spider/ A cleaning fire” from Hoa Nguyen
“Safe through the generous fields” from Lucile Clifton
“You are coming into us who cannot withstand you you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand
you” a slight variation of Adrienne Rich
Kamastura is widely sampled
John of the Cross is widely misquoted
Kate Hodal and Chris Kelly are widely sampled from their Guardian article “Trafficked into Slavery on Thai
Trawlers to Catch Food for Prawns”
Economic definitions from the website Investopedia
Americium definition from Wikipedia
Conrad and Meyer’s “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South” is widely sampled
! 220

Abstract (if available)

Abstract A mystery poem

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Creator Vap, Sarah (author)

Core Title End of the sentimental journey

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 07/24/2020

Defense Date 04/24/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag gender,OAI-PMH Harvest,Poetry,sentimentality,workshop

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor St. John, David (committee chair), McCabe, Susan (committee member), McHugh, James (committee member), Nelson, Maggie (committee member)

Creator Email sarahvap@gmail.com,sarahvap@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-24629

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