Everyone has heard of X, our country’s preeminent poet, a fact made more remarkable because, in today’s prosaic world of Tik Tok influencers and power-hungry demagogues and anti-vaccination marches, it seems improbable that there would be widespread interest in the traces of one person’s poetic imagination. I already knew something of the enigmatic X because, when I was an undergrad student, I roomed with someone who went on to do a Ph.D. thesis on the poetics of X so, when I got the call to do a profile piece for the zine, I had an in.
My friend sent me to a non-descript address in the suburbs. It could have been anywhere. Dandelion infested lawns. Power mowers whining like cicadas in the heat. Garden hoses left uncoiled by the garage. It was a matter of some embarrassment that I hadn’t read anything by X, but every bookstore (even virtual bookstores) told me they had nothing in stock. I couldn’t even reserve any of X’s works through the public library system; the people I spoke to speculated that maybe clients were stealing X’s books (even virtual books). X was, after all, a popular figure. Legendary even. If it came to specifics, I’d have to bluff my way through the interview.
I found X sitting in a garden of plants I couldn’t identify. X was smoking a cigarette—vaping is for pussies (not my words)—and the hot afternoon air was so still that each exhalation added more smoke to a growing cloud that had settled around the poet’s head. X’s features lay indeterminate inside that grey smog. The hair might have been blond or brown; the eyes, green or blue. In fact, I couldn’t be certain X was a man. I had assumed, but maybe I wasn’t even using the right pronoun. When X greeted me, the voice gave no clue as to gender. Years of smoking had turned the voice into an understated gravel pit that could have belonged to anyone.
So what’ve you written lately? And as soon as the words had bounced off my tongue, I felt like an idiot.
Through the cloud of smoke, X offered what may or may not have been a smile. I am a poet, X answered.
The economy of words. The compression. The indeterminacy of meaning. The shamanic vibe. All these things were the hallmark of a great poet. And yet all these things were also a source of frustration for someone trying to nail down a piece for a struggling arts zine.
I am a poet because I am a poet. Not because I write poetry.
But if I apply a Butlerian approach to identity, I’d challenge your poetic essentialism and say your identity as a poet depends on the performative aspects of poetic production.
X laughed and laughed until the laughter turned into a hacking fit and X nearly fell onto the patio paving stones. Christ, you’ve been spending too much time with that postdoctoral nitwit friend of yours.
But you still write poetry, don’t you?
I tried once, but it scared the shit out of me.
Referring afterwards to my notes, I see that I wrote a gigantic “PHEW!!!” And underneath: “At least I know now why I couldn’t find any of X’s works.” Then, on the reverse side of the same page: “This A-hole has never written a single fucking word!”
So what is it? I asked. Anxiety? Fear of failure?
X drew on a freshly lit cigarette, held the smoke in for a minute, then expelled it into the ever-present cloud: Nothing so pedestrian.
As I understand it (assuming there’s anything at all to understand), X rests the full weight of personal poetics on a notion of opportunity cost which (because X wants to appear intellectual) can be reduced to the Latin maxim: expressio unius est exclusio alterius. Saying one thing forecloses the possibility of saying something else. If we say X has green eyes, then we have prevented ourselves from saying that X has blue eyes. But X wants to savour the possibility of having both green and blue eyes and wants the feeling to go on and on forever. So it’s impossible to say either. X struggles against the law of non-contradiction. X wants to kick the young Wittgenstein in the nuts. X wants to drown positivists in Heraclitus’s river.
In a way, said X, I’m the greatest poet who’s ever lived. By writing nothing, I leave the field open to infinite possibility. No other poet has been so expansive.
X wrapped things up with a personal mantra: Specificity destroys possibility!
Even so, for all this abstraction, I faced the practical matter of a deadline. Zine publishers love their specificity. In the end, I wrote the best article it was possible for me to write. I submitted a blank page and a yellow sticky with a note: “Feel free to make of this whatever you like.” I may well be the greatest zine writer who’s ever lived.
