Bob Perelman

CONFESSING TO THE LISTSERV

Aliens have inhabited my aesthetics for 
decades. Really since the early 70s.

Before that I pretty much wrote 
as myself, though young. But something

has happened to my memory, my 
judgment: apparently, my will has been

affected. That old stuff, the fork 
in the head, first home run,

Dad falling out of the car-- 
I remember the words, but I

just can't get back there. I 
think they must be screening my

sensations. I'm sure my categories have 
been messed with. I look at

the anthologies in the big chains 
and campus bookstores, even the small

press opium dens, all those stanzas 
against that white space-- they just

look like the models in the 
catalogs. The models have arms and

legs and a head, the poems 
mostly don't, but other than that

it's hard --for me anyway-- to 
tell them apart. There's the sexy

underwear poem, the sturdy workboot poem 
you could wear to a party

in a pinch, the little blaspheming 
dress poem. There's variety, you say:

the button-down oxford with offrhymed cuffs. 
The epic toga, showing some ancient

ankle, the behold! the world is 
changed and finally I'm normal flowing

robe and shorts, the full nude, 
the scatter-- Yes, I suppose there's

variety, but the looks, those come 
on and read me for the

inner you I've locked onto with 
my cultural capital sensing device looks!

No thanks, Jay Peterman! No thanks, 
"Ordinary Evening in New Haven"! I'm

just waiting for my return ticket 
to have any meaning, for those

saucer-shaped clouds to lower! The authorities 
deny any visitations --hardly a surprise.

And I myself deny them-- think 
about it. What could motivate a

group of egg-headed, tentacled, slimier-than-thou aestheticians 
with techniques far beyond ours to

visit earth, abduct naive poets, and 
inculcate them with otherworldly forms that

are also, if you believe the 
tabloids, rather salacious? And these abductions

always seem to take place in 
some provincial setting: isn't that slightly

suspicious? Why don't they 
reveal themselves hovering over some New

York publishing venue? It would be 
nice to get some answers here--

we might learn something, about poetry 
if nothing else, but I'm no

help, since I'm an abductee, at 
least in theory, though, like I

say, I remember little. But this 
writing seems pretty normal: complete sentences;

semicolons; yada yada. I seem to 
have lost my avant garde card

in the laundry. They say that's 
typical. Well, you'll just have to

use your judgment, earthlings! Judgment, that's 
your job! Back to work! As

if you could leave! And you 
thought gravity was a problem!


         [published previously in The Harvard Review
          and The Impercipient Lecture Series (edited
          by Steve Evans and Jennifer Moxley)]