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)]