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)]
 

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