Trying to explain what poetry is without resorting to poetry is a tall order, and reducing it to a simplistic definition—rhythmic speech united by a variety of formal elements and imagery—feels insufficient and lacking an emphasis of poetry’s power and purpose. Therefore, for the purposes of this short post, I will stick to what poetry does—at least what I perceive it does to me in the very narrow example I will provide shortly concerning the effect of jarring, if not repugnant, imagery.
Growing up a fan of 20th century Latin American literature I distinctly remember the phrase from one of Borges’ poems Mi vida entera (My whole life) in which he writes the line: “He querido a una niña altiva y blanca y de una hispánica quietud.” (I have loved a girl, proud and fair, with a Spanish quietness (trans. mine)). The line stuck out, not only because it was interesting and represented an insight into Borges’ perspective (of Spaniards? of women? of Spanish women?) but because I noticed a “quietness” among my favorite Spanish language poets, an air of reservation, decorum, high-mindedness which almost seemed stuffy alongside their English-speaking counterparts (especially post-mods, but even Pound). I would say, in retrospect, this was probably due to the era’s notions of what was socially acceptable, an easier assertion to make rather than trying to pin it on some cultural commonality spanning an entire continent. Furthermore, you could look at contemporary Spanish language poets such as Begonia M. Rueda and see, at least in her pandemic era book, no signs of her predecessors’ repression. In any case, my point is: I noticed something wild and interesting in American poetry that seemed different from my favorite poemarios, something I feel Skip Fox uses masterfully in his poetry: the power of repugnance.
Fox’s poem “sic transit gloria mundi,” begins in the sky with the new moon and the attendant celestial bodies: “stars entering / through a door in the east, leaving through a western door, / drunken wanderings of asteroids, / Orion rising midway / on his journey, song / on charmed / air” (pgs. 45-6). Fox takes us soaring through the starry night into the breaking morning before briefly meditating on Romanticism, the natural world, and the phrase “thou shall not die, sinuous baseline from beneath a luminant corner,” (italics original, Ibid). We continue through the lilting lines of free verse until arriving at a block of text made of long rhythmic lines that lull us into the meditation before punching us in the gut with a line, out of the blue, about Kathy Acker (a.k.a the real Quijote):
Surely thou shall not die, from the recesses, canyons, articulations of flesh and mind, sensuous reticulum enfolding hands and eyes, enveloping the senses, species knowledge, knowledge before that, as sound, what is it to know anything? and to be alive, as I was telling my students, even to a portion of what’s going on at any moment can be almost all so borne of delight, why Kathy Acker drove a spike through her clit or shoved a vibrator up her cunt to write (Ibid).
This is the part of the poem where I slammed on the breaks. It was jarring. Even Bukowski would have blushed. Say what you will about me, but this shock was no mere puritanical prudishness, I felt the effects of an artfully planned ambush, a fall from the night sky, the long-lined lulling rhythms of a meditation on feeling alive only to crash into something visceral and sexually charged. But this is not just cheap sensationalism, anyone can be grotesque and wild to get a rise out of a reader. It is the carefully-planned-for interplay, the juxtaposition between the high and low brow that jolts the reader and moves us through the text. Reading Fox is an experience that requires your full attention. The poetry will jump out at you before you can brace for impact.
I wish I could express it better, but there is an art to harnessing the power of repugnance. There is an art to the kind of juxtaposition that Fox uses to push the reader through a rollercoaster of emotion. I would even say, at its most jarring and visceral, it goes beyond the usual way we emotionally/intellectually engage the text—almost at a distance; here we experience something in the stomach. And this telescoping into grittiness works both ways. I cannot find it, and have been looking for way too long, but there is an image that sticks with me of a moth (I paraphrase) flowering like a dark blossom in a urinal. This juxtaposition between grittiness and beauty works in reverse, elevating the ugly, even as we can almost smell the men’s bathroom on the page.
I don’t know if I will ever be brave enough give voice to some of these ugly, carnal, violent, unapologetically cerebral, irreverently funny themes found in Fox’s work or if my own Spanish quietness will keep me too buttoned up to play, but I do know, if I ever try it, I would be lucky to pull it off even half as good as Fox does. Definitely worth a read. Check out one of his books and buckle up.
Fox, Skip. “sic transit gloria mundi.” At That, Ahadada, 2005, 45-6.