The Good, The Bad, & The Letter: On John Keene’s “Punks”
John Keene | Punks: New & Selected Poems | The Song Cave | 2021 | 234 Pages
“I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victims of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.”
—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America
“I enclose a poetics by which you can read an ethics.
I enclose the spine of a discourse someone else might build on.”
—John Keene, “Gift”
The Letter
February of this year I met the loneliest man I’ll ever know. His version of “Phone Book” would (1) stretch a whole volume of verse. I wore his cream fisherman’s sweater to his club on the 18th floor of the Transamerica building; we sat with a mid-aged gay couple, his sister, and his mother who wore violet-framed glasses with flames at the edge, we drank flambés and other plays on Mardi Gras. Then, I didn’t think much of the fact that when he texted he texted ten or twenty messages in a row, stretching across a half-hour. Then, I didn’t expect, especially not after I left the city, that he would invite me cross-country, nor that I would enthusiastically reply, “Of course!” (2)
The Good
What is egalitarian love? It is where your “tiny slit to breathe” becomes your lover’s physical (3) past in which Apartheid agents “began to beat” him and resolves into a “round of kisses.” It is (4) the same thing that turns a small-hands dick joke and a cutting paper bag test laugh into a (5) “blossoming, flowering, opening.” It’s where men dance and play along an “invisible barrier,” each an “angel,” each “so bright for a moment,” before they call out their goodbyes. (6)
The Bad
What use is a mortal love? Well, it gets us through the days. I don’t want to be too heady about this since if I am someone will say something about the body and quote me Audre Lorde. Your collection recognizes the state of the United States and has as its solution (or part of the solution (7) or if not a solution then a stance (but I refuse that distinction)) kindness. This does not suffice.
The Letter
Lots of highways are under construction. And everyone speeds on highways, no exceptions. In Mississippi I partook in what seemed to be live speed racing: across three and four lanes, I (8) zagged, zoomed, and tailed, at one point hitting 95 mph in our Subaru; partaking were beat-up (9) trucks, four-door sedans, and, I swear to God, a minivan. The highways surrounding the capitol of Arkansas were made for 55, everyone was going 65, and due to work being done on them guiding cones became haphazardly placed obstacles that made it feel like Mario Kart. In Texas, there is no speed limit, not as far as those straight stretches of land are concerned. In Arizona, two cars going straight at each other at a cross section with one going left and the other going straight came to a screeching halt inches from each other’s front fenders. Roads in America are fundamentally unsafe, unsupervised, and as prone to idiocy as they are to quote unquote independent thinking; which is how we seem to like them.
The Good
Because kindness is a worthwhile position. It glimmers. It makes a day. It is built out of hope—the belief that you and I will be able—and acceptance—the knowledge that we are not currently able. It stands up against fear—the self-preserving belief that it will go bad—and arrogance—the self-affirming belief that we know all we need to know.
The Bad
But it accepts the structures of power which put it in a position that only tries to sustain; it does not and cannot upend those structures so long as it retains its strength as only a response.
The Good
Hegel is the philosopher of the moment. He would have us all stop writing and start working on (10) CRISPR, Neuralink, or Meta, or find an alternative to the Like, the bots, and “el Face”; he would have us solve P v NP. But not because we can be sure that this will do anything. He is the philosopher of the moment only in so far as we recognize that this moment is distraught, torn, (11) and unpredictable. So if kindness is a thing that you are inclined towards, John, that “if in fact - this place exists - may I stand there.” (12)
The Letter
We are in Santa Fe, have you been? It is imbued with spirit still. It saves us from what we do not dream for. It used to be a no-growth city. That changed, and now planes WOOO overhead. It is the oldest capitol with roots in our Spanish colonial past and the highest capitol, 2000 feet higher than the mile high city. We went to the opera. It’s world famous. They did the Barber of Seville—it was performed against a face the size of an a-frame with a mustache built out of a hedge; a mariachi band, the GAP, sneakers, a Macbook, and a yoga mat were all included—and this little girl next to me laughed and laughed at the overture, du du du dudu, which I think I first heard in an episode of Tom & Jerry.
The Bad
I don’t believe you the narrator or your characters the muses are punks.
Any definition claims us, and if we define ourselves in turn we accept the claim, project it. A (13) punk does not say, I am a punk, but exists as one. Though a definition in the negative is like (14) pinning the tail on anything but the donkey, and exemplifies failing and is so often confused (15) (16) (17) in common except that designation: but for our ability to agree—to say Aha! Yes! when the word punk is put to them—we shut down if pressed to say more. There is indefinability, not engima. It is the difference between infinity and one. (18)
This is necessary: punk holds only positive connotations, glamorous without the glam, industrious without industry, lugubrious without lugging or jovial without jive, heartfelt with something more than heart. No punk would define themself. Wouldn’t give a Watch This, not barely a wink, before acting so cómo-se-dice counter-culture that if they were one to start a cult they could, after whatever it was they would pull. And there’s another punk nearby appreciating their punk-ness, and they might say something and they might not. Again, not enigma. Hardcore without the harsh, assured without the ass, conjurer without the con, angry without angst but sometimes agony, saddened without the dead-end, happy with hap, a savage with salve.
The Good
Valéry says that a poet does not feel poetic, does not
COME
LOST + BLESSED
GO (19)
a poet makes the poetic feeling in the reader. Which you did very much on one occasion, in “PUNKS.”
“PUNKS” by virtue of being a poem, words penned in a coherent order, cannot (20) escape and begrudges the fact (as I do) that it must have a start and an end. Because the poem (21) bursts in ALL CAPS turning any attempt at imposing a perspective on its head. (That’s a (22) fragment ). So I will analyze, starting at the quote unquote start, to see how it morphs:
(23) HYPNOS is the first word of “PUNKS,” so I will follow logic in line with its emergence, its path, as I find fit: you are defining a trance, which is the same as death, for the dead have no choice—being dead—and so the god THANATOS; because it removes the escape of life, death horrifies: what we know about the dead is that they stay dead; they do not talk to the living, they leave only what they can, and we are hard-pressed to determine what it is to leave: you list (24) some punks, some total, singular people, the ones we can imagine are happy dead because they seem to have left having had a good alive—PICASSO MODIGLIANI MIRO—and it’s all so much noise, living, isn’t it?, which the skateboarders quote unquote understand as they roll through the city as fast as possible without any of the headaches, breezing past us on the street, squeezing through impossible spaces, flipping off sidewalks, flipping off pigs, flipping through the city like a flipbook: the AROMA the HORSESHIT the SWEAT the WAR: thank God for SWEET OBLIVION, so that we may be free finally of the COPS the TUNNELS, and of course when a star dies it bursts under too much heat, and sex is that too BIG HEAT, that huge death we call climax: WHO KNOWS WHAT WE’RE FLEEING: HYPNOS the trance of wealth, see, John, see, I have a good friend who every day I tell, pretty much, to knock it off, stop what he’s doing with his money mongering because it is destroying his soul and he admits that it is destroying his soul and he is okay with that: he sees an end, and that end like the end is just another way of saying he is happy to die, happy to let it all die as long as he gets FAST FAME FERAL FILLING, so yes FACE DISGRACE so yes WHOEVER WINS LOSES THE PATH: memory is death, too, immediately history, since it places the end at the start, memory is its own end and means, and you and I are the rememberers who with much hope hopelessly put the start back together and back together and THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH A PAINTING IS CAPABLE OF: memory is life, too, since it includes things, inscrutable facts, people who share those memories, who in their SWEET SWEET laughter show you they remember them, and is it as SWEET to make memories than as it is to reflect on them?, is it even possible, well, for so many of us it is not possible to make more memories, there is a world that does not permit it, that slashes away the memory making machine, I mean, that squeezes the brain for all its juice so that there is no DREAM no FLOWER no HORIZON no ONES WHO can TRULY REMINISCE WITH YOU: in the face of it we keep our humor and it does not stop being serious: it is serious: so serious: see, humor: like being a SERIAL KILLER I collect stories, I collect the memories of other men, and I am on a roadtrip with that man: AIDS went after what you cherished the most, he told me: his artist friend, blind; his gorgeous lover lost his looks: his brilliant best friend, the man who shot pleasure off mayan ruins because no harm done because he could, he was a big government guy and they met in Merida before Cancún was Cancun, and what a memory, well, he lost his mind: so that I feel like a SERIAL KILLER when I am left with silence because it is just that thing, the only thing, that thing which is nothing and only you can fill, which is how I am in fact different, and all writers are in fact different, from a SERIAL KILLER: we fill the world from nothing but ourselves, require nothing but ourselves, so that we are our own RADIOACTIVE MAGIC, COCK-SHAPED BEAUTY ADDICTED TO THE THRILL: and at the end of it all the punk is looking for love, a way to love the world, love himself in the world, be loved in the world.
And there is no such thing as a metaphorical living: there is me, and I am I, and this is the world, and I am in it; which is the motto of a punk.
The Letter
And then I left that man again.
I left because I had to do this, write this letter, go to school, continue my life. He’s lived most of his life, felt relief at his father’s death, can’t speak to his mother or his sister because they neither love nor respect him. A septuagenarian, he got phone scammed. And I don’t mean to say something as inane as: it’s sad.
It is, it is, no question. But it’s also much worse than that.
Which is why I believe in more kindness, now, too.
Addendum: For Those Who Saw Everything Everywhere All At Once
After her resurrection, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) wears a cardigan, Chinese New Year red with the word PUNK across the back. The lettering first comes into view when she picks up the pen to finalize her husband’s divorce and the bat to obliterate their laundromat. (She has told her husband that she saw the life she would have had without him, and it was so beautiful. Sad. She will say of her laundromat, bat in hand, “I never liked this place,” before she goes to breaking everything she can. True.)
And, back from her daughter who has invited her into the everything which is nothing since there everything stops mattering—a pre-, post-, and literal blackhole, a place where the entire world occurs simultaneously—and since in any one situation there is a best choice but in any two situations the two best choices can conflict and in an infinite number of situations there are an infinite number of choices that contradict and cancel and make all of the situations not only not the best but futile—she chooses to stay in one world, this world around others who have made the same choice, the same people with the same beautiful indebtedness, what they are to each other. She returns as what she already is.
Evelyn is a full-blown punk, always on the verge of destruction or construction. Her ability to do the improbable is unlike nearly anybody else’s, and she does do the improbable. Since destruction and construction are equally unlikely choices—most people choose to keep things the way they are, don’t rock the boat, don’t wake the beast—by choosing honesty with her dearests, she strengthens them and proves her own strength. She constitutes a way of life that takes it as it is by continuing it in the direction she sees as its most fit, which always comes from her, her whom observes and knows them. The punk is not a solo creature. Even it needs a family, a home, a Coin Laundry to throw a Chinese New Years party.
So if you are the rare person who has seen Everything Everywhere All At Once and read Punks you will see the point: it is not about me or you, this or that dildo or fanny pack nunchuck, not about infinite what-ifs, but me and you, this unquestionable eternal fact: it is about the weight of knowledge: it is about making the choice to proceed in one direction, which is the hardest because it is the most natural, which does not bite its tongue, which does not back down from a fear of generational anger, which lives now, and only now, with those who are here and who will stay because you stay, too.
Notes
(1) From the first section, Playland, an abecedaric poem listing victims of AIDS.
(2) I’ve always wanted to see more of America. Virginia has mysterious trees, Tennessee’s bear shotguns, Arkansas’ could stay there all day patiently, Texas’ become plains, Arizona’s roll into hills, and Louisiana’s are up to their necks in river.
(3) In his The Nation essay/review, Ken Chen so warmly writes that while the self-modulated and intra-corroboratory is à la mode Keene chooses kindness by/and seeing people.
(4) From the second section, The Lost World, this comes out of the first (“Try To Remember That South African Man”) in a series of prose poems.
(5) ibid. “You Have Smallish Hands For A Brother.” Also, can we ever forget the Republican primary debate where several men emphasized for nearly two minutes that they have big hands. The biggest.
(6) ibid. “Everybody Sets It Off Live In Here.”
(7) Noam Chomsky’s comment (in response to Lex Fridman on his podcast (Episode #316)) made me privy to this fact: Justice Clarence Thomas in declaring concealed carry laws in New York unconstitutional (New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen) stated that this country is so dangerous that guns are the only way for us to protect ourselves: “Whatever the likelihood that handguns were considered ‘dangerous and unusual’ during the colonial period, they are indisputably in ‘common use’ for self-defense today. They are, in fact, ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon.”
(8) And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam. Nina Simone.
(9) “It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.”
(10) “The business of any writer, and especially of the philosopher, is, as they say, to discover, utter, and diffuse truth and adequate conceptions. In actual practice this business usually consists in warming up and distributing on all sides the same old cabbage. ... They think that the warmed-up cabbage contains new truths, especially to be laid to heart at the present time. And yet we see that what is on one side announced as true, is driven out and swept away by the same kind of worn-out truth. Out of this hurly-burly of opinions, that which is neither new nor old, but permanent, cannot be rescued and preserved except by science.” (Hegel, Philosophy of Right)
(11) “If you believe that metaphor is an event, and not just a literary term denoting comparison, then you must conclude that a certain philosophy arises: the philosophy that everything in the world is connected. I’ll go slowly here: if metaphor is not idle comparison, but an exchange of energy, an event, then it unites the world by its very premise—that things connect and exchange energy.” Mary Ruefle, found in Patricia Lockwood’s “How Do We Write Now?”
(12) The collection’s fourth section is a collaboration with Cynthia Gray entitled Trees, from which I have quoted, “Scatter.”
(13) Exclaim it!
(14) Put your finger to a word in the dictionary. Excuse me, open up a dictionary, first. Whatever the definition is hangs on whatever the words defining the definition are, and those definitions cling ever more tenuously, and so on, too. This language fact, worsened by the intentionally irreverent instability of American English, is responsible for political sloganing, lovers’ quarreling, cynical disassociating, childlike rebelling, literality’s idiocy, and metaphor’s weakness. If we can accept language as de facto infinite, as endless in its interpretation, then we can defeat definition, which is a limit. An open question is what this leaves us.
(15) Which should you try, I will along with the amenable slovenly drunkards snicker.
(16) One need only imagine a man in confusion, distressed by that confusion. There is an attempt to say what is causing this confusion. You console, “Ah but it is not that at all.” And the question comes, “Are you sure?” And your assurance returns, “I am sure.” And now we are both clear about what is not clear, but are not clear about what is clear. Yet, there is a kind of clarity here, like being brought back to the crossroads where you were first lost, like returning to a many forking path and having the chance to choose again.
(17) But I will be doing no such thing. I cannot permit any discussion to be done in the negative, because I will have then only told you so many times what it is not (when you should be here for this reason, to determine what it is). If it is not clear as of yet that what anything is is not clear—and so writing about this text which makes such a point of insisting on that very point has been maddening—I will hope this statement—Nothing is clear. But. “Anything at all can be said” (Oppen).—may deliver some clarity.
(18) I was at first inclined to say that it is the difference between zero and one, but man has no conception of zero, while imaginations deliver us infinity nightly, and existence one daily. So that a punk is dreamy.
(19) From the first section, these four words and addition sign are the entirety of “The Angel of Improvisation.” I have as much patience for improvisation as Edgar Allen Poe (who loved/respected and was loved/respected by Valéry).
(20) After and for Martin Wong.
(21) Though it is useful for literary criticism. If you are only going to pick up Punks in a bookstore, which you actually can’t because it comes shrink-wrapped, but if you are going to tear off the shrinkwrap, thereby destroying the product and bringing shame upon you, your family, and your dog Max and your cat Gizmo, read “PUNKS.” It’s worth it.
(22) Now on the head, one might make any of a number of dope tricks: headspin, headstand, summersault, belly flop.
(23) God bless the fragment.
(24) And that is woefully misrepresented, even worsely interpretted. If there remains a gem of understanding who will actually make it through the rubble will know.