The Pecking Order Of 20th C. American Literature
3-26-06 Concerning High & Low Church Modernism
W.C. Williams the good doctor who delivered many a baby among the pure screaming products of America---was he not also a pontificator extraordinaire behind the glasses of neighborly Good Times Generation Man friendly codger? Did not this same pediatrician preach the gospel that His Way was The Only Way, in a way? I mean sure, T.S. Eliot was that evil ex-patriate Royalist Look Down Your Nose footnote intellectual and should've kept his Waste Land in London in the basement at Lloyd's Bank. And, yes again, Ezra Loomis Pound was too Yooropean to be trusted by the likes of you & me as we talk over the back fence concerning things not ideas, idioms not idiotic abstractions among a game of pool let's say in the Pool Room which is a peculiarly American institution not imported from The Continent. Do you dig? The son of a bitches in The Academy got The Ache for abstraction that comes with age and too much time in The Stacks & doctrine---o, yes, that above all else. The doctrine of The High Church of Esthetical Cant. If you cant get it up you do The Down Syndrome in esthetics-----follow the leaders with the most crooked line. Since a straight line is the closest distance between two points and that spells trouble, it's too easy. There must be something wrong with it. It is available to the Poor, God help us all. And we all know sex is too good for the poor. Maybe it (this ideal poem) is also Radiant like the sun. Let's say it's Simple & Direct and actually Here & Now present(!) to be touched & tasted & smelled & seen & heard-----if you have the essential tools.
But like I say, if you don't have them-----the Gifts of taste, & smell & hear & see & touch-----then of course you can hide in the stacks at the library & invent mighty deeds of the abstract Intelligence told in a language unrecognized by the common herd-----The Rabble. In fact you can invent a whole theology whose Secrets can be gleaned Only by the elect-----who are of course the clergy predestined to be the Interpreters of the new sacred & Infallible & forever Clandestine scriptures. In nebulo veritas. In the Clouds are truth. Long live nebulosity! But of course who gives a damn about you and your world of clouds & fake reality?
Take up thy cross & follow me, you little lizards. For breakfast you get stones. For lunch sticks. For supper turds. Be grateful for your appetites. They will save you from much mischief. Such as whole weekends wasted on gourmet gravy and all the STD sex you can eat in 72 hours of non-stop moaning & writhing & continuous loss of oxygen: or, what you previously thought to be Pleasure. Cleanse thyself of rampant Stupidity. Which attacks the brain like a raging fire that spreads with ferocious velocity & consumes the entire organism with that unstoppable disease : GREED. I WANT MORE, you son of a bitches, & I'm Gonna Get It-----over your dead bodies. That lame line of a dying organism.
RLG
W.C. Williams the good doctor who delivered many a baby among the pure screaming products of America---was he not also a pontificator extraordinaire behind the glasses of neighborly Good Times Generation Man friendly codger? Did not this same pediatrician preach the gospel that His Way was The Only Way, in a way? I mean sure, T.S. Eliot was that evil ex-patriate Royalist Look Down Your Nose footnote intellectual and should've kept his Waste Land in London in the basement at Lloyd's Bank. And, yes again, Ezra Loomis Pound was too Yooropean to be trusted by the likes of you & me as we talk over the back fence concerning things not ideas, idioms not idiotic abstractions among a game of pool let's say in the Pool Room which is a peculiarly American institution not imported from The Continent. Do you dig? The son of a bitches in The Academy got The Ache for abstraction that comes with age and too much time in The Stacks & doctrine---o, yes, that above all else. The doctrine of The High Church of Esthetical Cant. If you cant get it up you do The Down Syndrome in esthetics-----follow the leaders with the most crooked line. Since a straight line is the closest distance between two points and that spells trouble, it's too easy. There must be something wrong with it. It is available to the Poor, God help us all. And we all know sex is too good for the poor. Maybe it (this ideal poem) is also Radiant like the sun. Let's say it's Simple & Direct and actually Here & Now present(!) to be touched & tasted & smelled & seen & heard-----if you have the essential tools.
But like I say, if you don't have them-----the Gifts of taste, & smell & hear & see & touch-----then of course you can hide in the stacks at the library & invent mighty deeds of the abstract Intelligence told in a language unrecognized by the common herd-----The Rabble. In fact you can invent a whole theology whose Secrets can be gleaned Only by the elect-----who are of course the clergy predestined to be the Interpreters of the new sacred & Infallible & forever Clandestine scriptures. In nebulo veritas. In the Clouds are truth. Long live nebulosity! But of course who gives a damn about you and your world of clouds & fake reality?
Take up thy cross & follow me, you little lizards. For breakfast you get stones. For lunch sticks. For supper turds. Be grateful for your appetites. They will save you from much mischief. Such as whole weekends wasted on gourmet gravy and all the STD sex you can eat in 72 hours of non-stop moaning & writhing & continuous loss of oxygen: or, what you previously thought to be Pleasure. Cleanse thyself of rampant Stupidity. Which attacks the brain like a raging fire that spreads with ferocious velocity & consumes the entire organism with that unstoppable disease : GREED. I WANT MORE, you son of a bitches, & I'm Gonna Get It-----over your dead bodies. That lame line of a dying organism.
RLG
posted by rlg at 12:53 PM
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