Context
From Splendide-Hôtel
Gilbert Sorrentino
"A tall man, dressed rather shabbily, was
walking down the road." Thus, any story. The writer wishes to make his
sense exact. A . . . what? "A dog came out of the bushes at the side of
the road" (in South Newington, New Hampshire) "to confront the man and
his wife, halfway to the roadside vegetable stand." The corn there
sweet and luscious, kernels popped between the teeth, their sugary
juice. It is this letter which serves so well, A. But don’t
misunderstand me: I am not a "country" writer, although its peace is
appealing to me. The writer—a writer wishes to make his sense
exact, or why bother? Precise registrations are beautiful, indeed. The
popular novelist deals with feathery edges, one gets a "tone." One gets
a "feeling." Then there are those who rhyme dialogue, subsidized
assassins of the precise. The inane, the poets in constant residence.
They demand of the poem that it adjust their very lives, they die
fragmented at parties, turn out bands of students armed against
ignorance with error. Error sharpened and ready for assault! Give them
annual prizes, I beg you. Beware the interested academic. "A" young
English instructor . . . ignorant, ignorant. In New Hampshire,
I dug 280 clams in Portsmouth Bay in 45 minutes. The earth’s plenty. My
wife made a magnificent clam soup and we had four guests. The children
played in the soft night among pines. I was a vacationer. The next day
swam in the icy Atlantic, yet knew what I am. From this head—comes
beauty. It is the artist who lives the nonartistic life who is most
aware of his painfully absurd position. To keep one’s mouth shut. Who
the hell does he think he is, anyway? One sees in the letter A a
constant: and yet, a continuing rejuvenation. A continuing rejuvenation? Of flies! Mouches eclatantes. The
poet has it that this primal vowel is black. The great alpha, black A.
"Black velvet coat of glittering flies." Black, black. The A, sitting
quietly on the page, wings folded back over the shining body. A, a fly.
AA, two flies. "It is true that most of them breed in decaying organic
matter of some kind, but we must remember that disgust is purely a
human reaction." In New Hampshire, a genus of biting fly (Chrysops)
was so persistent that it would stay on the flesh until the exact
moment one sank beneath the water, and sometimes even went under in its
ravenous feeding. In this sentence, eleven instances of sudden
blackness. Eleven flies. To keep one’s mouth shut, or, opening it, to see the language in
air, inexact somehow. Talking to the young English instructor in his
Maryland farmhouse: he is a member of some audience unsuspected, yet he
does not understand this language. In the bright kitchen, the following
morning, with grapefruit and coffee on the table, I felt an exile,
somehow totally out of whatever world I live in, fuzzy and—inexact. On
the bookcase, a fly. In the mind, A. Darkness, darkness. Later, another
poet would ask me if I had ever met John Crowe Ransom. Poets together.
Yet my poets—their secret lines speak to me. A poet. A poet. English instructors and their wives. Depressed. At
such times, one throws up a hasty wall of wit and anecdote, behind
which the heart can hide. From its retreat, it listens to the
spectacular hyperbole rumbling above it. I board the train for home and
am again at the beginning. The fields and towns go by, the soured
Jersey flats finally. A.
A A
A continuing rejuvenation. Thus it is that one often comes across
a line of startling beauty and brilliance in an otherwise putrescent
poem or page of prose. Movement of the line, its quantity, the shifting
of the vowels, the A’s breeding in decay. One must read with care,
searching for precise registrations. The true poet will always have
something to offer. In his lines aspects of the persistent, the
re-created. So that these precise notations die only when the world
dies. The A waits calmly, shadowing the line. Calm.
A AA A
A
A A
A A
