ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY

1
PREFACE: ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE-ESSAY, OR
MORE SPECIFICALLY, THE ANNOTATED PERSONAL VERSE-
ESSAY POEM

OR: ON THE PERSONAL ESSAY-ISH NATURE OF THE
CONTEMPLATIVE AND DAYDREAMING CONSCIOUSNESS, IN
GENERAL ( AND WITH BRIEF REMARKS IN RELATION TO THE
PRACTICALITY AND UNIVERSAL NATURE OF CREATIVE AND
CRITICAL WRITING, RENDERING MOST OF US THE
PROTAGONISTS OF THE STORIES WITHIN OUR PERSONAL
ESSAYS) IN THE MORE SPECIFIC CONTEXT OF THE
POTENTIAL OF POETRY’S SPIRITUAL/ PHILOSOPHICAL
SIGNIFICANCE—FOR AS PERCY SHELLEY SAID OF POETS:
THEY ARE THE ‘UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGISLATORS OF THE
WORLD.’”

2
TABLE OF CONTENTS

· PART
1
:YOU AND I

· PART
2
: ON ATTEMPTING TO CREATE GOOD ART AND SELL IT
IN A WAY THAT MAINTAINS ONE’S INTEGRITY IN THE CONTEXT
OF A MOST COMPLEX ECONOMIC SITUATION, PLUS THE GREAT
INFORMATION FLOOD OF THE LATE
2
0
TH AND EARLY
2
1
ST
CENTURIES

· PART
3
: I, SEAN PATRICK FINN-O’CONNOR SHALL ATTEMPT TO
TALK ABOUT MYSELF IN A PALATABLE WAY

· PART
4
: ON MY TASTE IN POETRY

PART
5
: A LITTLE BIT ON MY NEED TO BE CLEAR ABOUT GENRE

· PART
6
THIS IS A VERSE-ESSAY; AN ANNOTATED PERSONAL
VERSE-ESSAY POEM

· PART
7
: META

· PART
8
: FANTASIZING ABOUT FAME

· PART
9
: IS THERE/SHOULD THERE BE SUCH A THING AS “THE
BEST?”

· PART
1
0
. ON THE NECESSITY OF UNIQUENESS AND GRANTING
EVERYONE PROTAGONIST STATUS OF THE STORIES IN THEIR
PERSONAL ESSAYS

3
· PART
1
1
.WE ARE ALL CREATIVE AND CRITICAL WRITERS

· NOTES:

·
1
.
1
PERIODS, MOVEMENTS, AGES, ERAS, ET CETERA

·
1
.
2
THE CONTEXT IS VERY PHILOSOPHICAL

·
1
.
3
MY POSTMODERN CONSCIOUSNESS COURTESY OF ALLEN
GINSBERG AND NIETZSCHE MOST OF ALL

·
1
.
4
THE AYN RAND PHASE

·
1
.
5
MY RETURN TO COLLEGE AND MY INCREASING AWARENESS
OF THE PROBLEM OF POSTMODERNITY

·
1
.
6
DISCOVERING MAXIMALISM

·
1
.
7
SOME REMARKS ON WAYS TO DEFINE MAXIMALISM ALONG
WITH ITS ‘PROS AND CONS’

· Credits for the New York Times Interactive Article “Who We Lost”:

·
3
. CONTACT CITATION

4
·
4
.
1
AGAINST THE CREATIVE-CRITICAL WRITING BINARY
NARRATIVE

·
4
.
2
ON HYRBID FORMS OF ESSAYS AND POETRY

·
4
.
3
ON THE VERSE-ESSAY

·
4
.
4
WHICH FORM OF POETRY SHOULD MY POEM TAKE?

·
4
.
5
WHAT YOU WRITE DOES NOT COUNT AS POETRY,THE
IVORY TOWER SAID

·
4
.
6
“WHAT YOU WRITE DOES NOT COUNT AS AN ESSAY,” SAYS
THE IVORY TOWER

·
4
.
7
HYBRID ESSAY FORMS

·
4
.
8
“WHAT YOU WRITE DOESN’T COUNT AS POETRY,”THE
IVORY TOWER SAID, PART
2

·
4
.
9
OUTSIDE THE BOX

· *A BRIEF AFTERWORD
:

5
PART 1: YOU AND I

You.

You, fellow human!

Or, who knows,

maybe you’re an “alien!”

(If…

ya’ll aliens are out there!

In which case, I hope you come in peace,

for we humans have suffered through more than our

“fair share” of plagues, genocides and war.

Indeed, coronavirus
2
0
1
9
, in viciously mean fashion,

for the past year now,

has played the role of evil alien, so to speak.

“One in three Americans has lost someone to the coronavirus,” The New York

Times said in its interactive online article, “Who I Lost" [
2
]

Do I believe you’re out there?

“If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space,” Ted Arroway tells his

daughter in the movie Contact [
3
]

6

I agree! Similar to my speculations

on the prospects of some sort of

god, goddess, deity, creator, intelligent designer, et cetera.

I don’t

know, of course,

but logically speaking there’s certainly grounds to

SUSPECT it’s very possible.

Moreover, I certainly hope

there’s both aliens — nice ones—

and a diety…)

But back to my more speci
fi
c focus on YOU

and you’re YOU-ness!

Whoever/whatever you are.

And what I wonder most of all about you:

what’s your story?

what’s your world view (and why?) and thus your priorities?

Mustn’t I practically obsess over you

as to provide the best customer service possible?

You! You! You!

You become my whole consciousness!

7
Ya’ll!

You’se.

Because,
fi
rst of all, it must

be you,

instead of ME,

because,

all marketing aside,

I dare hope for your readership

and thus must
fi
nd some sense of balance

between communicating to you with utmost honesty,

thoroughly and elaborately,

and yet, most palatably,

whatever that might be,

and thus one reason why I love aesthetics!

But anyway, is it not the case that in fact it’s not at all

about me? Aren’t you

the one who is paramount?

Mustn't’ my fundamental principle of aesthetics,

and more speci
fi
cally, poetics,

commit itself to
fi
guring out just how this transaction… forgive me,

OUR transaction

8

(more on personalization and depersonalization on its way a little later, I

think…)

help you out!?!;

help you

make more

money,

gain more advantages than,

and/or be better

than others?

After all, people are calling it

a “service economy” these days.

Still,…perhaps

you appreciate that I’m being slightly sarcastic,

as to honor the tinge of irony re: the artist’s task,

an act of business

which in a sense must do the exact opposite

of “business as usual”

by presenting to you, fragments of a distinct, unique, individual, personal human soul,
and/or consciousness,

i.e, so-called authenticity!

But in an economy

that, at least for me, feels so exclusively,

9
monotonously,

tediously

to be a YOU-CENTERED transactionality,

(and yet in a most contradictory way! That is to say,

on the surface, it’s all about how I…forgive me….how we

can succeed in making YOU

win or believe YOU win

with respect to everything

or at least anything re: the services and products

we provide, whether government policy, public hate speech, easy access to sex,

images of

violence, computer and internet technologies, et cetera…

“Advertising signs that con you

Into thinking you’re the one

That can do what’s never been done

That can win what’s never been won

Meantime life goes on outside all around you,” Bob Dylan sang.

All the while, what’s the real motivation behind all that great customer service?

—insincerely opening by asking “how are you?”

and closing by saying “have a great day”

10

to the tunes of “um,”

“uhh,”

“like.”
 

You know… “
fi
ller words”

...

Fuck. C’mon, it’s about pro
fi
t!

Nobody gives a fuck about anything other than pro
fi
t.

Even Democrats! Harassing me by sending me like seven text messages a day

asking for money. Not that I entirely blame them as there is now, sadly, a

massive

need to do all we can to prevent those white nationalist Republicans from

gaining political power ever again! But still,

it’s a most unfortunate context

in which we’re all so desperate for money

for reasons political and personal!

Pro
fi
t and of course more pro
fi
t than your competition.

Oh, and…and…what better way to make a superior pro
fi
t than

fabricating a seductive

IMAGE!?!

[Jesus Sean O’Connor’s like mad cynical!

Is he though or is he just being realistic and in fact optimistic

11

in his thinking that honesty and critical thinking

can in fact “go a long way?”]

Your public image which PR people

try to depict as practically religious

in its perfection

as to disprove any and every critique

to which all the while many of us call “bullshit”;

what an awkward

“elephant in the room!”)

 

…Every time I even think of mentioning

“ME, MYSELF, AND/OR I,”

I

feel as though I am

“walking on egg shells!”

And so, I’m seeking to balance

my compassion

for both

the other and for the self.

YOU AND I!

12
And so here you

are, having read this far into

MY poem,

(my “annotated personal verse-essay poem” but more on genre and speci
fi
cally

this hybrid genre later, I hope)

if

anyone “out there” is reading this at all!

And thus we come,

well I come

to the question, why should, well, why might

you

wish

to

read

this,

…to read me?

(“little old me!”)

AND FOR A FEE!?!

HA HA HO HO HEE HEE!

And these days, with such an

13
ANXIOUS

(can ya feel it? I said can you feel it!?! let me hear you say “yeah!”

ya’ll: “yeah!”

Me: One more time, let me hear you all say “yeah!”

ya’ll: “YEAH!”)

HA HA HO HO HEE HEE!

Sean O’Connor trying hard to be a little silly.

…Yes, in my opinion, a most

ANXIOUS

and at times even

DESPERATE,

as I said,

seeming

economy!

And we’re always so busy.

Doing what?

Trying to make money!

Right?

Do I “shit you not?”

14
PART 2: ON ATTEMPTING TO CREATE GOOD ARTB AND SELL IT IN A WAY
THAT MAINTAINS ONE’S INTEGRITY IN THE CONTEXT OF A MOST
COMPLEX ECONOMIC SITUATION PLUS THE GREAT INFORMATION
FLOOD OF THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES

So now, considering that the time and education

that often facilitates the appreciation of art

is often thought quite a luxury,

and with art having grown so massively as a “
fi
eld”

(everyone’s an artist now! so it sometimes seems—

before you deem me pretentious, read on!)

and thus so many people trying to appeal

to so many people,

and in the context of

THE GREAT INFORMATION FLOOD OF THE LATE TWENTIETH AND
EARLY TWENTY FIRST CENTURIES,

information utterly dizzying the human psyche

(no wonder there’s such an anxiety crisis; it’s an almost inevitable symptom in

reaction

to extreme

15

over-stimulation!

In fact, that might even be why I love drinking whiskey at night. —Though I

might quit!

[That shit is bad for the liver!]

It slows

the brain’s

processing

of pouring, sleeting, snowing, hailing,
fl
ooding

information!

But we can make it!)

 
Why do or why might we read

anything

in particular?

And by “read”

I mean not simply

reacting to sparkly so-called “click bait”

and all that manipulative tits and cunt in your face just for money bullshit,

I mean, why would you or I

sit down

someplace with no major distractions around

and deeply read thousands of pages of complex poetry?

16
Is it exclusively for the elites

within the literary
fi
elds

and within the poetry niches?

(speci
fi
c niches within the poetry niche)

…like, was it a pipe dream to think

one could write for a readership

that transcends

cliques or whathaveyou?

Well, hopefully you won’t mind,

if while in the midst of my attempt to establish some sense of connection

with you,

—hopefully, mostly free of both narcissism

and

utter self-loathing/self deprecation;

i.e., balanced compassion for the self and for the other —

( “I celebrate myself, and sing myself

And what I assume you shall assume

17

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,”

as Walt Whitman put it so uncannily well…)

PART 3: I, SEAN PATRICK FINN-O’CONNOR, SHALL ATTEMPT TO TALK
ABOUT MYSELF IN A PALATABLE WAY

…hopefully you won’t mind

if I brie
fl
y mention just a few things about

myself;

I’ll try to do it tastefully

by presenting the notion as a most pressing question (pressing, at least, to me)

to both of us (!),

you and I (!),

because, look, I don’t want simply

to lazily, cheaply, robotically parrot

a lot of super
fi
cial selling points to you;

I’m trying

to tell the truth! —

“…You will
fi
nd your
fl
ow when you go robot

I want to thank you and spank you upon your silver skin

Robots don't care where I've been

You've got to choose it to use it, so let me plug it in….

…I don't take these things so personal

18

Anymore, anymore,” Anthony Kiedis sings in the Red Hot Chili Pepper song “Go

Robot”—

—and thus not

evade

what I wish I could say

“say what you need to say,” as John Mayer sang in his song “Say What You Need

to Say.”

So here I essay in search of a voice that seems exclusively my own—

—which maybe I could then compare and contrast

with transcribed verbalizations of the most genius minds,

“I only quote others the better to quote myself,”

as Michel de Montaigne wrote—

a quote, now that I think of it, that I associate somewhat with T.S. Eliot:

“What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness

of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his

career.” (See “Tradition and the Individual Talent”)

(At the same time,

19

T.S. Eliot’s “Impersonal theory of poetry”

is chilling,

in that it disturbs me…

…yes,

Disturbs

ME!

ME, Mr.T.S. Eliot!

…oh, the irony

of early twentieth century

modernity,

such a striving for clarity

and yet, a clarity which forgets

the metaphysical presence

of human souls!…—)

Listen, I just think

it may be really rather helpful for me to know

or at least make a well-educated guess as to

what it is I think

about this and that,

about any given thing.

20
And applied to the desire to write poetry

with thoughts of prospective readers in mind,

I wonder: what do I

read

and why do I

read what I

read?

PART 4: ON MY TASTE IN POETRY

I

like a quotable poem— “well put”

“she opened up a book of poems

And handed it to me

Written by an Italian poet

From the thirteenth century

And every one of them words rang true

And glowed like burning coal

Pouring off of every page

Like it was written in my soul from me to you,” Bob Dylan sang in his song

“Tangled Up in Blue”

I like

a poem that transports me into it nearly all the way

and sustains that sense of escape or well guided contemplative daydream!

Figuratively speaking,

21
van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” meets Frasier and StarTrek as binged on Net
fl
ix.

I love a poem sparkling in its

essayistic

clarity,

(I forgot to mention, or rather I said I’d get to genre and hybridity later, now

here we go.

This is A VERSE ESSAY

OR an ANNOTATED PERSONAL VERSE ESSAY POEM.[
4
]

This entire book is to be a collection

of ANNOTATED PERSONAL VERSE ESSAY POEMS.

***

PART 5: A LITTLE BIT ON MY NEED TO BE CLEAR ABOUT GENRE

Hmm.Why do I feel such a need to proclaim

my name for my genre?

The question of genre

for so long

haunted me.

Why?

Well,
fi
rst of all,.

22

I really often would worry that “[M]y whole life I’ve been a fraud,”

like the narrator in David Foster Wallace’s

great, compelling, multilayered

short story “Good Old Neon” said.

Yes, a fraud because every time I thought

my mind’s
fi
shing hook
fi
nally
 

caught an option—

a way to somehow remake

or add to aesthetic notions of poetry—

an option I ought

to pursue,

I then felt distraught

upon recalling the universe’s ever-expanding,

near-in
fi
nity,

and I felt fear

that my point of view might miss

an opportunity

(which I suppose we’re all inevitably bound to do anyway,

even when a thing is right in front of one’s face; “if it was a snake, it would’ve

bitten you”)…

Yes so, this question of what is a genre

23

and how do we distinguish one genre

from another…

for so long

this question has haunted me.

The haunt…it taunted

me with…TOO MUCH FEELING…

…feelings, like steaming hot springs……
 

too hot (“hot as hell”) but the masochistic

aspects of myself wished

to stay in, like too much

drinking for one night…

…so overwhelmed and I couldn’t
fi
gure out how

to feel even the least bit “alright.”

…You see, sometimes “I c[ouldn’t] stand my own mind,”

to quote Allen Ginsberg’s poem “America…” … …I became hysterically

paranoid,
 

(I know this may sound strange…) because

what if nobody thought my

“poetry” counted as

poetry?!?

I mean, forget concerns regarding desired readership!

24

I worried I’d be dismissed by academia as illegitimate,

—like they say, mere prose with line breaks

…I didn’t want to make any grave mistakes

with my poetry.

For me,

poetry has always seemed

to
fl
ow from within my mind

onto a verbalized line most naturally…

It was the way

a line break

accentuates

the thingness

of verbalized thought

(I’m thinking, for some reason of John Lennon’s song

“God,”

and yet, on the surface I don’t know why…

as if it was originally a piece of prose

about his atheism,

clear and beautiful like a turquoise ocean

that then, like a microscope, homed in on

a Rose quartz gemstone…

as if the “thingness” of thought…)

25
PART 6 THIS IS A VERSE-ESSAY; AN ANNOTATED PERSONAL VERSE-
ESSAY POEM

It is a hybrid essay-poem of a speci
fi
c sort:

THE ANNOTATED VERSE-ESSAY

form of poetry.

Prosimetric you could also say.)

I seek to be essayistic for example in my treatment of theme.

I want to think

“it’s as if Sean O’Connor is really talking to me,

intimately,

as if I’m his priest

or confessor,

or psychologist,

or whatever!"

I love when it feels impossible

to tell whether it’s
fi
ction

or non-
fi
ction.

(I experimented over and over again

26

with
fi
ction

but every time I try to create

a
fi
ctional “character”

or situation it feels so jarringly

forced and full of bullshit!

Like biting one’s tongue

to “keep the peace”

when one wishes so deeply to express disagreement!

It feels so jarringly forced, as if falsifying

the very sources of my thoughts

along with the thoughts themselves.

[I know, of course it’s “falsifying”! that’s what it is, it’s FICTION!]

But for some reason every time

I start to write a
fi
ction [invent a character or situation]

it literally repulses

me.

As Phillip Lopate wrote about the
fi
ction works that failed to resonate with him,

in his

book To Show and Tell: The Craft of Literary Non-Fiction :“I get

the feeling that the characters and situations are being mechanically coerced toward

tragedy or farce.” )

And I love a poem that inspires me!

27
(And what is this “inspiration” stuff?

When I’m reading something

and I just start thinking and feeling,

as if in the form of ocean waves,

the way they seem so singular and particular

until they crash into the generality of one’s consciousness.

Inspiration is when a poem gets me

thinking about “the good life,” “the ever-improving life,”

self actualization; self transcendence!

An induced brainstorm of sorts!

Proof of uniqueness!

and yet

I feel

a strong connection!

As if we’re in one another’s heads!

PART 7: META

I tried not

to write much about writing.

Why?

28
Because there’s a whole universe

of phenomena beyond

the little pond that is Sean O’Connor,

his writing, and

writing as such.

Leave that stuff to the writer’s of creative writing textbooks, I’d always think.

And I’d always fear

that I would be an unknown poet

who resorted to writing textbooks

just to try and somehow get mentioned!

Also, I wondered:

does too much writing about writing

betray my personal sense of purpose

which is to say a few words

on the series of mysteries

and brief periods of gemstone transparencies

concerning human experience?

Not that I believe I ought to ignore

the subject—writing, that is—

(and furthermore,

I don’t mean to suggest

29

[ah, see how defensive

I can get, trying to reach one step ahead of critics,

imaginary and real, who are anxious to shred

up something someone has said,

whether the critique seems to make sense

or arose because the critic misinterpreted

what they read…]

…and furthermore, I didn’t mean to discouragingly criticize

anyone whose niche is to write critiques

or whose niche is the specialization in writing about writing…

…indeed, I consider both exciting!)

…I don’t mean to ignore the subject.

I simply enjoy indulging in what I hope to be my niche specialization:

writing from a universal

and yet personal

perspective!…

That’s personal,

NOT

SUBJECTIVE!

“What’s the difference?”

30
some people ask.

I believe the difference is that

one can contemplate one’s self/introspect

in a nearly objective sense

instead of whimsical emotions

and crazy, risky intuitions.

PART 8: FANTASIZING ABOUT FAME

Yes! I want to be crazy fucking famous!

and in fact, this raving craving

is directly related to my aesthetics

as well as and my thoughts

re: the connection between beauty and economy.

I can’t say yet

with con
fi
dence whether or not

this desire of mine is somehow problematic—

i.e., pretentious, condescending, snobbish; do I believe it is or isn’t narcissistic

to hope for and crave fame!?!

Thus…

I’m essaying the matter!

What do I even mean by “fame?”

31
I mean I want

MY NAME

in the news,

book reviews,

political speeches,

commencement speeches,

Net
fl
ix epics,

Amazon and Hulu epics too,

I want to be in the history books!

I want the history books to say

Sean O’Connor— grand provocateur, observateur

genius

poet!…

Genius philosophical poet!

Genius? As in the best? As in G.O.A.T?

Simply as a matter of fact!

Not to boast and gloat as if imagining I have

something you…

something you don’t have!

But isn’t it more complicated than that?

As is often the case with most of life—

(except, perhaps, death,

32

which I hope is actually not the case,

I hope we get to return as immortal, eternal ghosts…

I hate to dare suppose

consciousness and existence are but a mortal rose…).

The thing is that we are all the haves and the have nots.

Most fundamentally, generally, abstractly, metaphysically, ontologically,

we each have our

OWN

SOULS!

(“You shouldn’t

say

the word ‘soul’

in a poem,”

Dr. Rafal Szcepanski says.

“Too abstract.”

That, if you’ve happened to have read

any of my other pieces,

is one of his talking points…

and one of my chief motifs

is

33

the expression of the exact opposite belief…)

We each have our own souls

and thus our own nuanced desires.

Some of you wish to live in the Caribbean.

I wish to live in the Somerset Hills.

Some among us seek to explore above and beyond the Earth.

In other words, to the extent which, for purposes most fundamentally

serving awareness

re:

“which things

are where?”

and “in what ways

do they seem

to compare?”,

I suspect it’s fair

to say where

and how

certain hierarchical

appearances

—-unfair though they sometimes… all too often are—

seem to be.

34
In that context,

I certainly, absolutely wish

for my poetry

to make it into the literary anthologies,

the best sellers lists,

the history books!

I want

TO BE GREAT!

And to be considered great— you know…deeply and widely appreciated!

But I still feel awkward about it.

First of all,

what is greatness?

In fact, let me try another word!

I want to be

ONE OF THE BEST!

PART 9: IS THERE/SHOULD THERE BE SUCH A THING AS “THE BEST?”

And by “best…?”

I mean I want to be among the most invested…

in the aesthetics and writing of poetry

such that I’m a success

35
in the way I already mentioned.

To be in the history textbooks.

To be the next Percy Shelley.

The next Shakespeare.

The next Walt Whitman.

The next Bob Dylan!

To give you chills.

To take you on an imaginary cognitive ride!

But…so I am trying to think though beyond my ego

and abstract labels like “genius.”

I want to be thorough!

I want you to feel as though

you were literally inside the human mind!

But to do that, I gotta talk about myself!

All this business of “Self.”

What degree of attention to self is suf
fi
cient?

Alright, and also, this concept “excellence”

“bestness”…

is the concept inherently pretentious, condescending?

Like how dare we

brand others as “less”

but then again,

36
competence qua creating a product or service

is not the same as the inherent worth of a person!

I don’t know about you, but I hope

those who need brain surgery

have the best surgeons!

And of course they should be praised.

They deserve it.They save lives! They should be generously paid!

So then, hmm, I mean, certainly, wouldn’t you agree

that should we wish to live,

or in other words, exist,

it’s reasonable to try to excel

at something?

Wouldn’t that help us cultivate a sense of MEANING?

But then, once again, I get to thinking about hierarchies.

Something like the Olympics.

Someone always loses and someone always wins.

That some of us are the losers

seemingly no matter what!?

That some of us might think,

to quote Bob Dylan, from the song “Idiot Wind”:

“I can’t help it if I’m lucky!”

Born to rich parents,

37
or with sexy tits,

or a big dick.

Some end up quadriplegic.

Eaten up by fucked up diseases.

Some of us seem to others among us to be

utter geniuses!
 
And I hate to admit it

but I wish I was a genius

and that I was considered one!

Original.

And I wish to be rich.

To live…forever!

To give amazing cunnilingus!

To fuck and make love good.

To treat others well!

With love!

To try my best to help others

thrive, improve….

and if we are to you know…do well in life,

do we not have to give ourselves

permission

to strive to be brilliant geniuses within our niches?

38
And do to manage this,

well, I think

if we wish to be so much as even someone with basic cognizance

despite what might in a super
fi
cial context

come across as awfully self-obsessed,

I mean, we will have to give ourselves

permission

to pay considerable attention

to our personal experiences

within our so called “human condition,”

such that we must essay our stories.

10. ON THE NECESSITY OF UNIQUENESS AND GRANTING EVERYONE
PROTAGONIST STATUS OF THE STORIES IN THEIR PERSONAL ESSAYS

And if we should wish to
fi
nd a niche

in what seems like an ever over-saturating economy,

where, perhaps ironically, too much similarity between us

“blows smoke in [all] our faces,” such that it makes

parts of ourselves invisible,

39

“just another voice in the wilderness” as Barry Gibb sings in the Bee Gees

song “Just Another Voice in the Wilderness.”

doesn’t it seem like

we

have to examine ourselves, our deepest authenticities

rather thoroughly,

such that we must give ourselves the levity to be

the protagonists of

our personal essays?

But what about the humility

which…

would it be fair to say (?)

postmodernism taught so many of us?

To live less modestly may feel, to some of us,

as awkward, egotistical, sel
fi
sh, narcissistic, condescending, arrogant, and pretentious.

But to put it another way,

what if we grant

everyone

protagonist status

of their essay-stories?

And it shall enrich socio-cultural, global, international, universal consciousness!

40
And so the very context of so-called “literature”

changes our understanding of such a concept.

11. WE ARE ALL CREATIVE AND CRITICAL WRITERS

We’re all living memoirs!

For “the writer” (creative and/or critical)

is no longer quite that person,

alien with all their foreign jargon,

as if to so emphatically divide the artist and some “non-artist.”

Most of us

have thoughts

and most of us

verbalize and thus

to some extent discuss,

some of these thoughts,

much of which may

be done extemporaneously

touching letter icons on a tablet,

composing a text message or email

to send via the internet—

—for example.

41
So, in fact, just as most of us are talkers,

and while we may not all be so called “authors”

in a more professionally literary sense

most of us are writers.

Now the writer writing about writing

becomes something so much more exciting

than mere meta-elitism.

Now the writer writing about writing

unites us

as thinker transcribing verbalized thought

about transcribing verbalized thought

(metacognition!)

i.e,..to simplify,

writing becomes thinking and communicating thoughts

and writing about writing becomes thinking about thinking and communicating
thoughts.

I mention this in part because

for years I was so distraught,

believing a writer ought not to write about writing and being a writer,

(did I mention this earlier?

sometimes it gets hard to keep track of my thoughts!)

because which readers who bought your book sought a plot

42
based on the writer’s identity qua writer?

Isn’t getting lost in the reading of a writing

—such that one forgets that they’re even reading,

and thus forgets that they’re reading a writer,

all the more exciting?

And yet, does not such an impersonal and detached tone

(a la Tolstoy, T.S. Eliot, I dare say)

drone on in tedious lack of deeply felt, personal expression of an authentic, individual
soul?

My current theory is that

the writer

becomes a character

who is MORE THAN “the writer/narrator/speaker, etc…”

writing about themselves.

In a way,

the writer qua protagonist

gives voice that helps us imagine

ourselves in the midst of our stories,

fi
nding bits of another’s perspective

that resonates so chillingly

that we experience a most intimate

sort of spiritual community,

43
such that fragments of our

minds and consciousnesses, qua readers,

permeate the resonant “quote” or “line”

(and this bit of the writer/protagonist’s consciousness/mind)

in the process, grows signi
fi
cantly more clari
fi
ed.

Moreover, we create an entrance into a sort of

crowd sourced living archive—

your personal essay stories

and mine.

May we deem okay

if my story is a rich, genius, famous poet

who shall achieve near immortality,

and live within near eternity,

someone whose name

the universal culture celebrates

in honor of his genius brain?

Or am I really

just an awful narcissist?

I just want to be a good person!

And this pursuit all too often makes me so nervous!

NOTES:

44
1

1.1 PERIODS, MOVEMENTS, AGES, ERAS, ET CETERA

Before proceeding to share with you some of my notes re: Maximalism, some context
might elucidate how/why I could take such abstract, dry, aesthetic thought so
personally and thus feel so deeply passionate about it.

Since I was
1
8
years old (back in
2
0
0
4
) and discovered “THE BEAT MOVEMENT,
“THE BRITISH ROMANTIC PERIOD,” and THE FRENCH DECADENT
MOVEMENT,”…since then, the concept of the so-called artistic/aesthetic/literary
“movement” or “period” or “age,” et cetera, has fascinated me very intensely!

That artists were innovating and cultivating a new socio-cultural consciousness (or
maybe they were simply re
fl
ecting the collective consciousness in a distinctly evolved
style/voice of sorts) seemed to me implicitly on par with making advances in
philosophy, with the exception that in those days I had the wildly uninformed notion
that philosophy was some sort of advanced calculus and/or physics, which had to be
“over my head.”That was
fi
ne though.This was before I discovered Nietzsche and I
viewed poetry as the medium that best conveyed what I later came to learn philosophy
actually is.

1. 2 THE CONTEXT IS VERY PHILOSOPHICAL

(In other words, though I failed to recognize it then, I was and perhaps always have
been an extremely, maybe inherently philosophical person.Well, philosophical and
literary! The best examples I can provide to substantiate this claim:

ONE: One of the
fi
rst questions I can recall asking an “adult”— I was maybe three
years old— was to my grandmother. “Grandma, is ‘god’ a girl or a boy?”

“‘god’ is whatever you want it to be,” she said. [Only now do I realize my grandmother
was the poster child for the postmodern female. Indeed, she was nearly a nihilist!
Especially towards the end of her life, she claimed she could care less whether she
continued living or died. She had no wish for a funeral, cof
fi
n, tombstone, any of that!

“What difference will it make to me? I’ll be dead.” She was the perfect and yet the
worst match for my grandfather, who produced pornography
fi
lms. She was a radical
for porn just as he was, and they were a non-monogamous couple, openly so, but she
always would seem especially bitter about it, hypocritically calling my grandfather a
“god damn fucking pervert!” quite often…both of them chain smoking and
persistently drinking— grandma drank gin and tonic, grandpa drank tequila…]

45
TWO: Continuing with the ‘god’ theme, at
1
3
years old I proclaimed myself an atheist,
which caused quite a strange stir. It was
1
9
9
9
and unbeknownst to me, outside of
textbook suburban Blanville, where I grew up, in the very center of New Jersey, atheists
existed! [I discovered this once I went to college] Even my grandparents— the paternal
ones I just referenced— who may not have believed in a god at all, refused to be
referred to as “atheist.”They were, in name, Russian Orthodox Christians [and both
their parents were Russian.That always gave me a feeling of extra special connection
to Dostoevsky.]

One of my best friends was passionately into saying she was Hindu: Jirothi Saxena.
(That is to say, she didn’t care for the religion itself but liked that in terms of her
familial background she was Hindu. She really never delved into her Hindu identity at
all beyond calling herself one— like my Christian grandparents!] She was actually the
fi
rst girl I can say I truly fell in love with. First girl I ever performed cunnilingus on
[though we were only very brie
fl
y “boyfriend and girlfriend”].

She asked me one day during the earlier epoch of our friendship what my religion
was. I said I was a “jewstian” [while my paternal and Russian grandparents were
Christian in name, on my mother’s side, all were Jews.They were not quite as
irreligious as my paternal Russian fake Christian grandparents but they were also not
quite impassioned.The key difference was that when my paternal grandparents
celebrated the Christian holidays there was never a reference to Jesus or any sort of
ideologically, or textually Christian notion. Christmas was about presents, lights (my
grandfather loved to clothe the exterior of their house in multi-colored Christmas
lights. [[Funny enough, at least to me, my grandmother was passionately for only white
lights and so they would
fi
ght over decorations. Even the tree, come to think of it.
Grandpa believed in real Christmas trees, going to chop it and bring it home National
Lampoon-Griswold family style. Grandma preferred the arti
fi
cial. My grandmother
liked to have a Santa Clause
fi
gurine on top of the tree. My grandfather preferred a
golden star! Sometimes they experimented with compromises. Other times it was one
way or the other]] In contrast, on the Jewish side, there was always reference to the
“stories” and “rationales” as for why we celebrated. My cousins and older sister would
join the family in saying certain prayers the Hanukah one, but I never did.]

“That’s not a real religion, be serious,” Jirothi said.

“Okay, well, let me think about it.”

And so I did.T’was like a “light bulb”
fl
ashed on in my mind re: the suddenly
seemingly blatant bullshit that was the ‘god’ myth and the Jesus myth and the Adam
and Eve myth, and the Abraham myth, the Moses myth, the Allah/Mohhomed myth, et
cetera. A) It was too perfectly comforting…all these promises of post-death miracles

46
and claims of miracles that occurred ever-so-strangely before anyone could persevere
any evidence of such miracles. B) On a similar note, there was no evidence whatsoever
to even so much as suggest any sort of religious claim.

This made for a most complex relationship between Jirothi and I as I came to accuse
her of being utterly crazy for identifying with a “religion.” At the same time, our schism
created a most beautiful and erotic sexual tension. I thought she was the crazy but
beautiful girl. She thought I was the bad rebellious boy. Alas, we never did “go all the
way,” though, over the years I used to jerk off ferociously to the thought of fucking her
and it was always so very good! I could go on and on about Jirothi. But perhaps some
other time. Because the point I meant to get at here was that I was foundational a
philosophical type.Which leads me now to point number three.

THREE: Just as religion was a conversation between my best friends and I [my other
best friend was David Williams. He was not religious but did believe vehemently in the
existence of a goddess. It was strange because David was actually a very logical person
but for whatever reason he convinced himself that this female deity existed and when
we argued religion with him he would just say it’s what he believes and that was that],
likewise, my best friends and I were passionate about movies.

David’s dream in those days was to be a movie director. Mine was to be a movie star.
Jirothi’s was to be the screenwriter. And so we made movies in that fashion and we
watched a lot of movies and debated our aesthetics re: all the aspects of
fi
lm, from
cinematography to special effects to favorite actors and actresses. I was obsessed with
John Travolta. David was obsessed with RalphRalph Fiennes and Jirothi was obsessed
with Nicole Kidman. David hated and, last I heard from him, still maintains he hates,
Nicole Kidman. He believed she was terribly dry and emotionless. “I wouldn’t even
fuck her! She might be hot but she’s fucking lifeless. Might as well be a necrophiliac
and fuck a corpse.”

“What’s a necrophiliac?” I asked. David cursed a lot and taught me some of the “bad”
words I didn’t yet know. “Pussy. Cunt. Cock. Cum. Et cetera.

I do want to also say, I am a fan of Nicole Kidman. I think she’s a genius. Her and
Meryl Streep I believe are the two greatest actresses of all time!…

In any event, the point I was to make is that we were passionate about what could
count as “good” or “bad” or “beautiful”

or “ugly.”There were a couple of movies we all
agreed were utter masterpieces. Schindler’s List. Scream. Pulp Fiction.As Good as it Gets.
Beverly Hills Cop.

Then there were movies we were divided on. I was obsessed with Grease and Saturday
Night Fever (extremely foundational to my ascent into becoming a poet! Will discuss

47
later.) For David…Fight Club. And to this day, I don’t get it.The movie always struck me
as jaded homoerotic blandness. I hated looking at men
fi
ght each other so intimately
like that. It grossed me out. Disgusted me.

Please don’t misunderstand. I was not anti-gay. In fact, I participated in day of silence
protests in high school in the name of gay rights. By “disgust,” what I really mean is
that it was like…jarring. I didn’t think it was “wrong” in any moral/ethical sense of the
term. I did, on the other hand, think it was illogical/irrational. Close-minded as it was,
my view was that the most sacred image in all of nature was man and woman engaged
in sexual intercourse, as the woman is moaning in expression of her tumultuous array
of multiple orgasms.To be gay, I thought, therefore, awful as it sounds, was
depreciative. Gay men failed to appreciate the sacredness of the woman and lesbians
failed to appreciate men.

I was sort of hypocrite re: lesbians. I loved to watch them trib in porn. But not as much
as I loved to watch a woman be fucked by a man (and I would imagine I was that man
fucking that woman.) On that note, I hated watching a woman fuck another woman via
strap-on. It made no sense to me! If you want something thick thrusting in and out of
your cunt why wouldn’t you just use a cock? That was how I thought of it. David loved
lesbians and in fact was an advocate on lesbian only porn. Jirothi thought porn was
“hot” but also thought it simply too taboo for her to try so elaborately to obtain.
(Because young teenage guys couldn’t buy porn. So, we either stole it from our fathers
or someone else we knew got a hold of porn who knows how.) Jirothi’s favorite movie
was AceVentura:When Nature Calls. She was a sucker for comedies, though among us,
it was David who was funny.Though admittedly, I can’t remember speci
fi
cally anything
he did or said which was so funny.

I admit that this doesn’t paint a picture of deeply contemplated aesthetics and
philosophical thinking, but it was nonetheless, for the lack of a better term, our tone.
Good and bad.Wrong and right. Beautiful/hot and ugly/“busted.”

Now I’ll skip ahead —back to being
1
8
and fascinated with artistic movements and
periods.

1. 3 MY POSTMODERN CONSCIOUSNESS COURTESY OF ALLEN GINSBERG
AND NIETZSCHE MOST OF ALL

The “movement” I most identi
fi
ed with was “the beat movement.” Allen Ginsberg was
my hero! The “king of cool.”The greatest poetic genius of all time. I especially loved
poems of his that seemed to suggest he was on some very crazy hallucinogenic drug,
tapping into some sort of spiritual consciousness that wasn’t hard to understand
because it was bullshit, but because it was taped onto a sort of spiritual consciousness.

48
Take for example, his poem “Aether.”

“4 sniffs & I’m high…”

it starts.

…all the old Hindu

Sabahadabadie-pluralistic universes

ringing in grandiloquent

Bearded juxtaposition…

a text-box;

“…IS X

MEANINGLESS—

ADONOI—

IS A JOKE—-

“…arbitrary madness!”

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. And I loved that!

Or…

“Butte Magic

of

Ignorance,” as Jack Kerouac wrote in his poem “First Chorus Mexico City

Blues.”

Prior to my Ginsberg phase, my notion of poetry was almost dogmatically Bukowskian
(at
fi
rst it was the Bee Gees, then it was a mix of Alanis Morissette and J.D. Salinger
and Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, then it was
Sharon Olds and then it was John Lennon/Percy Shelley/Allen Ginsberg: the three
genius atheist poets! But Ginsberg most of all, because most of the time in those days
my poetry was free-verse. [I wrote song lyrics from about
1
2
-
1
6
, and then I started
experimenting with free verse and prose poetry…incidentally, never knowing those
terms. Also, consequentially, in response to some prose poems I published in the high
school literary journal a teacher suggested I read Jack Kerouac. I never planned to but
when I discovered Ginsberg [[I discovered Ginsberg because I speci
fi
cally began
searching for atheist poets, which led me to him, Lennon, and Shelley]]—I will tell
other aspects of the story another time).

49
And at this time my mind was in such a bad way!

The awful mix of smoking a lot of pot and suffering from undiagnosed panic and
major depressive disorders led to a mode of consciousness that I try to completely
omit from my memory. Probably three fourths of the time that I smoked pot I got
extremely fucking paranoid, convinced either that I was severely low-i.q. / i.e.,
intellectually disabled or that I was dying! I would become so convinced I was dying,
when I was high, that I would sob loudly in front of who ever the hell I was smoking
with, and practically moan about how I didn’t want to die.

But this mentality led to my dropping out of college, and then living what you might
call, truly a chaotic and whirlwind life, moving from Fort Myers to South Beach to
Tampa Bay, back to New Jersey, where I was constantly living in bedrooms in peoples’
houses or townhouses or condos, and eventually I moved to California.Then back.

But really, I didn’t know what I was doing because I was so oblivious, always feeling
doomed, depressed, anti-social [I didn’t exactly have friends who loved poetry. Well
Molly Dreyfus, who was my girlfriend from
2
0
0
8
until
2
0
1
7
—t’was politics among
other things that drove us apart. She was a radical libertarian. For while I was too. But
when Trump became president…well, so began a most dramatic time for everyone in
America with a conscience. Honestly, I’ll never understand how Molly could support
Donald Trump. She said it was him or a continual growth of excessive government and
debt and taxes which was to her so unacceptable. Really, the most serious of problems
with respect to our political schism began in
2
0
1
4
when I began doubting my
Libertarian dogma.

Molly.

One day I’ll tell you how I met her. For now, I’m just trying to give you some context
re: my oblivious and self-destructive mentality in those days— most of all between
2
0
0
5
— when I started smoking pot— and
2
0
1
1
, when I came to accept the
epistemological value of reason and knowledge. [It was
2
0
1
1
when I became a
Libertarian and it was more about idealism—like in an ideal world there would be no
need for government because everybody would be virtuous— but…as I came to grow
more attentive to reasoning and reality or apparent reality if we must call it that, I
realized I was indeed out of my mind] Molly did love poetry though. She was a
guitarist and singer-songwriter so we both could talk poetry for hours. Molly was into
Kerouac and Ginsberg. She was into pot. She was into revolutionary consciousness
whatever it might have been. She was never really a fan of my poetry now that I think
of it.Why didn’t she like it? She didn’t like that I used so-called profanity and that I
often wrote explicitly about sex. She disliked my hatred for rhyme. She found my
poetry “jarring.”Why were we a couple (?), you might ask.When words and opinions

50
didn’t get in the way we had a very emotional connection.We both suffered severe
depression and anxiety and both knew what it was like to be extremely vulnerable.We
both knew how to give the other comfort.When words and opinions didn’t get in the
way! Or if we were high or drunk!

Also my friend Jirothi was somewhat into poetry, merely lukewarm however. She liked
to listen to songs and discuss lyrics and so had an appreciation for John Lennon, Bob
Dylan, Paul Simon, Jim Morrison, all of them…she thought Morrison and Dylan were
sexy….she sometimes read my poetry and she wrote occasionally, but…she had
changed a lot by the time we were in college. She gave up on her aspiration to be a
screenwriter and thought it was useless to try and “make it” as an artist. She wanted
something safer. And so she became an accountant…

She didn’t like that I was so gung-ho about becoming a “rich, famous, and genius
poet.”That idea of mine, she said, was a pipe-dream. But she thought it was
“interesting” that I had such “daring” passion. If only it wasn’t also dangerous and
suicidal.

As for David, we lost touch. He also gave up on his dream…to be a
fi
lmmaker. But he
didn’t give up, at least, on his passion for
fi
lm. He became a professor of media
studies.]

I mean, when I look back on it all now, I see mostly a blur. One of the few sort of
concrete images that stick we me: reading TheWillTo Power in a steaming bathtub,
while drinking tequila quite heavily, late at nighty, telling myself, in between drunken
musings on my barely present comprehension of Nietzsche, that I was going to one
day be so fucking famous. I had visions of living in Manhattan and having a sort of
entourage around me, reporters, wanna-be artists riding on my coattails, women…and
I was to live in a luxurious penthouse with a panoramic view of the city. So went my
mind in between that obsession with the drug induced poetry of the Beats and the
classic rock songwriters of the
1
9
6
0
s and the thick irrationalism of Nietzsche…I
existed in a dimension of chaos so distant from reality that in fact…hah…I’d be
driving along country roads where the speed limit was
4
5
and do
7
5
,
8
5
,
9
5
miles per
hour, while listening to the Dire Straits and feeling almost as though I existed in outer
space and was
fl
ying a space ship into oblivion.This led to getting many speeding
tickets and losing my license. Indeed, I was without a driving license from
2
0
0
9
until
2
0
1
5
. Almost half a decade without driving. I actually had to re-learn! Anyway, my
point is that felt I felt so free to nihilistically evade any sense whatsoever of even the
prospect of even a tiny “kernel” of actual truth that the way I was living re
fl
ected as
much!

51
If you don’t mind, from here I wish actually to skip many years because this entire
“note”— which ended up much, much longer than anticipated— was really just
supposed to be about a bit of context re: my maximalistic-ish aesthetics.

Ultimately, from roughly
2
0
0
6
— at which point I would say my two favorite poets were
Charles Baudelaire and Bob Dylan— until
2
0
0
9
, I remained unaware of anything
remarkable literarily except for Dostoevsky, who actually intrigued me more
philosophically and philosophically I was most of all, ultimately Beatnik and Nietzsche
in
fl
uenced.

“There are no such things as ‘mind,’ reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or

truth:

they all belong to
fi
ction, and can serve no purpose…facts are precisely what

is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations” (the italics are Nietzsche’s,

see Will To Power, pages
2
8
3
-
2
8
4
).

I clung tight to this intellectual nihilism. [I say “intellectual nihilism” because it wasn’t
as if I felt, intuitively or spiritually, that life was meaningless. Rather, I simply agreed,
as if deductively, even when I didn’t believe explicitly or intentionally in deductive
reasoning, with all of Nietzsche’s ideas. In fact, my goal was to write poetry that
answered Nietzsche’s call for a so-called “Transvaluation of values.” My goal was to
write books of poetry that protected a superior “reality”—i.e., a new physics! My
metaphysical view was that “reality” was a kind of very confusing, paradoxical illusion
which induced either oblivion or fantasy energy, or karmic fantasy energy…Alas, yes,
like the underground man in the great Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, I
could dream up new illusions:

“I had a means of escape that reconciled everything- that was to
fi
nd refuge in

‘the sublime and the beautiful,’ in dreams, of course……I suddenly became a

hero…I believed blindly at such times that by some miracle, by some external

circumstance, all this would suddenly open out, expend…I for instance, was

triumphant over everyone…I was a poet and a grand gentleman… the Pope

would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the

whole of Italy at theVilla Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como

being for that purpose transferred to the neighborhood of Rome…”—…that’s

how the underground man explained it.

I ended up concocting some absurd fantasies, all the more bizarre since I was before
this mess of a time, an atheist, as I discussed. But here’s one example: the idea that we,
humans, were all, in fact, “Goddesses and Gods” [I was to eventually write a book
entitled “Goddesses and Gods”; never ultimately did though] And we human-deities
were co-creating ever-evolving tendencies of physics with the those fantastic “karmic

52
forces” of our fantasies that I was telling you about… That is to say, I came to think
nature re
fl
ected either a plurality or majority of what people “willed” it to be.The law
of attraction on crack, let us say.Thus, to make the multidimensional universe a better
place to live, we had to delude ourselves with elaborate, utopian idealism! And so…
that’s what my poetry would protect! My mother used to say I lived in “lala land” or
that my head was “in the clouds” or that I was “riding the magical mystery tour bus” all
of which distressed her, and my father as well, since they feared for my life because I
gave very little indication of exercising even the most basic concrete awareness of my
perceptions and thus had absolutely no “practical” sense whatsoever!

So you see… things like the possible wisdom of my parents or of some professor, or
getting a job [I was working in restaurants and retail, always the lowest rung jobs,
dishwashing, bussing, stocking, cashiering,….any claim at practicality was often just
jarring background noise that gave me a panic attack… I believed what Kerouac said:

“Ignorance”

was “Butte Magic…”

Yes, philosophically I was a mix of Nietzsche and Kerouac and Ginsberg and
Baudelaire (Baudelaire I loved in a literary sense more than philosophically…I loved
how his poems always made me feel like I was high on opium, same as him, oblivious,
oblivious, oblivious…..and so….to be a mix of these folks philosophically was not just
abstract and theoretical. I had to be… like them! Like Jack Kerouac I had dreamed
of hitchhiking America. I almost dropped out of college my freshman year back in
0
4
’
to do it but my grandfather talked me out of it saying I should try and
fi
nd a
compromise between wanting to travel and getting an education; I should go to
college someplace I’d love to live. I did do that. And I never did get to hitchhike
however Molly and I did drive to California from New Jersey and back and from New
Jersey to Texas and back and would pretend we were the new-wave beats! And like
Allen Ginsberg I had to smoke a lot of pot and write with a lot of profanity! Too bad I
didn’t ACTUALLY understand the real meaning of his poetry and I never thought
about the. ominous warning embedded in that famous opening line from his
revolutionary “Howl”:
 

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”

[“the best minds…” “destroyed…” “the best minds… destroyed..” “madness" ]

And like Nietzsche I had to
fi
nd a way to marry my desire to be, really when it comes
down it, like outright psychedelic, and project that better world! But I wasn’t a
cultivated thinker, I was an irrational one, so I couldn’t really conceptualize this “better
world.”What I had was a vocabulary and a love for words. So I wrote hundreds of list
poems which catalogued, I believed, a sort of ideal consciousness and ideal reality. I

53
loved words like THRIVING, ORGASMING, UTOPIA, PARADISE, OCEANS,
OBLIVION, IMMORTALITY, et cetera. Essentially, I wrote in a very rawly subjective
way. I wrote words that made me feel how I wanted to feel then and there.

I was in this state of mind overall from about the time I was
2
2
— so it was
2
0
0
8
— ,
until roughly January of
2
0
1
1
, or so, when I brie
fl
y read James Joyce but found I was
just spending too much time in the dictionary for my taste, and then, fatefully, due to
my interest in the word “individualism” and pursuing it what was written about it, and
at the suggestion of Molly, I discovered Ayn Rand, with whom Molly and I became
freakishly obsessed for three or four years.

1.4 THE AYN RAND PHASE

It was in the midst of exploring Ayn Rand that I
fi
rst grew signi
fi
cantly aware of the
concept postmodernism, as it was in many respects completely opposite Ayn Rand’s
so-called “Objectivism.” [I hate to credit her with coining the philosophical term of
“objectivism” because she,
fi
rst of all, not the
fi
rst human thinker to advocate for an
epistemology based on reason — she was rather crazy to act as though an
understanding of objectivity and logic and reasoned owed so very much to her!— and
also, she was not really objective about much other than the need to think objectively
as to get by in life [well, to try. Nobody is perfect]! But you know, I do still respect Ayn
Rand for having written and spoken so passionately about the value of Aristotle, and
the laws of non-contradiction and identity.That a thing cannot be other than what it is
— is this not the essence of cogent, rational thinking? And I had never thought of it
like that. I mean in terms of contradictions and non-contradictions. Even before I had
sort of lost my mind, and was an atheist and all that, I was more of a strict empiricist
than an advocate of reason— I could not wrap my mind around the so-called a priori
in those days. Because before Ayn Rand I really hadn’t even considered the
“conceptualness” of concepts. A thing’s thingness. I couldn’t have told you what a
concept was!

In this context I owe my life, I feel sometimes, to Ayn Rand. Because, whacked out as
Ayn Rand ultimately was, I do want to reiterate, in the abstract, epistemologically
speaking, she made sense! Of course we should strive for objectivity, logic, reason! And
so, through inhaling everyone of Ayn Rand’s books like three times, annotating them
like mad, and becoming a sort of unof
fi
cial scholar of her work, I learned to think
abstractly, I learned how to think in terms of DEFINITIONS AND MEANING! I
learned what philosophy actually is! [Pre Ayn Rand, my notion of philosophy had
something to do with an intuitive capacity to visualize what a better system of physics
might be; post Ayn Rand I came to appreciate philosophy as the study of the most
fundamental principles of existence or apparent existence!]

54
Indeed I did learn to think abstractly! If you haven’t noted already, I’m a very abstract
person, just as I am very philosophical. If I had to compare myself to any other poet I
would compare myself or wish I could compare myself to Percy Shelley. As of this
writing he is categorically my favorite poet and in my opinion the greatest English-
language poet of all time! If I had to compare myself to a more prosaic writer, I’d say
it’s Michel de Montaigne, Phillip Lopate, [Montaigne and Lopate most of all! Through
Montaigne I attempt a sort of digressive and eternal sort of consciousness; through
Lopate I attempt to be truly PERSONAL.], Leslie Jamison, Susan Sontag, James
Baldwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson….Though all of the above, abstract as they were,
managed very often to concretize their abstractions. I naturally struggle with
expressing myself concretely, which makes my poetry to many critics but a sham!
“Fuck em’” is what my grandfather would have said. I do not like to be that mean
though. I am strangely Christian in my view of adversarial relationships: forgive them
their sins they know not what they do!”]

No need to delve further into my current literary models right now; I’m just giving you
a little context as to the signi
fi
cance of eventually believing in logic and reason and
objectivity as the guide to rightness, goodness, truth. Because, the thing is this:
suddenly starting to REASON about things and root out contradictions that I would
observe OPENED UP THE UNIVERSE FOR ME, in a very really metaphysical sense!

Suddenly, I was learning politics and current affairs! You know, concepts like federal
debt, taxes, legislative processes, town council meetings, foreign relations, HISTORY,
economics, more practical aspects of consciousness. True, very unfortunately this new
“rational” Sean O’Connor was disturbingly libertarian and even worse, an outright
snob! I think I de
fi
ned utter snobbery. I would start an argument with anyone I could
and try to “teach” them philosophy. I viewed everyone except Molly as crazy, liberal,
altruistic, nihilistic, victims of postmodernity. I refused to go to Christmas parties
because that would be an endorsement of Christianity, I reasoned. I began refusing to
watch television and virtually every movie because they didn’t have a Ayn Randian
enough metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics. I even started berating my mother and
father, trying to tell them A is A! (I stopped that though when I had read that Ayn
Rand spoke explicitly against preaching to one’s parents.) My creativity, as a result, was
very sti
fl
ed. I wrote very few poems during the Ayn Rand days. Granted, they were epic
in length and ambitious in trying to think up something smart philosophically.
Actually, I wanted to somehow be better than Ayn Rand. It began seeming “cultish”
and “freakish” to me that I could not
fi
nd a single
fl
aw re: Ayn Rand. So, I searched for
one. And wrote an epic poem “Beyond Ayn Rand.” [I would eventually burn it!]

Where Ayn Rand
fi
rst lost me was in politics.The idea of no social safety nets and no
taxes or taxes that would only be voluntary, how, practically speaking, could this
happen? I’m not even talking about in terms of implementation. I mean, how are you

55
going to change the thinking of virtually an entire country and on such a fundamental
level. It’s one thing that in America’s history there was a revolutionary and civil war
which attempted to stamp out monarchy and slavery… this was true…but…there was
a sort of logically existing desire within people for those changes. Meanwhile, in terms
of the majority of Americans, I mean, but for the antiquated and evil electoral college,
we’d be a radically democratic country. One would have to have the spiritual power of
Jesus or the idea of Jesus to turn western liberal democracies into laissez-faire
capitalistic republics. Clearly Ayn Rand was overly idealistic, at best! From that point
on, bit by bit, numerous of my attachments to her ideas, talking points, principles,
chipped away and came unglued.

1.5 M Y RETURN TO COLLEGE AND MY INCREASING AWARENESS OF THE
PROBLEM OF POSTMODERNITY

I should give her credit for one other thing though. Ayn Rand strongly encouraged
people to get a college degree if they could. She believed IF the culture was ever to
change the way she wanted it to, it would have to happen in the universities.This had
planted a seed in my mind to actually get my BA in philosophy while posting my
poems on my blog. But I was’t sure.

But Molly gave me an ultimatum actually. She said if I didn’t go back to college she
would break up with me. So between her and Ayn Rand, I felt compelled to return.
 

My return to college is truly one of the most spiritual and beautiful experiences of my
life. I read vociferously. I became, at least considerably more than I ever had been, a
sort of positive-ish thinker. An optimist….again…ish. Indeed, at one point I planned to
write an epic poem I would call THE OPTIMIST. It never did materialize though. I got
a job as a writing tutor! I made…if not friends…meaningful relationships of some sort
with my co-workers, and people I’d see walking around every day. I discovered two
professors who would become my mentors. Dr. Israel Foster and Dr. Rafal Szcepanski.
Dr. Foster is a professor of interdisciplinary studies. Dr. S. is a philosophy professor.

It was Dr. S who really brought my attention to postmodernism because he taught a
class speci
fi
cally on it. On the
fi
rst day of class he played that song “Midnight” by the
Red Hot Chili Peppers where they sing

“Everyone knows anything goes!”

Inspired by the my utter disgust for that principle, I began an impassioned
independent and in-depth study on postmodern poetry. In so doing I came to see how
utterly postmodern collective consciousness had grown over the second half of the
twentieth century and into the twenty
fi
rst. It rather scared me! Poems that were

56
deemed the most incomprehensible were treated as the best. John Ashberry, for
example. Even Bob Dylan, who I consider the second greatest English-language of all
time, is often purposefully ambiguous, and as much as I have come to love Dylan, I
often get very annoyed at his more postmodern aspects.You had your exceptions, like
Billy Collins, (who I believe is a fucking snob! ) and Sharon Olds, maybe somewhat,
Denise Levertov, and also a fair number of songwriters— they do not get paid their
due respects! Read though those bullshit fucking anthologies of postmodern garbage
and usually not even Bob Dylan is included.You think I’M AN ELIST? No I’m fucking
not.The academic poetry community is elitist. Elitists as fuck! How condescending
they are, with the most arbitrary and persistently unsubstantiated rules they have like
the necessity of imagery, the unpoeticness of the essayistic in verse…it’s not even the
issue of those whacked out beliefs…its that they impose them on people who go into
debt, paying them to certify you as degree approved—as if that would help you sell a
truly genius work of literary art or get you a job as a professor! True, can’t blame
today’s professor’s of the humanities for the gutting of humanities funding! But I
never felt as though my efforts in grad school mattered to anyone other than myself
and my wife Jewel and a very tiny handful of people who I don’t go to school with who
appreciate that I put my all into my aesthetics!—- but by and large, to this day,
snobbish as I myself might seem to you, I believe most contemporary poetry to be
utterly incomprehensible and bad. I mean, I hate to say such a thing. I tend to hate all
sense of hierarchy. But I also tend to resent people who make money or who are
treated special simply for writing utter bullshit as to re
fl
ect that such is likewise their
view of reality!

1.6 DISCOVERING MAXIMALISM

I guess it was around
2
0
1
8
that I discovered the concept of so-called “maximalism.”
Two books: one by Nick Levy— Maximalism In Contemporary American Literature ,
and another by Stefan Ercolino—The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolano's 2666.

(Actually, it was through Ercolino who had before writing on maximalism, written on
the so called essay-novel [see note #
4
], introducing me to some of my favorite novelists
of all time— Proust, Musil, and Mann!—…it was out of admiration for him, in
exploration of his other work that I stumbled upon his book on maximalism, which
intrigued me, seduced me, resonated with me! )

One of my favorite introductory remarks re: maximalism comes from the pianist and
composer Ben Nobuto, who in fact wrote his masters dissertation on the topic—
“Digital Maximalism and ‘The New Post-Everything’”. (https://bennobuto.com/writing/
collaboration-with-dj-
1
3
-days-slb
4
8
) In his essay he writes:

57

“Owing to the nature of the subject matter, any essay on maximalism has the

potential to be in
fi
nitely broad and discursive (de
fi
nitions alone vary

signi
fi
cantly from context to context, be it for maximalist architecture, fashion,

literature or home décor)…does the logic of technological progress in our

current century entail…‘a slow erosion of our humanness and our humanity’?

It’s an idea that, I believe, has profound consequences for art, and considering

the extent to which most of our lives (at least in economically developed parts of

the

world) are now inextricably intertwined with new media technologies that

articulate, shape and de
fi
ne our experiences in ever-shifting, imperceptible

ways, it seems to be an idea that can’t not be confronted on some implicit,

subconscious level whenever we interact with the world and with others

through art and other means of expression.” (Bennobuto.com; Writing; May
1
st,

2
0
1
9
; https://bennobuto.com/writing/collaboration-with-dj-
1
3
-days-slb
4
8
)

Points from Mr. Nobuto that stand out to me and seem worth reiterating/ emphasizing:

Maximalism taps (“potentially”— and most likely, I think, practically by its nature) into
“the in
fi
nitely broad and discursive.” Indeed, I think maximalism offers the artist a
means to COPE WITH the inevitably NEAR “in
fi
nitely broad and discursive” essence
of reality.

(I am uncomfortable, as of now, with the word “in
fi
nity. ” I prefer the “near in
fi
nitely.”

I say “near in
fi
nity” because I reject the concept of “pure in
fi
nity.”Why? Because at the
nexus of time, space, and motion, “at the edge of the universe” as the Bee Gees sing,
where the expansion TOWARDS so-called in
fi
nity may be CONCEPTUALIZED…
(imagine hypothetically we had a telescope that could actually SEE and photograph
this point of expansion) it has a
fi
nite aspect, rendering reality, logically speaking,
perceptionally (if that is not a word, I --hereby coin it!) speaking, furthermore (because
human consciousness, while capable of sharpening its closeness to objectivity, is
ultimately a little biased), at a given
fi
xed place, time, and essence…to be in a state of
fi
niteness…

That said, I also think use of the term “in
fi
nity” can be “taken with a grain of salt”
because at the same time, despite the paradoxically “
fi
nite” aspect of paradisally
conceptualized “in
fi
nity,” beyond that sort of “objecti
fi
cation” or “conceptualization”
mark, as far as human consciousness seems concerned, so far as any of us know
(correct me if I am wrong), there is no tangible “end in sight.”)

There is such a mesh of distinct things within consciousness that it is no longer even
remotely reasonable to retreat into one’s own universe.

58

“The idea of cutting into a continuum, arbitrarily selecting the objects to focus

on, certainly not the only ones possible, presented some interesting theoretical

implications.” (Ercolino, Stefano.The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas

Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolano's
2
6
6
6
. Bloomsbury

Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

Such a mode of consciousness, in the context of standing up for the REALITY of
INDIVIDUAL consciousness DID make sense, and theoretically, as a piece of
maximalism, still does, but no longer in of itself, as it becomes unrealistic, anti-social,
oblivious, et cetera.

And this, the aforementioned, I believe may provide a working hypothesis to Mr.
Nobuto’s question:

does the logic of technological progress in our current `century

entail…‘a slow erosion of our humanness and our humanity’?

Maximalism is the only way to MAINTAIN and PRESERVE our humanness and
humanity— lest we should all live solipsistically and/or under the evil manipulation of
Trumpian sophism which goes by infamous Giuliani principle “truth isn’t truth.”

I like the way the great poet, writer, activist, theorist Gloria Anzaluda puts it in her
book Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza, and even more speci
fi
cally in her
chapter “La conciencia de la mestiza” or “Towards a New Consciousness.” She writes:

“JoseVasconcelos, Mexican philosopher envisaged una raza mestiza, una mezcla

de razas a
fi
nes, una raza de color- la primavera raza sintesis del globlo. He called it a

cosmic race… his theory is one of inclusivity [A] ” (emphasis mine). She also

writes:“The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and

emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and

indecisiveness.” (emphasis mine). Her next point is what I consider paramount

to the evolutionary break away from postmodernism that results in maximalism

(though she doesn’t put it as such, explicitly):“The counterstance refutes the

dominant culture’s views and beliefs, and, for this, it is proudly de
fi
ant.All

reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the

counter-stance stems from a problem with authority (emphasis mine) –outer as

well as inner—it’s a step towards liberation from cultural domination. But it is

not a way of life. (emphasis mine) At some point, on our way to a new

consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between two

mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores once, and at

once, see through serpent and eagle eyes…The possibilities are numerous once

we

decide to act and not react…characterized by movement away from set

patterns and goal and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes

59

rather than excludes (!!!; emphasis mine)…attempting to work out a

synthesis…a new consciousness…that questions the de
fi
nitions of light and

dark and gives them new meanings… we are the grinding motion,/the mixed

potion (yes/emphasis/as perhaps you guessed?/is mine)” (see pages 99-103).

A (additional remark on INCLUSIVITY and maximalism)

“My claim that the maximalist works studied here are uni
fi
ed by

something akin to what, readingWaltWhitman, Franco Moretti calls a

“rhetoric of inclusivity”—Dr. Nick Levy writes, accentuating or adding

substance to a consciousness of inclusivity as the outgrowth of

postmodernity (in my opinion).; (Levey, Nick. Maximalism in

Contemporary American Literature [Routledge Studies in

Contemporary Literature] [p.
1
5
].Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

1.7 SOME REMARKS ON WAYS TO DEFINE MAXIMALISM ALONG WITH ITS
‘PROS AND CONS’

But what exactly do I mean by maximalism anyway?

How we might want to de
fi
ne “Maximalism” depends on who is de
fi
ning it (oh,
postmodernism….) and also the context/medium we’re referring to.

To repeat Nobuto: “de
fi
nitions alone vary signi
fi
cantly from context to context, be it for
maximalist architecture, fashion, literature or home décor.”

For example, my initial research into this concept led me to aesthetic theories and/or
cultural trends pertaining to interior design. Further research on the topic led me to
Dr. Stefan Ercolino (who fascinatingly enough was foundational in my starry-eyed
fi
xation on ideas of “cross-genre” writing). Ercolino identi
fi
es
1
0
characteristics that
tend to distinguish maximalistic literature from other “sorts” or “genres” :

1
) Length
[[i]];
2
)Encyclopedic mode;
3
)Dissonant chirality;
4
)Diegetic exuberance;
5
)
Completeness;
6
) Narratorial omniscience;
7
) Paranoid imagination;
8
) Intersemioticity;
9
)Ethical commitment
1
0
) Hybrid realism; (Ercolino, Stefano.The Maximalist Novel:
From Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolano's
2
6
6
6
. Bloomsbury
Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

Three things about maximalism make extreme sense to me: clarity of writing (i.e.,
“encyclopedic mode”; “completeness”; “hybrid realism”) , inclusivity of a vast variety
of points of view (such that it seems to depict the pluralistic consciousness of our

60
time; to reiterate the idea of inclusivity once again and probably not for the last
time), and in similar fashion, its tendency to be elaborate and thorough (i.e., again,
“encyclopedic mode”; “completeness”) just like the essayistic
fi
ction writers before
them (Mann, Musil, Dostoevsky, Proust) but….with things like footnotes/end notes to
give a even more complex feel!

Which brings me to the beauty of footnotes and endnotes! This is indeed something I
have thought about at length, tremendously! I am as inspired by David Foster Wallace
as I am Percy Shelley in this regard. Aesthetically speaking, I believe that annotating
any piece of writing speaks to

a) what Nobuto said:

“de
fi
nitions alone vary signi
fi
cantly from context to context”;

but furthermore, within every context is a still deeper context, because, remember, so
far as current physics can tell, the universe is ever expanding. And so things ever-
complicate.The footnote/endnote gives the artist room to add another layer, that
“hybrid realism” that Dr. Ercolino refers to.

b) It is often the case, as time proceeds, that preserved pieces of literature end up
footnoted and/or endnotes, because, to bring up context again, the context of the times
can change so markedly that the reader may not manage to appreciate the literary
work to a fuller extent without the footnotes and endnotes.Well, if chances are,
endnotes and/or footnotes probably do serve an ultimate purpose in the longer run
anyway re: preservation of literary works, why not plant them on our own when
composing our literary works.

MOREOVER, I believe that maximalistically speaking…or anti-postmodernistically
the footnote/endnote rebels against obscurity, evasion of meaning, equivocation,
obfuscation.That is to say, the footnote and/or endnote actually allows for potential
intensi
fi
cation of meaning, sharpening of it, accentuation of it, even poeticization of it!
In the context of poetry, it offers the poet the opportunity to see their poem both in its
own exclusivity (the dimension of the poem itself) and in its aims, intentions,
anticipations of criticism, i.e., in the more holistic sense of being a part of the poet
who wrote the poem!

As Thomas Mann so brilliantly put it in the very beginning of THE MAGIC
MOUNTAIN:

“We shall tell it at length, in precise and through detail—for when was a story

short on diversion or long on boredom simply because of the time and space

required for the telling? Unafraid of the odium of appearing too meticulous, we

61

are much more inclined to the view that only thoroughness can be truly

entertaining.”

In fact, I’ll push this aesthetic notion even deeper: the very sense of a PLOT, of
SUSPENSE, of MYSTERY becomes the attempt, the essaying of “thorough detail.”
That it is to say, how could I put more clearly and meaningfully such that it will bring
my readers deeper into the soul/psyche than ever before? Eh?

c) My use of footnotes and endnotes has provoked so much negative criticism, or
expressions of distaste, aesthetically, that it compels me to essay the matter for myself!
For example, Dr. S. (ironically, as he is a postmodernist who appreciates liberality in
certain contexts, but not in those that speak to the “encyclopedic mode” and
“completeness” of the maximalist aesthetic, for that would be to impose “more than is
needed” to quote him) says that my endnotes “take too much attention away from the
verse/poetry,” that “publishers hate them because they make the editing too
complicated,” and… “it’s now passe’ ; David Foster Wallace has come and gone and
now it’s time for something new.”

But I also see Maximalism as the logical progression beyond postmodernism.Why?

What do I even mean by “postmodern?” To save you some time and to plug my poetry
I refer you to my poem “ON LUXURY” in the second part of book/volume
1
because I
get to the “crux of it” there, suf
fi
ciently for my taste. However, since there is more to
say than what I said there I’ll say it here.

As Garry Potter and Joze Lopez write in the
2
0
0
5
book they edited, After
Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism:

“One of the central planks of postmodern theory in its myriad variants was the alleged
discovery of the irreducible complexity of the natural and social world, of language
and meaning. For some the complexity was such that any attempt to encapsulate it
would fail; thus much postmodern theory became content merely to re
fl
ect complexity,
or become complexity itself.The alleged loss of hegemonic meanings in the social world
were not so much explained but reproduced in texts through all type of narrative and
rhetorical strategies.This lead to a type of writing, and argumentation, which was rich
and seductive, dense, almost mystical.A type of writing that celebrated ambiguity, and
enthroned irony. A type of writing that, at its worst, demanded little in terms of
evidence, and argumentative coherence and consistency; the playfulness of
language took precedence. (emphasis mine) (See pp. xiv- xix )

And Julie Armstrong writes in her book Experimental Fiction:

62
“Postmodernism’s in
fl
uence has been everywhere and has been the dominant concept of
late twentieth and early twenty-
fi
rst centuries, and yet, there now appears to be a need
to respond and react to something other, but what? Certainties have changed.With the
complete breakdown of Grand Narratives, our beliefs about time and space, science and
religion, reality and illusion, life and death, and the nature of consciousness have
changed in ways that we have never experienced before...There is a lack of borders, an
amalgamation of cultures and migration…These are times when we Really are not sure
what is real or true anymore, a time when the boundaries of art, reality and celebrity,
advertising, marketing and publicity are becoming increasingly blurred. (pp.
1
5
5
-
1
5
6
;
Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition…)

 
All of this “ambiguity” and “blurring” I think does a rather ironic, perhaps inadvertent
disservice to individuality/self; it actually DEPERSONALIZES!

If our meanings are “ambiguous” and “blurred,” our meanings are also futile,
meaningless, except to ourselves. But isn’t this really quite isolating? And also a very
single minded aesthetic. (I mean that in contrast, MAXIMALISM is trying to get at the
integration of perspectives where postmodernism is trying to render perspective,
again, futile!

It’s often said that postmodern writing means to leave room for the reader’s
imagination. (I hear this in writing workshops like all the time as well as in discussions
of literary texts.) That’s one way of putting it, surely. Another way is that postmodern
writers often write in a code that only they would ever understand, and that only they
SHOULD understand, for who is anyone to have anything to do with our private,
personal, volitional, autonomous selves, lest we should succumb to their POWER
CLAIMS!?!

Now, In of itself, it makes complete sense to me.We are all different! We are all
somewhat ambiguous both to our selves and one another. But why should that be the
end of the matter? Why not try to CLARIFY as to BETTER UNDERSTAND instead of
obfuscate? This, I believe, is how maximalism sheds off the postmodernity of collective
consciousness.

There is one aspect of maximalism I am sometimes at odds with: maximalist pieces are
often, though not always, massive writings! Indeed, as David Foster Wallace says in one
of his audio book recordings, in apology for so many footnotes, “I can’t help it.”

That’s how I feel. From an idealistic perspective all of this annotated personal-verse
essay poem would have been compressed and limited to a page. But I simply
fi
nd that
to be dishonest…to myself! (I can’t speak for anyone else’s aesthetics!)

63
It’s very dif
fi
cult to have a stable thought about long writings (consciously maximalistic
or not.) Even Montiagne, who often managed to write essays between one and three
pages also could not help himself when he wrote “On Some Verses of Virgil” (roughly
7
0
pages) and “An Apology for Raymond Sebond which goes on for almost
2
0
0
pages!

On the one hand, who the hell wants to read a
2
0
0
page essay or a
1
0
0
page poem? Or
a
4
,
0
0
0
page novel, as is the case with Proust’s epic In Search of Time Lost—? And even
if we would like to read something that long— I want to read all of Proust very much
so— who the fuck has the fucking time!?!

But to think of it another way, I recall what a friend told me once in a discussion on
lengthy works. (I’ll speak further on length later I think.) She said it was like a long
Net
fl
ix series she could keep binging.That is to say, the longevity of a literary writing
could be viewed as one’s hope for longevity of life, longevity of enjoyment, longevity
and enormity of meaningfulness, longevity of humanity’s existence! I like that, and
think it gives maximalism a beautiful angle!

2.

Credits for the New York Times Interactive Article “Who We Lost”:

Design: Gabriel Gianordoli- Producer: Alexandra Eaton- Reporting: Aidan Gardiner-
Editors: Clinton Cargill, Solana Pyne- Text: Julie Bosman- Cinematography: Luisa
Conlon, Elliot deBruyn, Noah Throop

Video EditorsMeg Felling, Danielle Miller, Noah Throop

ColorElliot DeBruyn

Sound MixFraser McCulloch

Director of CinematographyJonah M. Kessel

Executive ProducerSolana Pyne

Additional Production and ResearchSusan Beachy, Scott Blumenthal, Asmaa Elkeurti,
Jake Franken
fi
eld, Mike Puretz;

published on March
5
th,
2
0
2
1
and still featured on the home page on March
6
th,
2
0
2
1
;

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/
2
0
2
1
/
0
3
/
0
5
/us/covid-deaths.html?
action=click&module=Top%
2
0
Stories&pgtype=Homepage

3.

As quoted on the Internet Movie Data Base. Contact was written
fi
rst as a novel by Carl
Sagon (with story credit also attributed to his wife Ann Druyan); the novel was adapted
into a screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg.

64
4.

4.1 AGAINST THE CREATIVE-CRITICAL WRITING BINARY NARRATIVE

Before delving into why both the nomenclature of this genre (of genre in general,
even) and my success as managing to articulate for myself, both mean so much to me,
I wish brie
fl
y to remark on the de
fi
nitions and nomenclature of genres as such, both
because it is my belief that our newly maximalistic movement/period/age is necessarily
one of REDEFINITION…a rede
fi
nition based on an integration of the myriad
understandings of a concept, such that discourse becomes less polarizing and more
constructive, and secondly, I hate to say it, but it is my experience, as this note shall
later describe in fuller detail, that people can fall into rather unsettling states of
condescending anger when you claim that this or that is that or this, to call your
“poetry” POETRY when they dismiss it as mere prose with line breaks, or when you
call your “
fi
ction” FICTION and they say “no, it is not quite that” and seek to dismiss
further discussion.

Much of the nuance re: the so called “essayistic” versus the so-called “poetic” et cetera,
is actually discussed in more elaborate detail both in this note as well as in the verse of
and notes to PROLOGUE
1
—especially matters re: poetry— this note aims to focus a
bit more on the essay/essayistic and a little on hybridity— (you may recall this is
PROLOGUE
1
TO PROLOGUE
1
) but this note has a been a work in process since
autumn of
2
0
1
8
; over the last three years, I’ve encountered further research on matters
re: literary genre that I think serve well as introductory context of sorts.

This was originally composed in a unrhymed free-verse format in the late autumn of
2
0
1
8
. On March
6
th,
2
0
2
1
, after much consideration, I updated it with my three years
of hindsight.

An essay I found very elucidating with respect to genre and hybridity is “Creative-
Critical Hybrids” by Hazel Smith, which is a chapter in the book The Handbook of
Creative Writing edited by Steven Earnshaw and published by Edinburgh University
Press in
2
0
1
4
.

“Critical and creative writing are considered to be separate and contrasting

activities.The distinction between the two…rests on the assumption that

creative writing is an imaginative and subjective activity, while critical writing is

an interpretive, discursive and more objective activity…

65

…Creative-critical hybrids collapse this polarization of the critical and creative

and meld the two together in the same text…

…many writers have grown impatient with the conventions of the scholarly

essay [for example because of the] impersonality. ..

But some authors have been committed to freeing up the essay form…

introducing personal anecdote, narratives, poems, or digressions into the essay

with a view of making it more personalized, more relevant to everyday

life” (pp.
3
3
1
-
3
3
2
)

4.2 ON HYRBID FORMS OF ESSAYS AND POETRY

Among the creative-critical hybrid forms that Smith mentions is what she calls

“the
poem essay”:

“The poem-essay is a fusion of essay and poem. Some of the poetic

features that tend to distinguish it are line breaks, extensive use of

metaphor, and distinctiveness…These poetic features are usually grafted

together with the more prosaic and argumentative style we associate with

an essay” (p
3
3
4
)

Looking elsewhere for commentaries on the so-called “poem essay,” I haven’t found
much, over the years. If you Google “poem essay,” changes are you will just
fi
nd a
bunch of pages re: writing essays about poems. In terms of a hybrid between the essay
and the poem, what is often found in the research are references to the so-called
“prose poem,” “lyric essay,” “prosimetrum,” and the “verse-essay” or “essay in verse.”

Both the so-called “prose poem” and “lyric essay” lend themselves to traditions of,
frankly, postmodern dogma, with very few exceptions (I can only think of two, Francis
Ponge and Claudia Rakine.)

What is a “prose poem?” In The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem introduction Jeremy
Noel-Todd says

“I can only offer the simplest common denominator: a prose poem is a poem

without line breaks” (page xix)

Citing Marguerite S. Murphy, from her bookTheTradition of Subversion:The Prose Poem
in English FromWilde to Ashberry, he adds:

“the prose poem embodies, among other paradoxes, a ‘tradition of subversion’.”

(p. xxxvii). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

66
It seems at best, the prose poem is the art of presenting text as lacking in de
fi
nition,
and at its worst, seeks to subvert. Either way you put it, between the two extremes, it
seems like nothing more than postmodern expression without line breaks.That is to
say, after years of research, the term “prose poem” doesn’t really appeal to me at all.

Similarly, the context in which the “lyric essay” is often discussed is put quite well
Deborah Tall and John D’Agata, often credited as the authorities on the term of the
coiners, in their essay: “The Lyric Essay”:

“With its Fall 1997 issue, Seneca Review began to publish what we've chosen to

call the lyric essay.The recent burgeoning of creative non
fi
ction and the

personal essay has yielded a fascinating sub-genre that straddles the essay and

the lyric poem.These ‘poetic essays’ or ‘essayistic poems’ give primacy to

artfulness over the conveying of information.They forsake narrative line,

discursive logic, and the art of persuasion in favor of idiosyncratic meditation.

(https://www.hws.edu/senecareview/lyricessay.aspx)

Indeed, “forsak[ing] discursive logic” does seem to be central to this “genre” which is
what turns me off.

“Yet in the lyric essay the voice is often more reticent, almost coy, aware of the

compliment it pays the reader by dint of understatement. [emphasis mine;

might as well say “ambiguous, and evasive, and equivocating, and obfuscating,"

in my opinion, if a writer feels the need to be almost “coy” as opposed to

CLEAR”

Even more disconcerting is that the duo writes:

“What has pushed the essay so close to poetry? Perhaps we're drawn to the lyric

now because it seems less possible (and rewarding) to approach the world

through the front door, through the myth of objectivity.”

What troubles me more? That “objectivity” is reduced to “myth” or that poetry
somehow is inherently not objective, as it is somehow inherently “though the myth of
objectivity” that poetry can impact our souls?

I like wha would be Charles Harper Webb’s rebuttal. in his book A Million MFAS Are
Not Enough:

“I favor poems that speak, at least potentially, to a readership beyond the specialist. I

believe that meaning exists, and expect poems to communicate it, even though ‘it’ may

be hard to paraphrase. I resent poems that, like little Enigma codes, require

deciphering. I don’t like poets to obfuscate— especially when what they’ve hidden

67

proves to be fool’s gold. I like poems roar give pleasure and are understandable the
fi
rst

time through, but reward reading with increased pleasure, depth, and resonance. Such

poems enlighten as they entertain” (xxi; Published by Red Hen Press in
2
0
1
6
)

And just as Webber defends the credibility of poetry, my hero Phillip Lopate defends
the essay-front, or offers good reason not to suppose an essay needs some sort of
lyricisizing that seeks to play coy with the readers.

“In short, it its part of the larger rebellion againstWestern Enlightenment

reason and linear, left brain thinking…

…I would fear seeing rationality dismantled (To Show and To Tell—The Craft of

Literary Non
fi
ction; published by Free Press in
2
0
1
3
; page
1
2
3
)

“It seems to me that [lyrical essayists] are angling for a license for their dreamy

vagueness, which will allow them to dither on ‘lyrically,’ trying the patience f

most readers” (
1
2
5
)

Phillip Lopate really puts it all so well in my opinion: he refers to the essay as

“the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out…tracking the

consciousness of the author…glorious thought excursions” (page
6
)

What does it mean to combine the Lopation notion of the essay with a Charles Harper
Webb notion of poetry? If not the poem-essay, and not the prose poem, and not the
lyric essay, then what? (I am excluding the prosimetrum from this discussion because
the de
fi
nition is crystal clear— it’s a mix of prose and verse, as distinct things,
complete contrary to the so-called “prose poem” or “lyric essay.” I would go so far as to
call this personal verse essay poem likewise, synonymously, a prosimetrum. I only
exclude the word because the prose notes of this poem are so central to elucidating
the prose—in other words, these notes are
fi
rst and foremost NOTES, not a sort of
literal attachment to the poem’s
fl
ow. Does that make any sense to you? I hope so!)

4.3 ON THE VERSE-ESSAY

A term that does arise in the research most of all in any sort of prosy poetry hybrid/
cross-genre work is the so-called “verse-essay.”

Perhaps Alexander Pope is a good example for foundation and precedent with his “An
Essay on Criticism” and “An Essay on Man” (“didactic and wide-reaching and was
meant to be part of a larger work of moral philosophy that Pope never
fi
nished,” the
Poetry Foundation writes; “Alexander Pope”— https://www.poetryfoundation.org/

68
poets/alexander-pope ) …simply by virtue of the titles! Around the same time, Daniel
Defoe composed a
3
7
5
page poem Jure Divino— written in “the form of the verse-
essay, then an established species of didactic poetry” as Paula R. Backshieder puts it in
her scholarly article “The Verse Essay, John Locke, and Defoe’s Jure Divino” (page
1
0
0
;
ELH Volume
5
5
, No.
1
, Spring
1
9
8
8
, pages
9
9
-
1
2
4
)

(A fascinating feature of the Jure Divino is that it’s heavily, most thoroughly annotated!
There are footnotes on virtually every page! Backschieder mentions that Defoe got the
idea to annotate his poem via Abraham Cowley[
1
0
7
];

“Defoe saw Cowley’s use of textual notes as a valuable innovation…They

explain biblical allusions, cite sources, introduce myths and legends, give poetic

precedents, and provide de
fi
nitions and etymologies. More interesting are

those notes that comment on the poet’s method. ” [ibid]

and

“By choosing the verse-essay, he allied his poem with all of the poems that

advanced a uni
fi
ed philosophy which, when adopted would, it was hoped, bring

happiness and order to human kind. Like these other poets, he believed

abstract ideas could become perceptual and then cognitive, be made images and

vehicles of knowledge…

“The desire to free ideas from complexity, to be absolutely lucid, to clarify

rather than innovate or explore…(ibid.,
1
1
0
) )

Of the so-called “verse-essay,” Backschieder adds:

“The form [of the verse-essay[ had become the standard one for the

presentation of a system designed to increase order, wisdom, and human

happiness. Its architectural structure depended upon an examination of a

subject and its principles; [it] ruthlessly subordinated beauty to clarity and

argument” (101)

And:

Just as the prose essay was a personal form, a form giving pleasure not so much

from conclusion but from the contemplation of the mind in motion—so was the

verse

essay” (ibid.,
1
0
9
)

Thus, as Thomas Karshan and Kathryn Murphy write in the recently published book
they edited On Essays:

ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY

ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY

Similar to ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

ON MY AESTHETICS AND THE VERSE ESSAY