Wild Moon Transit
Critical Review
REGARDING WHIMSY
(a critique and discussion on the subject of
Jimmy's poem Whimsy Hikes the Volcano)
with Victoria Marinelli
From: Jimmy Warner
November 16, 2001
Subject: cool stuff
I am reading your poems here and the Shockoe article - I thank you for that.
I meant what I said, that Elegy was the best 9-11 poem I've heard so far.
Dear Jimmy,
It's wonderful to hear from you.
Thanks again for the feedback re: Elegy.
I had an opportunity to look over parts of your website (that has many more parts than mine, ergo, a thorough review will take some time!).
Liked this: "You find you have nothing to turn you on except/ Yourself and the mother ship machinery of thought."
The language here is sexy, fun, authentic.
But I question whether Bo Peep "in the actual flesh" would do any of the things you said.
My skepticism here is an inevitable vestige of my history, where in an assortment of political contexts, I addressed a variety of feminist issues, not least of which was the matter of prostitution (which of course
is not mentioned by name in "Whimsy Hikes the Volcano," but appears to be a primary subject threaded throughout it).
Here I enter troubling ground, hearing male poets and for that matter, many female poets, applying the force of their active imaginations to the subject of the sex industry (again whether
addressed as such, or not).
(
T
his is not criticism, nor would you imagine it was if you could see the amused look on my face, which is utterly lacking in feminist
condescension
.
)
Here's part of the dilemma: my work has often been construed as too political for poets, and too poetic for the politicos.
I have struggled for years with this. Lived and witnessed experience gives rise to personal convictions, which can in turn be glossed over for the sake of easily-digested poetry, or exploited for the sake of
politics.
The one essay posted on my site (the curiously titled Let the Meat Cake) goes into how and why I've pulled back from all that.
Now my task as a maturing poet is to write with authenticity, without ducking the difficult issues, but also without exploiting them; this process produces propaganda, not poetry.
Part of that task is to be honest in my responses to other poets whose work I find engaging and worthy.
(Had I thought your work was anything less than that, I would have replied with a three-line "gosh, thanks, you're great too" sort of email.)
But if you are to know me at any time or to any extent in this community, you will find that I cannot disguise my pain on hearing male poets pontificating about prostitutes, or extolling the virtues of
pornography.
This is all I'll say about it for now: I've known a lot of women -- in their actual flesh -- who have been involved in the sex industry (many will tell you it's a rape industry): women with pimps
who learned to smile and convince tricks of how much they loved their "profession," because said men (and occasional women) would react with violence at any other kind of impression.
Their mandate, of course, is to cater to the consumer's imagination, even when they find it emotionally degrading and physically painful.
I don't argue with the notion that there are women so involved who are fully consenting, no matter how illogical that seems to me, given the number of women who've actually lived to tell me
otherwise.
I hope I haven't brought an icy hailstorm down on your parade.
I've tried to you my reactions to your conjuring of Bo Peep in "actual flesh". But
it's poets who've won my final and ultimate loyalty.
Poets, goddamnit.
Just poets.
Best wishes,
Victoria
Hi Victoria,
Thank you for your honest and immediate reaction, wow!
I have learned to be less political out of a sense of esthetics rather that a cooling of my concerns, political or otherwise. However, I drew the line a being politically correct. You will have
to lobotomize me to get that going.
Perhaps I go a tad overboard in my incorrectness, to get attention, to be something other than Lettuce tomato and mayo. I'm not insensitive on the issues you address, having known so many such as
the women you describe, in my travels on the road as a musician. Most of them were just trying to get some attention as well. A lot of them didn't make it and nothing I could have
said or done would have made much difference because of the slavery like conditions that surrounded them. The police are better armed for that kind of struggle than I am.
The poem in the actual flesh, male fantasy that it is, is nothing short of a wish that fantasy could open the door to a real escape from such tyranny, it worked for me, but then my enslavement
was perhaps less complicated, and the only danger to me was myself.
Me thinks you project too much, but you are young and I am old. I see prostitution as a rock Formation, a genus of trees with tough bark, a beast that I cannot wrestle by myself.
Jimmy
Hey Jimmy,
Re: "However, I drew the line a being politically correct..."
Well hell, so do I! Oh dear God no, not that phrase. No, no, my reacting the idea was not to insinuate that there was any correct vision to be had, any correct language in which to compose that
vision. No, no, no. I was just reacting to the ideas with my own ideas, memory, etc. No lobotomies required, encouraged, or desired.
The problem here is that the issue of prostitution is bitterly debated everywhere for all sorts of reasons, so any time a difference of perception registers, the tendency is for individuals to
quickly assume positions on that battlefield, draw proverbial (actual?) lines in sand, etc. But there is nothing adversarial going here -- certainly not from my end of this nascent discussion -- nothing whatsoever. It's
about this, and only this: authenticity of voice.
I should have been a bit clearer on this point.
My bias here, I guess, isn't about feminism or prostitution or any of the attending issues -- it's that I tend to write in very literal terms, so when you say "actual flesh" I think you
mean "actual flesh" (even if the individual construed as embodying said "flesh" is one "Bo Peep").
RE:
"I see prostitution as a rock formation, a genus of trees with tough bark, a beast that I cannot wrestle by myself."
Yes, yes, a sort of multi-tiered Medusa.
No approach from any angle solves it or can dissolve it, in the current culture.
If anything, I want out of the issue, but can't seem to extricate myself from that Medusa's grip, or refrain from reacting to same. (Obviously!)
These are my growing pains whilst forsaking one specific movement (radical feminists) for the sake of another, more-likely-to-be-authentic movement.
(poets, goddamnit, just poets).
Best wishes,
Victoria