Jacket 18 - Aaron Belz - Flood Editions: The Conversation

SCENE: EXT. DAY. HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, 2002

SFX: TRAFFIC, OFF

Moore: [HAILING FROM ACROSS THE STREET]
Hey Spalding!

Gray: [HURRIEDLY CROSSING]
Hiya Demi!
[HUGGING HER LIGHTLY]
Hasn’t it been too long? You’re looking healthy.
[THEY GAZE INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES FOR A BEAT]
Out of movies for good now, are we?

Moore: Hey, easy there Spuddy — I haven’t seen you in anything since "The Killing Fields." You’re looking older and wiser, though, as usual. What do you have there?

Gray: In my hand or in my breast pocket?

Moore: Hand.

Gray: Or balanced on my head?

Moore: Hand.

Gray: I have poems, poems, poems, Dem — two of the six books available from Flood Editions: Pam Rehm’s Gone to Earth, and Ronald Johnson’s Shrubberies. These were published in 2001.

Moore: And in your breast pocket — those are other Flood books?

Gray: Yes, in a sense. Philip Jenks’ On the Cave You Live In (38 poems), and Tom Pickard’s new and selected Hole in the Wall (83 poems). These came out in January, 2002.

Moore: "In a sense"?

Gray: They could be fakes. I was just standing here realizing that I have no way of verifying their authenticity.

Moore: Authenticity is a reification, Spalding. The real question is whether or not they are textually legitimate. Which reminds me, have you read that Ken Ruthven book, Faking Literature?

Gray: Well, of course I've heard about it, Demi, but no, I haven't caught up with the actual text yet... why?

Moore: The bibliography alone would knock your socks off. There’s a detailed review by Patrick Herron in a recent issue of Jacket magazine... the "Ern Malley" issue, for goodness sake, all about hoax poetry. But tell me, why would anyone "fake" a Flood Edition?

Gray: [LAUGHING]
Why not, more like — these effers are flying off the shelves! And yes, to answer your implied query, I do believe they are "textually legitimate." Have you read any Tom Pickard? The William Carlos Williams of North Anglia? A Blakean Basil Bunting of the grimy streets? "I bought her a dark amaryllis / black as a sack of coal / she said shove it up your arse / so I binned it."
[DRAMATIC PAUSE]
That’s the whole poem. Look at this blurb from Allen Ginsberg on the back — "one of the livest truest poets of Great Britain."

Moore: Tom Pickard!

Gray: Yeah, and then there’s Philip Jenks — crazy spittoon Southern poet. Dark, biblical, comical, languagy. "Hardly any of me is solid any more, I mean I buy / things every day." Goodness, listen to how this continues:

And there comes a time when I am feeling
as windblowed as the apples
in the Shenandoah.
And there goes I who then again began
tho what does this Mrs. Begin?
(she says I am)

And cast down me wretched
sinner unto thee I am
slightly different from
a corpse at a funeral
in that I am less made up
but made up worse.

Who I thereby did appoint myself
but forgot which was mirror.

There, that’s about 1/3 of "Hypothetical Antipodes, Judgment." As to the Ronald Johnson, though this isn’t the finest example of his work, it seems to me a valuable late-career collection. He died, you know. Well worth $13.

Moore: And the Rehm?

Gray: Eh. Jury’s out.

Moore: More.

Gray: I don’t want to shortchange this book. It seems vital, but it also seems (in spots) to be talking down to the reader. It seems to come from a pulpit. But perhaps that’s part of its conceit. Here is the beginning of the title poem:

Beyond innocence
the exhibition
of obedient faith
is precedent

Work on the limits

A limit of what can be thought
outlives ambivalence

You work yourself to death

To enlarge an abstract
madness

Never so divine
a will

Moore: I dunno, Spalding, that sounds pretty tight to me. The preacherliness definitely seems part of the conceit, and an effective part. These are the words of a postmodern didact. Someone who’s tired of the politics, the show.

Gray: As I said, jury’s out.

Moore: Okay — balanced on your head?

Gray: Ah, what else but more titles from Flood: Paul Hoover’s amazing Winter (Mirror) and Fanny Howe’s collection of short fictions entitled Economics. These two are forthcoming.

Moore: I’ve heard of these authors. How did you find the Howe?

Gray: Hah. "Howe" else? SPD. No seriously —
[CAREFULLY UNSTACKING ONE OF THE BOOKS FROM HIS HEAD]
— have a look. First of all, it’s a great design, don’t you think? On the cover, the title info running down from the upper left hand corner? This kid with balloons? And then the spine with giant, futuristic type. It’s all a bit overwhelmingly yummy.

Moore: How about the work contained therein?

Gray: Wow, hmm.
[GRIMACING THOUGHTFULLY]
I liked it okay. It was blocky, abstract, made for provocative reading. Entertaining I suppose. A bit like Hemingway meets Jong meets "Days of Our Lives."

Moore: Oh God, you kidder. Are you damning this book with faint praise?

Gray: Let me be completely straight with you, Dem. However much I play — and Lord knows I love to have fun with books — Fanny Howe has something here. Despite her fiction’s apparent straightforwardness, its quiet realism, there is much afoot here in terms of political concerns, and Howe puts something of herself on the line. Let me make a quick comparison — remember that book of short stories Richard Ford came out with several years ago? At times brilliant, what with Ford’s talent, but overall I thought it was an exercise in patrician idleness — a thing was said, but there was nothing to say. By sharp contrast, here is the Howe book: nine stories with an almost Gorkyian sense of plainness and urgency.

Moore: And the Hoover — "amazing"?

Gray: Oh the Hoover. You have to buy it. It really brings new life to the whole floating couplet form so favored by Nicholas Christopher and the other New Yorker poets of the mid nineties. It also breathes new life into the blippy tercet. Hoover works in these modes naturally. I was really genuinely surprised by the elegance here.

Moore: Comparing it to Christopher, though — isn’t that harsh?

Gray: Depends on which Christopher. A distinction can be made. Some of that old New Yorker shit used to remind me of canned Neruda meets Sharon Olds or what have you, I agree; some of it, in fact, literally was Sharon Olds. But at his best, Nick Christopher made lines like shards of glass, in stimulating designs. Wreaths of colorful smoke. He had a Merwin thing going, a real flying-dolphin urbanity that younger poets would do well to continue to explore. The Hoover is even better than mid-nineties Christopher, though.
[REMOVING THE OTHER BOOK FROM HIS HEAD AND OPENING IT TO A DOG-EARED PAGE]
Listen:

The polaroid
of the sun

cooling in
your hand

is a certainty
and a fact,

kissing your
eye in a

semi-ecstatic
doubt that says

the man
is a rat,

the rat’s
a star.

[AFTER A BEAT]
Demi, I love that ending. It’s playful yet somehow seeable. Reminds me of my monologues if they were beaten into a thin metal. So vivid, so [...]
[INAUDIBLE]

SFX: LOUD PASSING TRUCK

Moore: [WINCING]
Jeez... a girl could go deaf standing here! So, the Pickard, the Hoover, the Jenks definitely; perhaps the Howe. And the publisher as a whole?

Gray: You know I’m a sucker for great small presses. I can’t figure out how they do it. FSG loses money on nine out of ten books, and these Floods look and feel a lot like FSGs. Like new Ashbery paperbacks or something. Very sexy indeed.

Moore: Look, I have an audition —

Gray: Demi, wait, I’ve been meaning to call you...
[CAREFULLY STACKING THE HOOVER AND HOWE BACK ON HIS HEAD]
Listen. Are you still with that Willis bruiser? Because —

Moore: No, but I’m married. Wait.
[ASIDE, QUIZZICALLY]
Am I married at the moment?

Gray: I figured you’d be the expert on that.

Moore: Being a celebrity is confusing, Spud. But no, I don’t want to date you, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m a mom now, very busy. Lot of auditions.

Gray: Okay I guess I’ll keep renting "About Last Night"! Hey, this has been fun. Give my regards to the others.

Moore: [WALKING AWAY]
You too, Spalding.

FADE TO BLACK