More Perfect Depictions of Noise by Justin Taylor

& Open Correspondence from the Senator by Jeremy Schmall

X-ing Books, 2008 (both)

Reviewed by David Sewell

The problem with identity worn, whether ironically or earnestly, as a kaffiyeh or Day-Glo hoodie or hussar’s mustache is, perhaps, of the projectional variety. It’s the self-satisfying critical eye that casts itself outward and becomes deeply concerned with what others espouse or evince. It’s the viewing of a stranger’s sartorial or coiffurial choices as a direct affront to our own existence, as self-appointed defenders of all that’s good and right in the world. Justin’s Taylor’s recent X-ing Books chapbook, More Perfect Depictions of Noise, seems to be centered in just such a place (let’s call it Brooklyn), where all around is the static of the garishly loud and tight-fitting falsities so in fashion these days.

“Everyone knows salesmen / are what’s killing us,” the book’s opening poem begins. Salesmen, in their various forms—“The salesmen are molting. / Their new shapes are impossible”—cause the speaker considerable vexation. That class of individuals popularly known as hipsters (“Dear / fellow public transportation rider, I can’t tell / if your mustache is ironic or in earnest / but it sure makes you look like an asshole”) can safely be included in the catalog of the latest molt, both salesmen of their own product(s) and dupes who’ve swallowed the brand messaging whole, like an antelope. “Every advertisement is an advertisement for every / other advertisement,” the poem “Maybe This Is My Requiem for Baudrillard” begins.

And so it goes. The world’s become overrun with walking, talking, L-train-riding simulacra whose sole desire is to lure us back to Williamsburg to gorge on our souls while a salsa remix of MGMT plays softly from a dented boom box. Okay, maybe I’m getting a little carried away there. But what’s being fought out in the midnight train cars and dive bars of this unreal city is nothing less than “The War of Self-Portraiture,” a well-aimed salvo against the self-absorption and narcissism underwriting the current contretemps.

One can understand, then, why these poems behave the way they do: concerned with their own intelligence, their own image (and images)—a bit insecure at times. It’s no coincidence that the first poem’s title, the second poem’s first line, and several other lines in this rather handsomely designed slim volume are imperative statements; the speaker, it seems, is striving to lock arms with kindred spirits before “the world’s knees buckle” under the weight of all the commoditization. “Summer X,” the poem that contains that phrase, includes, as its penultimate thought, what might be seen as the collection’s organizing anxiety: “I’m so far past not knowing what to believe that I might / become utterly certain of anything.”

Yet the only thing the speaker claims to know for sure is that “our hearts are little / impulsive creatures with huge ideas” (“Home Scenes and Hearth Studies”). The huge idea on the speaker’s mind most often is that of survival, or salvation, in the face of a ubiquitous, and somewhat paradoxical, emptiness—the emptiness of noise. And so many of the poems lean toward a Romantic, cri-de-coeur territory (let’s call it the Poconos), trying ever to grasp and hold tight something finally solid and real. Often we see the speaker gazing longingly into the firmament, at the sun, the clouds, the stars, as if trying to find the answer there. Eight (or just under half) of the poems, in fact, end with a natural-world, heavy, monosyllabic word/image—lights, tree, fire, storm, sea, lake, star, and, for the final poem, noise.

It is, however, the sometimes noisiness of the poems, in the form of ironic emotional distance, cool-sounding diction, hazy sarcasm, and book-learnin’ fence posts (Kierkegaard, William James, Baudrillard), that keep the connections not quite solid and the static on blast. I occasionally found myself wishing that the poems—funny and smart and, at times, overwritten—would have been conceived more as alternatives to the noise, rather than depictions of it, however perfect or imperfect. To corrupt slightly that most famous Wallace Stevens line, if Taylor could just let be be finale of think, a little more often, maybe he could find a bit more peace in the quiet.

Jeremy Schmall’s Open Correspondence from the Senator, also from X-ing, seems to have a similar, tired-of-being-sold-to raison d’être. The collection, presented in the form of a standard-size manila folder embossed with a squawking eagle, contains satirical letters from “The Senator” printed on officially jingoistic letterhead. It’s a curious experience, considering this chapbook. My initial fear upon receiving it was that the over-the-top presentation, replete with yellow Post-it notes and a flap label featuring the author’s name and the ISBN, signaled a project that had given primacy to its concept, at the expense of its execution. But I am perhaps getting ahead of myself.

The Senator, an alternatively venal, loopy, horny nincompoop, is a sort of golem composed of parts from, say, drunk Richard Nixon, as recently portrayed by Frank Langella (“I shot an old lady’s poodle once”); George W. Bush at his most articulate (“I have been in the bathtub for three straight hours…. The water was super hot and now I feel, like, kind of dizzy”); Robert Byrd at his most awake/alive (“My question for you is, how did you get such a nice tan? Have you always tanned easily?”); Donald Rumsfeld at his most lyrical/inane/glib (“Look, the universe is a dark pit we all writhe about in until we’re mercifully clutched out by death…. But be a man about it. Or woman. I believe in equal rights and all that”); and the common representation of our elected and appointed officials as power-addled incompetents with a bustier-wearing skeleton or two in the “man-size” safe (“I did not sleep with your wife. It was most likely my evil twin”).

The first poem/letter, a brief missive about pancakes and the Senator’s supremacy in matters of physical attractiveness, entertainingly establishes his unhinged bona fides. He’s a regular nut, all right, typing up off-the-wall letters about casting Carl Weathers as Superman, pouring orange juice into all the cups in his house, and peeping on his neighbor while wearing a bathrobe, from the vantage point of her front lawn. Through the twenty-one letters in this chapbook, he’s revealed to be the following: crushing on the President, antagonistic toward those brighter than him, a policy lightweight, jingoistic, corrupt, and, overall, a moron with the attention span of a small child (“Ooh, my macaroni is ready”).

Living somewhere in the intersection of multiple, overlapping genres (political satire, comedy writing, poetry, prose, epistolary, dramatic monologue), the poems/letters live or die on the richness and fullness of the characterization of the Senator and lean heavily on their attempts at comedy for traction. It’s not exactly that the book is just spinning its wheels or that the Senator’s character isn’t fully realized; it’s more that the realization, even if pulled off masterfully, doesn’t promise enough in terms of freshness or new territory. The Senator’s battiness, incompetence, and lack of self-awareness—we might have seen it all coming.

Schmall’s skill as a poet does bring something to the table—whether it’s new or more in line with the politico-comedic zeitgeist, à la Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, is open to debate. In the end, although the letters are often fun (and funny) to read, and successful as poems of some kind—especially the letters in which the Senator’s delirium is given free rein—on balance, our long-in-the-tooth Senator is a bit toothless as an agent of satire. Without a few major tweaks to his platform, his chances of reelection seem slim.