“This is my last communiqué from the planet
of the monsters.”
— Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star When I watched the Barbaric Writers defecate on my manuscript, I felt a great sense of relief, a great sense of fraternity with these men who loved literature enough to destroy it, and I recalled a poem I had once written, but never had the confidence to publish, about a so-called poet who shat himself into a toilet, only to float on hisback as torrential downpours of power filled the bowl and drowned him. I have always know that constipation is essential to poetry, though what I did not realize, until recently, was that poetry itself is repulsive. Words on their own are bad enough. But when placed alongside other words, when formed into rhythmic lines and stanzas: no act of creation is more hideous. In the salons, I have often watched, before my turn came on, our local poets reciting their verses. They speak politely, and with grace, to an audience that sips wine and chuckles at the words that flow not from their mouths, but from their plugged-up behinds. What a holy mockery of literature!
When I watched the Barbaric Writers defecate on my
manuscript, I felt a great sense of relief, a great sense of
fraternity with these men who loved literature enough to
destroy it, and I recalled a poem I had once written, but
never had the confidence to publish, about a so-called
poet who shat himself into a toilet, only to float on his
back as torrential downpours of power filled the bowl and drowned
him. I have always know that constipation is essential to
poetry, though what I did not realize, until recently,
was that poetry itself is repulsive. Words on their own are
bad enough. But when placed alongside other words, when formed
into rhythmic lines and stanzas: no act of creation is more
hideous. In the salons, I have often watched, before my turn
came on, our local poets reciting their verses. They speak
politely, and with grace, to an audience that sips wine and
chuckles at the words that flow not from their mouths, but from their
plugged-up behinds. What a holy mockery of literature!
Were the barbarians to see such a spectacle, no
theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter. No, poetryis not what I want. Only defecation on poetry. Forafter years of humiliation, I have finally learned thatlearned that to humanize our poems, we must shit on them. We must shitfreely, with arms raised, as detectives in blue sport coats examineour feces for sustainability, all the while fightingoff other detectives in bluer sport coats who take ourpoetic leakage to their laboratories to search forparasitic demons, or diamonds, depending on the angle.We smear what drips from our self-inflicted wounds onto our verses,combining blood and ink into new poetic forms in which werub our faces, the better to smell our disgusting children with,the better to drool on our disgusting children with; and once wehave bled and drooled and driveled, we declare our poems complete, thebetter to wipe our asses with, before submitting them forpublication. We smear our typewriters with pus and semen, andchastise any fool crass enough to declare himself a poet,
an offense punishable by confinement in a cage
surrounded by Barbaric Writers who expectorate betweenbetween the distinguished author’s eyes, his hands tied behind his back toprevent him from cleaning his face. For poetry is hard work! Itis hard to create such filthy, vile putrescence.
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