David Wallace - Both Flesh and Not - Essays

THE BEST BOOK OF 1994 is the first English translation of Zbigniew Herbert’s Mr. Cogito, a book of poems that came out in Poland in the mid-1970s, well before Herbert’s justly famous Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems . Mr. Cogito’s a character who appears in most of Herbert’s best poems — he’s kind of a poetic Pnin, both intellectual and not too bright, both hopelessly confused and bravely earnest as he grapples with the Big Questions of human existence.

Zbigniew Herbert is one of the two or three best living poets in the world, and by far the best of what you’d call the “postmoderns.” Since any great poem communicates an emotional urgency that postmodernism’s integument of irony renders facile or banal, postmodern poets have a tough row to hoe. Herbert’s Cogito-persona permits ironic absurdism and earnest emotion not only to coexist but to nourish one another. Compared to Mr. Cogito, the whole spectrum of American poetry — from the retrograde quaintness of the Neoformalists and New-Yorker- backyard-garden-meditative lyrics to the sterile abstraction of the Language Poets — looks sick. It seems significant that only writers from Eastern Europe and Latin America have succeeded in marrying the stuff of spirit and human feeling to the parodic detachment the postmodern experience seems to require. Maybe as political conditions get more oppressive here, we Americans’ll get good at it, too.

— 1994

cloche—close-fitting woman’s hat, worn by e.g. flappers; a bell-shaped cover for plants during frost cloisonné—enamelware with bands of color separated by strips of metal cloistral/claustral—secluded, cloistered clomiphene—drug that increases ovulation clonidine—drug for hyperten sion and migraine clonus—in musculature, abnormally rapid contraction and relaxation closet drama—a play to be read rather than performed coaming—(nautical) raised rim or border around opening to keep water from coming in colloid—suspension of fine particles coloboma—birth defect of eye that reduces vision colposcope—magnifier/camera for examination of vagina, used by gynecologists colubrine—of or resembling a snake commandmental—imperative compleat—having a highly developed or wide-ranging skill confute(v.) — like refute, show to be false or contradictory, or to prevent, forestall coprolalia—uncontrollable use of foul language coprolite—petrified shit coulee—Midwest: a valley with a hill on either side coulisse—a grooved timber in which something slides couvade—culture dependent: when wife is in labor, husband takes to his bed as if he were having child cradle—like scythe, a bladed harvest tool you swing crazing(n.) — a fine crack in a surface or glaze crimp(n.) — a shanghaier, somebody who tricks or coerces people into soldiering/sailoring crocket—projecting ornament in architecture croker sack—Southern for gunnysack crosse—stick used in lacrossclee culex—common mosquito culm—stem of grass or similar plant cunctation—procrastination, delay cuneal—wedge-shaped cupreous—containing or resembling copper cuspate—having a cusp or shaped like a cusp cuspidate(adj.) — tapering to firm solid point; a cuspidate leaf (head? penis?) cuspidor—spittoon cyan—greenish blue daltonism—red-green colorblindness davit—small cranes used to hoist cargo on and off a boat debouche—coming out of an enclosed area into a wider or open one deckle—frame for turning wood pulp into paper decollate(v.) — to behead décolleté—cut low at neckline decoupage—art of decorating a surface with paper or foil cutouts demotic—of or relating to the common people deracinate—to pull up by the roots; to displace one from his native environment dermatoid—resembling skin desquamate—to shed, peel, or come off in scales; (n.) desquamation detinue—act of unlawfully detaining personal property, or a legal action to recover property wrongfully detained dexter—of or located on the right side dharna—a fast conducted at the door of an offender, especially a debtor, as a means of obtaining compliance with a demand for justice dhoti—loin cloth worn by Hindu men in India diabase—dark gray stone mixture used in monuments and tombstones (the dark shiny gray w/luster or sparkle) diadem—crown worn as sign of royalty; royal power or dignity dickey—woman’s blouse front worn under jacket, or men’s detachable shirt front, or driver’s seat in carriage, or special seats for servants in carriage (up top?) dieldrin—poison used in insecticide dimity—sheer, crisp cotton fabric woven in stripes or checks, used for curtains and dresses

RIGHT NOW IT’S 1530H. on 3 September, the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, the holiday that’s come to represent the American summer’s right bracket. But L.D.W. always falls in the middle of the U.S. Open 1; it’s the time of the third and fourth rounds, the tournament’s meat, the time of trench warfare and polysyllabic names. Right now, in the National Tennis Center’s special Stadium — a towering hexagon 2whose N, S, E, and W sides have exterior banners saying “WELCOME TO THE 1995 U.S. OPEN— A U.S.T.A. EVENT ”—right now a whole inland sea of sunglasses and hats in the Stadium is rising to applaud as Pete Sampras and the Australian Mark Philippoussis are coming out on court, as scheduled, to labor. The two come out with their big bright athletic bags and their grim-looking Security escorts. The applause-acoustics are deafening. From down here near the court, looking up, the Stadium looks to be shaped like a huge wedding cake, and once past the gentler foothills of the box seats the aluminum stands seem to rise away on all sides almost vertically, so vertiginously steep that a misstep on any of the upper stairs looks like it would be certain and hideous death. The umpire sits in what looks like a lifeguard chair with little metal stirrups out front for his shoes, 3wearing a headset-mike and Ray-Bans and holding what’s either a clipboard or or a laptop. The DecoTurf court is a rectangle of off-green marked out by the well-known configuration of very white lines inside a bigger rectangle of off-green; and as the players cross the whole thing E-W to their canvas chairs, photographers and cameramen converge and cluster on them like flies clustering on what flies like — the players ignore them in the way that only people who are very used to cameras can ignore cameras. The crowd is still up and applauding, a pastel mass of 20,000+. A woman in a floppy straw hat three seats over from me is talking on a cellular phone; the man next to her is trying to applaud while holding a box of popcorn and is losing a lot of popcorn over the box’s starboard side. The scoreboards up over the Stadium’s N and S rims are flashing pointillist-neon ads for EVIAN. Sampras, poor-postured and chestless, smiling shyly at the ground, his powder-blue shorts swimming down around his knees, looks a little like a kid wearing his father’s clothes. 4Philippoussis, who chronologically really is a kid, looks hulking and steroidic walking next to Sampras. Philippoussis is 6'4" and 200+ and is crossing the court with the pigeon-toed gait of a large man who’s trying not to lumber, wearing the red-and-white candy-stripe Fila shirt so many of the younger Australians favor. The PM sun is overhead to the W-SW in a sky with air so clear you can almost hear the sun combusting, and the tiny heads of the spectators way up at the top of the W bleachers are close enough to the sun’s round bottom to look to be just about on fire. The players dump their long bags and begin to root through them. Their rackets are in plastic they have to unwrap. They sit in their little chairs hitting racket-faces together and cocking their heads to listen for pitch. The cameramen around them disperse at the umpire’s command, some trailing snakes of cord. Ballboys take crumpled bits of racket plastic from under the players’ chairs.