"Some Novelties of Stagecraft," by Matthew Gagnon
from Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2012
I remember these poems from a few years ago by Linnea Ogden. For instance, "Contact," published in 2008 by Boston Review. Ogden takes a snippet of legalese and inlays it into a lyric occasion. So simply. And so seamlessly. In fact, the connection between the two could make you think the legal statement simlpy generated the poem from its own juridical intent. The beginning of each stanza may be legal jargon, but the sentiment syntactically fits within the lyric and offers further complication for its occasion.
What happens when you open the poetic possibilities of jurisprudence? I say subversiveness. It's like poetry just happened to wander into the courtroom, or the zoning office at City Hall, and then started kicking its way into the law books. Perhaps that's too kind and too enthusiastic a take on the poems. But I want political poems that aren't so brash and unsubtle I feel awkward for them while I'm reading them. Is Poetry really going to win a fight with fisticuffs? I don't think so. Subversive poems are subtle. They occupy their space quietly. They rearrange the logic of the space to suit their own terms. Ogden's poem appropriates and confronts a vital and active and self-consuming part of our culture. I would say it's closer to protesting the 1% than many poems that scream about how angry they are with the 1%.
And what, in God's name, is Matthew Gagnon's poem doing? Looking for a corporate sponsor? Describing the lyric exuberance of a poem that has already found its corporate sponsor? Here, again, is an appropriation of language: underwritten, churning, in the pipeline. The term, "irrational exuberance," that appears about 2/3 of the way through the poem, actually has a Wikipedia entry to describe it. The fact is, Gagnon's speaker has been underwritten. And his message is spreading like water threading everywhere. But what does that mean? If a "punch line" has some sort of corporate backing, who benefits? In this world where Facebook and Google are going to use data about us for some supposed diabolical plan, I wonder why we are so eager to presume these corporations will harm us.
Are we not capable of being like Gagnon's speaker: "storied and customized." That guy is like a "fuse box humming beside a thornbush." As with many poems of the exuberant, the ecstatic here is an ironic gesture. Gagnon hasn't really decided which way he would go with this. However, I appreciate Gagnon taking a moment to speak for the 1%. Or at least to slip onto the balcony overlooking the proesters and toast to subversion in all its poetic immensity.
Recommended links:
Boston Review
Maybe this is Matthew Gagnon? More subversion?
Some other poems of his at Conjunctions.
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