"Apologies from the Ground Up," by Timothy Donnelly
from A Public Space 15
What isn't funny about narcissism? And I don't just mean narcissism like the Howard Stern kind. That's more a talking narcissism, which I would compare to the "talking cure," except with Stern it's like all the language he generates actually reconstitutes itself on his command to become a gigantic trophy. And he can hang from his neck. Think albatross. Think Flava Flav but much more unwieldy. The narcissism Timothy Donnelly is talking about is different. It's more like the one where, when you're 17 years old, you figure you'll probably be President of the United States by the time you're 37, or 41. Which might sound like a delusion. But for the narcissistic, it's called self-importance, which is this uninhibited force inside you whose trajectory extends beyond your 20s, your adulthood, and includes even the historic ramifications of your life. FYI, there are encyclopedia articles that are part of those ramifications. So you'd be best to remain sharp.
"Apologies from the Ground Up" is talking a narcissism that looks at a painting of the Tower of Babel, and feels that magnitude of ego required to order such a spectacle, and thinks: I am that king. For I am willful. I am powerful and demented. I direct the people's will. And, yes, I may have to admit it was ill-advised to start on a project such as this. But "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
It may be that this narcissism of presumption is what we feed off of in 2012. Listen to Kanye West. Listen to Arcade Fire. Listen to about 3/4 of the pop music that comes out these days. We are pressed daily with so many ennobling spirits. We are urged to the imagined violence of the fighter. If there was ever a poetic needle Wallace Stevens could have ordered up so that he could inject nobility into our very sensitive egos, he just needed an iPod on 2012 Genius Mix. The world is ours to conquer, says the imagination. Donnelly's poem even makes light of this easy obsession/mistake of thinking that life caters to our wills. The occasion for "Apologies from the Ground Up" is a ride on a Manhattan-bound express, where the speaker is able to avoid "a general rupture from the keeping / of thoughts to oneself." This to the extent that it almost feels that these people keep themsevles to themselves for the speaker's benefit.
Is this detachment of 2012 self from other 2012 selves equivalent to the King who orders the Tower of Babel be built? Donnelly says yes. Or actually what Donnelly says is that every presumptive thought, when extended beyond its reasonable extreme, will continue to rationalize itself. And yet, in the end, if we are to continue the analogy, it seems we are all victims to individual languages that are specific to our overindulgent subjectivisms. Which is to say, all us narcissists make for the most alienated population. And we seem to take some strange pride in it.
Recommended links:
The Cloud Corporation
Recent LotsofNeat review of The Cloud Corporation
6 poets Timothy Donnelly recommends
Recent Comments