A poem from STUPID BIRDS by LOGAN RYAN SMITH

JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Reviews

“Narcissus 2000” from Stupid Birds by Logan Ryan Smith

(Transmission Press, San Francisco, 2007)

        
          Narcissus 2000

when narcissus was careful with it he carried his mirror

around in public and asked what others saw in it

he carried it around but couldn’t care less what others saw

in the mirror when there came the celebrity of the future

upon his reflection and he was confused

because suddenly it was 2002 and he didn’t know

where he began but was sure that he still loved him-

self and that he was glad to be gone from echo that echo

had died a long time ago but there in the city of the country

he did not know he was in he found the gutter

was beautiful with cigarettes, trash and his face

and in the drain today he sits and his name

is bubblegum wrapper [Wrigley] and whiskey bottle

[ANCIENT AGE] and spit and metal bearings

and come on get over it it’s never going to change

I love myself and don’t care what you think

I’ll sit here and stare at this and what was before

(you don’t know what was before and I’m okay

with that that you don’t know because you shouldn’t)

and I’ll tell myself that I have had a place

and I have paid my rent and that the city of the country

that I live in is looking out for me because I am me

HELLO HELLO HELLO HI I think you know me

by now you have heard me by now this is COMPLETELY

IMPOSSIBLE that you have forgotten me and that my

little prayers to myself have gone unnoticed and forgotten

take them please take them now and go on with them

flourish and frolic and do whatever it is you people do

just LISTEN and move on with what I give them and you

I hope you have a wonderful day with all that I give you

*

I read “Narcissus 2000” as a “questioning”, to put it mildly, of the lyric sensibility, in and out of poetry. It performs the lyric form to undermine and perhaps to explore reviving its possibilities in our time. I don’t think I need to define the lyric for this audience (as if I could, really), but in general the lyric is the form in which an individual subject sings. It’s a bit vexed to consider oneself an autonomous individual these days, scientifically, psychologically, philosophically, economically, politically … and yet, and yet … it is (or seems, I’ll stick with seems) kinda hard-wired in to feel that “I am me”, doesn’t it?

In any case, Smith takes a kind of limit case, Narcissus, as a stand-in for the lyric poet, the lyric personality, and explores it, just to see where it takes him. I don’t propose that Smith really decides anything definitively here, this is just one trip down Subjective Individuality Lane.

when narcissus was careful with it he carried his mirror

around in public and asked what others saw in it

he carried it around but couldn’t care less what others saw

in the mirror

The first thing to notice is that this poem begins in the third person, and thus can be read, at least in part, as potentially non-lyric, since the poet and / or narrator is perhaps not concerned with lyric expression (we don’t know yet). The second thing to notice is the “it” in the first line. What is narcissus careful with? We have to guess, but knowing the myth as we do, we might hazard that it’s his self-obsession. What then, might be his mirror? Well, it might be an actual mirror, but for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on it might also be his poetry. In one way or another it’s his self-absorption; we can fairly safely assume this by the third word of the fourth line.

I could add that I find this opening both funny and horrifying.

when there came the celebrity of the future

upon his reflection and he was confused

because suddenly it was 2002 and he didn’t know

where he began but was sure that he still loved him-

self

These next lines bring narcissus into the present. I believe that he is confused because the lyric / individual subject is in many ways (has in many ways been) abstracted from history, and only has the present moment to go in. For many, the present includes memory, which must be distinguished from history (history is inclusive of, at the very least, the memories of others as well as one’s own), but, as I’ve mentioned, Narcissus is a limit case; he’s so obsessed that, paradoxically, it’s only his present self-obsession that he can recall.

I should note that to this point in the poem it’s clear that this narcissus is not the mythological Narcissus, whose self-obsession is infinitely powerful. This narcissus (whose name is lower-cased in the poem, perhaps to distinguish him from his mythological namesake) is only mostly, as opposed to infinitely, self-obsessed. Otherwise he could have thought to be careful, and confused, etc.

and that he was glad to be gone from echo that echo

had died a long time ago

Why is he glad to be gone from echo? As I glean from a British Website aptly named http://www.echo.me.uk/legend.htm echo, “Echo's passion for Narcissus was equaled only by her passion for talking as she always had to have the last word.” Even after Juno cursed her by only allowing her to repeat the last thing she’d heard, she still had the last word. Echo/echo’s self-obsession equals Narcissus/narcissus’s own, it would seem. I think we can assume that he’s glad to be gone from her because who needs the competition, really?

but there in the city of the country

he did not know he was in he found the gutter

was beautiful with cigarettes, trash and his face

and in the drain today he sits and his name

is bubblegum wrapper [Wrigley] and whiskey bottle

[ANCIENT AGE] and spit and metal bearings

and come on get over it it’s never going to change

I love myself and don’t care what you think

I’ll sit here and stare at this

I think one could read “in the city of the country / he did not know he was in” as a way of suggesting that the person who insists on his/her subjective individuality has opted out of politics, ethics, all forms of real sociality. The result of this is that all he sees in the environmental degradation in which he is immersed is the same mirror in which he has always loved/obsessed over himself. We can’t expect anything at all from the insistently-individual subject.

I could insert an essay here about how this sort of subjective individuality came to be commonplace and socially dangerous as the first stirrings of the bourgeois spirit in the 17^th century, and how Romanticism came to fruition alongside the Industrial Revolution, and then I could write about the individual and consumer society … but that’s been done and you know it (at least you know the story) and you’ve heard it so many times and you don’t need to hear it again from me.

But I’d rather just point out two things: the name of the whiskey, which could be taken as both verisimilitude and as a way of saying that however dangerous the lyric narcissist has become, it’s always been with us (even if narcissus can’t remember that); and, how the third person has suddenly become the first person, and how the use of the third person in the earlier lines of the poem did not form a strong enough bulwark to prevent self-obsession from coming to the fore eventually.

And I’ll also suggest that this kind of manipulation on the part of the poet confirms my sense that Smith is testing, and questioning, rather than simply and unselfconsciously performing the lyric.

and what was before

(you don’t know what was before and I’m okay

with that that you don’t know because you shouldn’t)

Who is the you? I don’t know. Perhaps he hasn’t forgotten echo entirely???

and I’ll tell myself that I have had a place

and I have paid my rent and that the city of the country

that I live in is looking out for me because I am me

Perhaps these lines are narcissus’s way of saying, hey, I’m not just a DMS-IV Narcissist; I’m also capable of living like everyone else who lives in this century. But this is quickly undercut by “and that the city of the country / that I live in is looking out for me because I am me”, which every possible reader of this poems knows is absolutely not the case, not ever, perhaps, but certainly not in the 21^st Century; thus, while he may not be a DSM-Narcissist, he’s at the very least a DSM-Borderline Personality.

HELLO HELLO HELLO HI I think you know me

by now you have heard me by now this is COMPLETELY

IMPOSSIBLE that you have forgotten me and that my

little prayers to myself have gone unnoticed and forgotten

take them please take them now and go on with them

flourish and frolic and do whatever it is you people do

“HELLO HELLO HELLO HI”? I think this is echo speaking. Not the cursed Echo who can only repeat (the repeated HELLOs seem more like a Wagnerian leitmotif than anything else), but the Echo who always got the last word, as she does here, if I am right. How do I read these lines? What do I think she is saying?

I think she is telling narcissus that in some respects her love for him has never died. But her obsession has. In fact, though she still seems to need the last word, she seems to have gone to lots and lots of therapy, and it’s worked reasonably. Now she simply wishes him to heal himself, and to have a good life. And she extends the same wish to all people. Is that it? No. She adds:

just LISTEN and move on with what I give them and you

I hope you have a wonderful day with all that I give you

These two lines remind me of so many things. Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island”, in which echo takes on the role the sun has in that poem. If that’s granted, then Dante’s Commedia, in which his lost love Beatrice serves to inspire the way echo hopes to do for narcissus. Jack Spicer’s “Martian radio” or whatever you want to call it, since echo is suggesting that the poet should forego the lyric impulse and should sing instead of self (or along with self) (probably not just merely self) that which comes from outside. Remember, this is echo before the curse, so it’s not just repetition of the already-sung that narcissus is to listen to and move on with.

I found the following bit K. Silem Mohammad at his {lime tree}, 19 December 2005. I seem to keep quoting it:

Notice to all those poets still talking EITHER about “keeping out the ‘lyric I’” OR “putting the ‘I’ back in”: you are now living in the year 2005. That discussion wore itself out like 25 years ago. Get over it and feel free to live your lives. 

True dat. I don’t mean to harsh on the “I”. But we can never just take the it for granted now. We have to be it/use it consciously, perhaps srategically. I think Smith’s “Narcissus 2000” helps us understand why.

*****

[Editor’s Note: This is one of 50 reviews written, mas o menos, in 50 days.  While each engagement can be read on a stand-alone basis, there’s a layer of watching the critic’s subjectivity arise in a fulsome manner if the reviews are read one after another.  So if you have insomnia and/or are curious about this layer, I suggest you read the 50 reviews right after each other and, to facilitate this type of reading, I will put at the bottom of each review a “NEXT” button that will take you to the next review.  To wit: NEXT.  And an Afterword on John's reading process is also available HERE!]

 
John Bloomberg-Rissman is somewhere towards middle of In the House of the Hangman, the third section of his maybe life project called Zeitgeist Spam (picture Hannah Hoch painting over the Sistine Chapel) The first two volumes have been published: No Sounds of My Own Making, and Flux, Clot & Froth. In addition to his Zeitgeist Spam project, he has edited or co-edited two anthologies, 1000 Views of 'Girl Singing' and The Chained Hay(na)ku Project, and is at work on a third, which he is editing with Jerome Rothenberg. He is also deep into two important collaborations, one with Richard Lopez, one with Anne Gorrick. By important he means "important to him". Anyone else want to collaborate? He blogs at Zeitgeist Spam.