Over the course of the past week, I've read this collection a number of times; sometimes from cover to cover and other times a la peek-a-page. Each time I've opened this book, I've gone running around my apartment looking for a pen to jot down what, I think, he is referencing and/or alluding to.
Speaking of which, I think there's a distinction between a "reference" and an "allusion" (i.e., a difference in their stipulative definitions), despite their seeming synonymy (lexical definitions). I hardly ever hear "allusion" outside the classroom, but I hear "reference" quite a bit (e.g., "Family Guy is referencing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in this scene" [no one ever says, "Family Guy is alluding to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in that scene"]). This distinction, however, is important only in an Eliotian and staunchly academic sense, such that "high" and "low" culture are concerned. For the sake of argument, one would say that Robbins is alluding to The Great Gatsby (high culture) when he says, "I spit on any fresh green breast," and that he is referencing Star Wars (low culture [i.e., pop-culture]) when he says, "She's not the droid you're looking for."
Anyway, what he risks by referencing pop-culture is the "datedness" discouraged by many schools of writing, as opposed to the "timelessness" of the classics revered by same. (Sidenote: DFW explores and refutes this notion in one of his essays, which was then picked up and quoted by Jonathan Lethem in one of his.) By thumbing his nose at said convention, Robbins is rewarded with an unusual readership--extending beyond the usual academics and other poets (perhaps an overstatement, but read on)--which includes a large portion of the population that is overindulgent and, shall I say, obsessed with popular culture; and therefore privy to the kinds of references he elects to make: Raptor Jesus/Philosoraptor, Purple Rain, Tiny Dancer, Guns N' Roses, Star Wars, Nirvana, The Big Lebowski, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Welcome Back Kotter, Silence of the Lambs, Fleetwood Mac, Cutting Crew, Joy Division, Indeep, Lil Mama, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, LL Cool J, The Beatles, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth, David Bowie, Wu-Tang Clan, etc.
Although this may not be the first to do so, it is a collection that grants the not-necessarily-academic access to allusive poetry in an example of (almost) reverse-privilege. However, the aforementioned "academics and other poets" are not left entirely in the dark, either. Within this collection of poetry are countless homage-like allusions, quotations, and rearrangements of words, images, and ideas made famous by the greats (or, perhaps, the not-so-greats, according to Robbins): Rilke, Berryman, Keats, Ginsberg, Whitman, Fitzgerald, Larkin, Auden, Frost, Shakespeare, Nagel, Basho, Wittgenstein, Adams, Seidel, Blake, Spicer, Freud, Socrates, Wordsworth, Crane, Stevens, etc.
The result is a collection of poetry that thumbs its nose at tradition while bowing before its altars; a collection that could be, and probably has been, falsely accused of being just another example of postmodern pastiche, parody, and irony; which to some extent it is, but just another example of such in poetry? I don't know, but I think these poems effectively capture what it's like to live amid the din--the infinite noise--of modern America; an emotionally jaded country still struggling to convalesce and cope with disenchantment/disillusionment; a nation clouded by pop-cultural preoccupations, while technology keeps on trying to cure itself, however unsuccessfully. Anyway, these poems successfully fulfill the Aristotelian ideal for art, which is to imitate life--i.e., mimesis.
Meta-edit (quasi-personal statement [as it probably should've been all along]): the only problem I encounter when reading Alien vs. Predator is in the explication process. In some of the poems--like "New Bridge Strategies," "Remain in Light," etc--I've a pretty good idea on what's going on, what's being said, etc. Maybe some of it is either over or under my head, which is funny. I offer the collection such praise but yet, I'm unable to make anything other than broad strokes in unpacking it. Or maybe I'm just being lazy. That is, I'd rather self-deprecate than go out on a limb to grab the ripest fruit. Fruity, indeed. Anyhow, I've something else in mind.
Maybe--while remaining in tune with the themes I mentioned above (and the postmodern fascination with meaninglessness)--many of these poems are indulging in a kind of Derridean play. That is, maybe they come pre-deconstructed, which I can't really explain just yet, but it crossed my mind as if it was a smart thing to say, ha!
Before I forget, I want to include the inscription that was written in the used book I purchased (which I've since torn out, but still use as a bookmark for some strange reason):
"Jesse--
I remember reading the poems of Frederick Seidel with you; these are the poems he would write if he were 15 years old and spent much of his time playing video games in his underwear and listening to Guns N' Roses and Jay-Z.
Merry Christmas!
--[illegible] + Laura
Xmas 2012"
I guess Jesse didn't care too much for this collection, seeing as how I now have it.
Anyhow (back to trying to sound smart): maybe some of these poems, in their esoteric blend of high and low culture, are more like Rorschach inkblots for its readers, allowing each of them to see something different, which then says more about them as readers than it does about the poems themselves. (I'll skip what my reading says about me, except maybe the part where--)
I come from a family that is inordinately aware and knowledgeable of pop-culture: my dad and stepmom (huge Bob Dylan fan) have a near-encyclopedic recall for the music from their generation up until, I'd say, the year, 2000. Needless to say, I was listening to Neil Young and Nirvana by the age of five. Meanwhile, I watched countless movies with my mom, and, looking back, it seems to me the only thing we ever did was cuddle up on the couch and watch movies like Alien(s), Philadelphia, Terminator, Silence of the Lambs, Fried Green Tomatoes, Schindler's List, Sleepless in Seattle, Shawshank Redemption, When Harry Met Sally, Jurassic Park; just oh-so-many movies. Oh, and it was with my dad that we watched the movies my mom was reluctant to rent due to their content: Freddy, Jason, etc. And it was with my dad that I saw movies like Fargo, Exorcist, Pulp Fiction, Deer Hunter Natural Born Killers--movies that, when I watch them now, I can't believe I saw them as a child (all the things that were over my head then that I'm just now getting)--despite their explicit plaints and fears (in jest) that we--my sister, stepbrother, and I--would grow up to be serial killers. And I remember watching Last of the Mohicans and Rambo a lot, which my grandfather taped for me, ha!
And so, from then on, I was hooked--not hyperbolically or metaphorically--on pop-culture: film, music, television, etc. Henceforth, I became a pirate, downloaded/stole everything, delved into the esoteric (sub- and underground cultures) afforded by internet access, had a lot of phases (fascinations, interests, preoccupations, aspirations): a stint, however brief, in sports (baseball, soccer, running); eclectic and radical movements/shifts within music (poli-punk, radiohead, pink floyd, death metal, house/trance, breakbeat/turntablism [had a pair of turntables for a while], underground and old-school hip hop, bossa nova jazz, funk/soul from the seventies); watched hundreds of movies (my friends and I, we play this game called "actor-movie-actor-movie" [see if you can figure it out: Brad Pitt--Legends of the Fall--Anthony Hopkins--Silence of the Lambs--Jodie Foster--Taxi Driver--Robert De Niro--Goodfellas--Samuel L. Jackson--Negotiator--Kevin Spacey--American Beauty--Chris Cooper--Adaptation--Meryl Streep--Deer Hunter--Christopher Walken--King of New York--Laurence Fishburne--Boyz n the Hood--Cuba Gooding, Jr.--Jerry Maguire--Tom Cruise--Vanilla Sky--Penelope Cruz--Vicky Cristina Barcelona--Javier Bardem--No Country for Old Men--Josh Brolin--Goonies--Sean Astin--Rudy--and on and on {to the break of dawn}]).
Okay, this is probably (getting [if not already]) exhausting to read but my point is: I feel at home with Robbins's poetry. Also, it gives me the courage to utilize my self-minimized background in pop-culture, which definitely makes it more fun, and interesting, to me anyway. Okay, bye.
Although this may not be the first to do so, it is a collection that grants the not-necessarily-academic access to allusive poetry in an example of (almost) reverse-privilege. However, the aforementioned "academics and other poets" are not left entirely in the dark, either. Within this collection of poetry are countless homage-like allusions, quotations, and rearrangements of words, images, and ideas made famous by the greats (or, perhaps, the not-so-greats, according to Robbins): Rilke, Berryman, Keats, Ginsberg, Whitman, Fitzgerald, Larkin, Auden, Frost, Shakespeare, Nagel, Basho, Wittgenstein, Adams, Seidel, Blake, Spicer, Freud, Socrates, Wordsworth, Crane, Stevens, etc.
The result is a collection of poetry that thumbs its nose at tradition while bowing before its altars; a collection that could be, and probably has been, falsely accused of being just another example of postmodern pastiche, parody, and irony; which to some extent it is, but just another example of such in poetry? I don't know, but I think these poems effectively capture what it's like to live amid the din--the infinite noise--of modern America; an emotionally jaded country still struggling to convalesce and cope with disenchantment/disillusionment; a nation clouded by pop-cultural preoccupations, while technology keeps on trying to cure itself, however unsuccessfully. Anyway, these poems successfully fulfill the Aristotelian ideal for art, which is to imitate life--i.e., mimesis.
Meta-edit (quasi-personal statement [as it probably should've been all along]): the only problem I encounter when reading Alien vs. Predator is in the explication process. In some of the poems--like "New Bridge Strategies," "Remain in Light," etc--I've a pretty good idea on what's going on, what's being said, etc. Maybe some of it is either over or under my head, which is funny. I offer the collection such praise but yet, I'm unable to make anything other than broad strokes in unpacking it. Or maybe I'm just being lazy. That is, I'd rather self-deprecate than go out on a limb to grab the ripest fruit. Fruity, indeed. Anyhow, I've something else in mind.
Maybe--while remaining in tune with the themes I mentioned above (and the postmodern fascination with meaninglessness)--many of these poems are indulging in a kind of Derridean play. That is, maybe they come pre-deconstructed, which I can't really explain just yet, but it crossed my mind as if it was a smart thing to say, ha!
Before I forget, I want to include the inscription that was written in the used book I purchased (which I've since torn out, but still use as a bookmark for some strange reason):
"Jesse--
I remember reading the poems of Frederick Seidel with you; these are the poems he would write if he were 15 years old and spent much of his time playing video games in his underwear and listening to Guns N' Roses and Jay-Z.
Merry Christmas!
--[illegible] + Laura
Xmas 2012"
I guess Jesse didn't care too much for this collection, seeing as how I now have it.
Anyhow (back to trying to sound smart): maybe some of these poems, in their esoteric blend of high and low culture, are more like Rorschach inkblots for its readers, allowing each of them to see something different, which then says more about them as readers than it does about the poems themselves. (I'll skip what my reading says about me, except maybe the part where--)
I come from a family that is inordinately aware and knowledgeable of pop-culture: my dad and stepmom (huge Bob Dylan fan) have a near-encyclopedic recall for the music from their generation up until, I'd say, the year, 2000. Needless to say, I was listening to Neil Young and Nirvana by the age of five. Meanwhile, I watched countless movies with my mom, and, looking back, it seems to me the only thing we ever did was cuddle up on the couch and watch movies like Alien(s), Philadelphia, Terminator, Silence of the Lambs, Fried Green Tomatoes, Schindler's List, Sleepless in Seattle, Shawshank Redemption, When Harry Met Sally, Jurassic Park; just oh-so-many movies. Oh, and it was with my dad that we watched the movies my mom was reluctant to rent due to their content: Freddy, Jason, etc. And it was with my dad that I saw movies like Fargo, Exorcist, Pulp Fiction, Deer Hunter Natural Born Killers--movies that, when I watch them now, I can't believe I saw them as a child (all the things that were over my head then that I'm just now getting)--despite their explicit plaints and fears (in jest) that we--my sister, stepbrother, and I--would grow up to be serial killers. And I remember watching Last of the Mohicans and Rambo a lot, which my grandfather taped for me, ha!
And so, from then on, I was hooked--not hyperbolically or metaphorically--on pop-culture: film, music, television, etc. Henceforth, I became a pirate, downloaded/stole everything, delved into the esoteric (sub- and underground cultures) afforded by internet access, had a lot of phases (fascinations, interests, preoccupations, aspirations): a stint, however brief, in sports (baseball, soccer, running); eclectic and radical movements/shifts within music (poli-punk, radiohead, pink floyd, death metal, house/trance, breakbeat/turntablism [had a pair of turntables for a while], underground and old-school hip hop, bossa nova jazz, funk/soul from the seventies); watched hundreds of movies (my friends and I, we play this game called "actor-movie-actor-movie" [see if you can figure it out: Brad Pitt--Legends of the Fall--Anthony Hopkins--Silence of the Lambs--Jodie Foster--Taxi Driver--Robert De Niro--Goodfellas--Samuel L. Jackson--Negotiator--Kevin Spacey--American Beauty--Chris Cooper--Adaptation--Meryl Streep--Deer Hunter--Christopher Walken--King of New York--Laurence Fishburne--Boyz n the Hood--Cuba Gooding, Jr.--Jerry Maguire--Tom Cruise--Vanilla Sky--Penelope Cruz--Vicky Cristina Barcelona--Javier Bardem--No Country for Old Men--Josh Brolin--Goonies--Sean Astin--Rudy--and on and on {to the break of dawn}]).
Okay, this is probably (getting [if not already]) exhausting to read but my point is: I feel at home with Robbins's poetry. Also, it gives me the courage to utilize my self-minimized background in pop-culture, which definitely makes it more fun, and interesting, to me anyway. Okay, bye.
