Author: Joe Linker

Wiman’s title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, about a snake, “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (1096). Diabolic, symbolic, and fearful (particularly for those with no fear of spiders), snakes glide through the grasses of Wiman’s prose. Self-deprecating, Wiman attempts to hide his ego in the grass of selected poems (his own and by others), copious quotes, anecdotes and memoir, and essays. He begins with a dedication based on “a whole new naivete,” that one might profess to know more having eaten the fruit of the tree of poetry. (“Zero at the Bone” is also, unfortunately, the title of a true thriller. I’ve not read that one, but it also sounds like it deals in despair.) The Zero in Wiman’s title suggests the silence of God. Shame figures throughout, beginning with an epigraph, a quote from Wordsworth: “…to my shame I speak.” The book begins and ends on Zero, the snake swallowing its tail, having shed skin over the fifty entries. “I have no idea what this book will be,” Wiman says in the opening entry, titled “Zero.” Various themes will interweave throughout the book. It is a quilt being sewn, a mosaic, or menagerie. It would have made an interesting blog. The prose does growl along though, as he warns us in the opening “Zero”: “And what, pray tell, is the source of this slowly rousing growl?” That we will discover.

For readers looking to assuage their own despair, this is probably not the book. It’s not a self-help book. It’s not a bromide. It provides few closed answers and not much good news. Wiman doesn’t appear to believe in Happiness. In this, of course, he’s not alone. Still, to say “One doesn’t follow God in hope of happiness,” hardly seems to go on the offensive against despair. And why shouldn’t one hope for happiness? Why should we not be happy? The opposite of despair is not happiness, but awe, Wiman suggests. There is no panacea. Depression is here to stay. But we can still be awed.

In entry 1, Wiman mentions a night when his daughter could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she had unwanted thoughts. Wiman suggests “she pray to God.” Seriously? The idea of something “erases what it asserts” appears again and again, like “comfort and anguish.” One begets the other: we all need comfort who are anguished, and if we are not tormented, we feel not comfort. There’s this constant dichotomy at work. No permanence save good and evil, the parents of despair. Build it up to take it apart. The kids go to a daycare, “so my wife and I could write.” Maybe writers should not have kids, if that’s how it is. But why can’t a good writer write with the kids around? Joyce did. No art equals no god, no perfection. But if god is so perfect, why the mess? The question of religion, but is faith an answer? This is what comes of taking poetry too seriously.

In entry 2, we find Wallace Stevens, “Domination of Black,” a poem about, I thought, camping out? Wiman says he doesn’t know what it means, but then goes on to say what it means, erasing what it asserts in so doing, and says it’s about death. Still, with Stevens in the campsite, this is a good entry: “Unreal things have a reality of their own, in poetry as elsewhere.” That is Stevens explaining the human imagination. How to live free from God, not just free from strictures.

Entry 3 is a single poem, ending “unraptured back to man.”

In Entry 4 we find Kandinsky again, mentioned with his wife in Entry 2. More quotes, out of context like threads, making the quilt, or is it a jigsaw puzzle, these pieces, not visions. Fragments. What’s the point, if you want to talk about points, of quotes out of context? Wiman’s audience may in large part be made up of divinity students whose lot it will presumably be to balance out angst and joy.

Dostoyevski fans might remember his line, “Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.” I kept waiting for Wiman to quote it. But why not of joy? Why can’t joy be an origin of consciousness? Remember, we’re making a quilt here. “One grows so tired, in American public life, of the certitudes and platitudes, the megaphone mouths and stadium praise, influencers and effluencers and the whole tsunami of slop that comes pouring into our lives like toxic sludge.” No kidding, and we’re only on page 30. Then there’s the dinner party honoring Lucille Clifton. Poetry never had it so good. But why does Wiman have to criticize e. e. cummings in his effort to praise Clifton, comparing their use of small case i instead of I? idk. And why take it out on the faces of the waiters? What might be interesting is how the waiters might have described the faces of the poets. For that, we’d need Samuel Beckett, but he’s been dismissed as a trap for minor writers. And there it is, the hierarchy of the cannon, with Dodo and Didi at the bottom of the heap, self-published but nevertheless awaiting instructions from the top.

And Nietsche? Why not Kirkegaard, Augustine, or Buckminster Fuller – whose treatment of the Our Father prayer is instructive and entertaining and most certainly against despair. But Nietsche is imminently quotable, and Wiman is given to quotes. The quilt makes for a hefty syllabus.

The poet’s dog. The Holocaust. The bullet we all feel lodged somewhere in the skin muscle of our soul. Christ walks in us. A sermon. Sometimes he walks right through us. Doesn’t stay long.

It’s a death quilt. Not sorrow. Sorrow is not at zero nor at the bone. Sorrow remains above freezing. Sorrow is a song that doesn’t get sung. Some people can’t sing. A poem says, “Tragedy and Christianity are incommensurable,” in entry 7, then, we get, “The story of Jesus is, in an inescapable sense, a tragedy.” I remember the “Laughing Jesus” image appearing in the church we attended at the time. But Wiman says, “Suffering and death, at some point, will be all that we know.” How does one move against that?

A poem, “a lullaby of bone,” and “dawn a scald of joy.” Sounds like despair against which nothing can hold back. Where’s the against here?

Another poem. No comment. Throughout the book, single poems, collections of poems, like posters stapled to a telephone pole advertising little concert events already passed. And comes Ted Hughes, of all poets, singing of joy. Sort of. “Joy! Help!” The Beatles sang it better. Ah, and here’s Kirkegaard: “What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.” And I’d like to read more of Norman MacCraig, who says: “I am a happy man…and nearly all the poems I write are in fact praising things.” Entries of quotes and poems. Remember, we’re making a quilt.

So he disses Samuel Beckett. But Beckett was a happy man. A humanistic writer, a kind man. But who are the “minor talents” Wiman refers to in his diss of Beckett? Bloggers? “This is a toy despair. It’s entertaining, brilliant at times, but it cannot help me.” Wiman explains the meaning of “against” in the title: “By ‘against’ in the subtitle of this book I don’t mean to imply a ‘position.’” A leaning, then. Shoulder against the wheel.

Yet another poem. No comment.

Dichotomy. There are two kinds of writers, we’re told. Yes, minor and major. Like guitar chords. Diminished and augmented. Wiman seems unforgiving about Virginia Woolf. Why even mention her if you can’t say something nice? He doesn’t mention her depression, her womanhood, the war raging. For someone who really is suffering from despair, as Virginia obviously was, this book by Wiman won’t be helpful. It might even make matters worse, as his response to Woolf’s suicide makes clear: “A prison gets to be a friend.” Wiman says she “embraced the oblivion that she had spent a lifetime creating out of, and in spite of, and against.” That is a complete misreading of everything. And mean-spirited to boot.

Wiman says, “Me, I can’t conceive of a god who can’t laugh.” Well, let us hear some laughter, then.

Another poem. Shooting pool. More despair. Haven’t we enough?

At the gym. This is a kind of Roland Barthes entry, or a topic Barthes would have used, like his American wrestling piece. “I’ve never been in a gym I didn’t like,” Wiman says. I’ve never been in one I did like. The smell of sweaty socks. Exercise going on but apart from any obvious need, like digging a ditch to lay a sewer line. Honest work. Of course one can be assigned physical therapy, and a gym comes in handy for that. But we should get outside for our exercise, and work for a living. But I can easily see why a writer might need a gym. Get away from the solo desk and into some camaraderie, even if you don’t actually meet or talk to anyone. Maybe even hire a coach, a trainer. But Rocky’s raw eggs? Really? And then we get some humor, finally, or at least some talk about humor. We missed a good chance with the Beckett stuff – well, that was just a footnote, anyway. But now, Wiman showers us after the gym with: “It [humor] can have existential reach and significance, can imply a world in which the comic, not the tragic, is ultimate.” This entry ends, by the way, with a footnote referencing Langston Hughes, a little quote from a letter he wrote. Fine, but Langston should have an entry all his own.

And now we’re back to snakes again. “Why does one create?” Wiman’s italics, not mine. Some to sound important. And of course the snake anecdote brings us round “commodious vicus” to Adam and Eve, story which with the help of Larkin, Wiman conflates with sex, not knowledge of good and evil. “Then, friend…” First, don’t call me friend. I’m your reader. It’s Eve creates consciousness. Hmm. And then God is the snake. What version is Wiman reading from? And then comes the Weil paradox. Destruction of the I. Hard to understand I guess for a poet, whose sole purpose is the creation of the I. And then it’s sustenance. And what of the others? If I drink it to death? And then comes the snake in the mouth. “There is nowhere to stand and see, nowhere to escape the stink of being human.” One must love that stink as Jesus did. And then this absurd comment: “Poetry is the only sanity.” Really? Then why does so much of it sound so crazy?

So, an Ars Poetica follows. “If I could let go / If I could know what there is to let go / If I could chance the night’s improvidence / and be the being this hard mercy means.” The work song.

Hearing music is better than poetry, sans words. Save the sound of a poem’s words.

More circularity. “The knowledge of love and the knowledge of death are the same, and neither is knowledge.” Is Wiman just trying to sound important here? Like a philosopher might? What indeed is the point? Yes, back on page 3: “To write a book against despair implies an intimate acquaintance with the condition. Otherwise what would be the point?”

And now more quotes. Bloggishness.

A six-line poem.

Loneliness and its solution.

William Bronk, at the expense of Wallace Stevens. Potato chips. Betcha can’t write one. Aphorisms, like this one from page 118: “Nothing is worth saying, nothing is worth doing except as a foil for the waves of silence to break against.” Yes, and “our ears are now in perfect condition,” John Cage said in his manifesto for music. As for Bronk, metaphor is everything and nothing, since it can point to what is, or what might be, but can never actually be that person, place, or thing. Buckminster Fuller: “I seem to be a verb.” That is not found in Wiman. Instead, we get, via Bronk: “I deal with despair because I feel despair. Most people feel despair but they are not prepared to deal with it except pretend that it’s not there. I think it’s there metaphysically, that it is not a matter of an individual predicament. It’s in the nature of reality and not to be denied.” Another sadist who wants people to think for a living. Isn’t it better to work for a living? “…a man lashed to a mast in his own living room,” is Wiman’s final statement on Bronk.

Barely bearable. Yes, because there is no “ugly” landscape. It’s all tremendous and awe full. That is the nature of Beckett’s landscapes. Only the human remains.

Pascal – the dedication to Wiman’s book is now explained, “a whole new naivete,” explained or illuminated.

Another poem.

Etheridge Knight. What poetry maybe can do is what “Jesus promises.”

Poem. “toot” (ish) footed.

Why is “common reader” in quote marks? Contradictions. Contraindications. Don’t mix this poetry with… Rabbits. Hot rats. “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Yes, precisely. “In the beginning…was the word.” Was. What now? Out of nothing something happened. But why this something? Why not some other happier circumstance? Burning worlds.

Another poem.

Out of “this tumbleweed nowhere” now here. And ends in laughter, really is, this entry, “against despair.” This is the autobiographical piece, the memoir, writing worth the price of admission. The memoir piece where Wiman describes his father and sister living like Becket characters trapped in a Southern Gothic play, is the heart of the quilt. Wiman has already tried to dismiss Faulkner’s characters, yet here they are, living a Flannery O’Connor dream. Here Wiman is at his best when it comes to the writing. It’s an American quilt.

Another poem: hailstorm.

“I am tired of the word ‘despair,’” Wiman says on page 170. No kidding. Me too. And we three? Remember the speaker is not necessarily the author. We might keep that in mind when we’re hearing voices.

Another poem. More rats.

Writing in the sand. Could he write? “Against closure.”

“Who ever anywhere will read these written words” (Joyce).

Poem. Hamburger.

Assumptions and predispositions – toward despair? “Ouroboros.” Our boring into belief. Burrowing? Borrowing from?

All quotes. “Faith becomes an instrument.” A tool? A piano stool?

Sermon calling. “Was it your own idea or were you poorly advised?” Funny. Either or. “Who do you say I am?

25 more quotes. Quip qwop gnip gnop.

Poem.

Traces. A play. “What’s the point, then…” Yes, of reading anything at all, never mind writing. What’s the point of worrying over points?

Entropy. Loss of the big. Who cares about “poise?” At a time like this? At anytime. Well, we’ve got to attend to the niceties. We aren’t in our own living room. And what of the obsessive and the compulsive and the disorders? Will Jesus cure us of those too?

A poem about pain.

10 more quotes. What’s the point? Like Melville’s “Moby Dick.” He wanted to write a big book.

A four-line poem on unbelief?

A found poem, created by “delineating” a piece of prose. Ok. Mentions Meister Eckhart.

One’s personal Jesus. Love – what is it? A miracle. Agape. Mouth open. Prayer for, as opposed to prayer against. The universe more strange than we can even ever imagine. In which Wiman reconciles science (physics) with the spirit. Fragments of a big bang. Of course, since it was the only bang, how would one know if it was big or small? Doesn’t matter.

Wiman makes clear to be against despair is not necessarily to be for joy. His book is not a 7 habits of highly joyful people. But why can’t joy create consciousness as easily as despair? Is humanity an experiment in anhedonia?

“…want want.” Not, not. Knotty. “Woman With Tomato,” poem.

Poem. Family. “buoys”

Cancer and television. “Why must my mind…” I get that. “I’m not chipper…” And the children of war? Children and cancer in the war zones. Wiman teaches a class called “Suffering.” He’s had an overdose of it. But is there another class he might teach called “Joy”? But Wiman says suffering and joy are alike. It’s the same class, turns out. The cancer chair. And Eli Whitney. Job (The Book of) and poetry. Values. Joy over despair. “Of course, of course, of course.” This renders a lot of comments – put your hands down. “One considers the meaning of…” (I’m on page 277 if you want to follow along – in Entry 49.) Not quite true, otherwise placid, readers of this book may attest.

Comes to a sum, page 278. “…feeds in blood” (281).

And a final poem: Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

Coda: Zero again. Nothing, nothing.

Not a book for someone trying to stare down despair. There’s the personal, individual kind of suffering, the stuff of sitting in the cancer chair. There’s the universal, general kind of suffering – “the sole (soul) origin of consciousness.” And there’s the week work and war and worry that wears most of us weary.