The Fat Tax: An Idea Whose Time has Come

What bracket will you be in?
Picking up today's paper, I read that film director Kevin Smith was ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight because he was too fat to fit in his seat. Smith claims he had no trouble fitting in the seat--"I could buckle that seat belt"--and is now in a rage against the airline.

A few years back another overweight flier tried to sue an airline for making her buy an extra seat to accommodate her flab. The airline, she said, was discriminating against her because of her body shape.

All this raises the question: Should fatties have to buy an extra seat to fly?

My answer is simple: First, hell yes! And second, you ain't seen nothing yet.

In the same paper with the news bit on Smith was an editorial about the problems we Americans now face with our gargantuan budget deficit. Because of our unpaid-for two wars in the Middle East, and what with the government stimulus package and painful Wall Street bailout, we now face years of deficits in the trillions of dollars. How will we ever cover such huge expenses? I think, for a helping hand, we should look to huge Americans.

What I am proposing is very straightforward, a novel way of reforming the tax code. Until now, an individual's tax bracket was determined based on income. Starting next year, we should add a new and more effective criterion. We should determine a person's tax bracket based on his or her weight.

The fact is that we as a nation are way overweight. And we are now also deeply in debt. This is bad for our health and bad for our economic future. Take a stroll round the local shopping mall and you'll realize the merit of my plan. Hundreds of billions of dollars could be raised if we started taxing all those sagging bellies and elephantine hips. It's time all those man boobs cost a little. At least as much as breast implants.

My proposed tax would presumably be a hit with the couple now in the White House. Our president now faces more criticism for his ballooning budgets than for anything else on his agenda. And our First Lady has undertaken to fight obesity. Hmm. Isn't it true that a fat tax would be a way to solve both these problems at once? What's more, I think Michelle Obama would support my proposal even though, based on what I've seen, it may knock her into a higher bracket.

The fact is that if seriously overweight Americans were required to pay seriously higher taxes they might finally decide to get off those tens of millions of sofas and shake their booties a bit.

The question arises as to how this proposed tax reform would be implemented and enforced. How, in short, would we go about the business of assessing a given citizen's tax burden? I already have ideas on this.

You know how on highways you'll occasionally see signs that read "Weigh Station Ahead"? Those signs are for semi trucks of course. I suggest we open similar Weigh Stations for tax assessment purposes. (Though I do think there are people who may finally have to use the semi-truck weigh stations, given the poundage at issue.)

We could open up Weigh Stations in every town, and each year before tax day citizens would have to come in with their IDs and get weighed. First, the assessor on duty would measure the person's height, then the person would be required to walk over a long series of weight-sensitive tiles. I picture it like walking down a hallway, but in this case each section of the hallway is calibrated to buzz at a certain weight, the poundage decreasing as one walks.

And so, stepping off the yellow starting line, you step onto the first large tile. That first tile will only buzz if over 350 pounds is placed on it. So far so good. It didn't buzz. But the tile after that buzzes at 330 pounds, and the one after that at 310 pounds, and so on down to the lightest weight.

The further you make it down the hallway without setting off the red buzzer light, the lower your tax bracket and the less you'll have to pay. If however you set off one of those first few tiles-- Well, brother, looks like you'll be covering a hefty chunk of our national debt this year. Needless to say, you'll be encouraged to lower your tax bracket next time around.

I know the fast food and soft drink lobbies will fight tooth and nail to defeat my proposed reform. Nonetheless I'm looking to some of our thinner members of Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, to sponsor it. And like I say, I believe Obama will be behind it, so there's little chance of it getting vetoed.

In any case it is time Americans stopped whining about fiscal difficulties and started putting their money where their mouth is. Instead of stuffing that mouth with thick-crust pizzas and bag after bag of "diet cookies."

With a new fat tax, America's health care burden will shrink as obese folks realize they're paying too much to Uncle Sam and decide to cut calories. Admittedly there will probably be cases of citizens who try to perform lipposuction in their kitchens or who desperately amputate limbs in a last-ditch effort to lose poundage before Weigh Day. But such cases should be few and far between, and can be considered unfortunate casualties in what is a necessary policy of national austerity.

As for myself, my bracket will not be the lowest, that's for sure. I have a small belly problem, and I won't make it to the end of that hallway. But I'm willing to do my part for America. I'm willing to pay a little extra. And you? If you are not one of those shameless slobs we see lumbering through food courts, ice cream cone in hand, all across this Great Big Nation, you have every reason to give your support to this new proposed fat tax. Write your representatives today.

Director Kevin Smith is upset. Cry me a river.
Michelle will be paying a little extra too.
Yeah, you're laughing now.
Safety in numbers.
These gals will be a doing a swimsuit calendar to raise money.
"Lemme tell ya what I think of your proposal, Eric. . . ."

Daniil Kharms' Orchestra

I'll begin with a few of Kharms' texts:

BLUE NOTEBOOK #10

Once there lived a red-haired man who lacked eyes and ears. He was also lacking hair, so he was called red-haired only in a general sense.

He couldn't speak, as he was lacking a mouth. The same with his nose. Even arms and legs, he just didn't have any. Nor stomach, nor backside, nor spine. And no intestines. He didn't have anything! Therefore it is totally unclear who is being discussed.

It's better if we don't talk about him anymore.

* * *
EVENTS

Once Orlov overate on mashed peas and died. And Krylov, having found out about it, died too. And Spiridonov died of his own accord. And Spiridonov's wife fell off the cupboard and died too. And Spiridonov's children drowned in the pond. And Spiridonov's grandmother took to drink and went off panhandling. And Mikhailov stopped combing and got sick with dandruff. And Kruglov drew a lady with a whip and lost his mind. And Perehrestov was wired 400 roubles and started acting with such self-importance that he got fired from his job.

All decent people, but they don't know how to keep a firm footing.

* * *
PRAYER BEFORE SLEEP
March 28, 1931 at 7 o'clock
in the Evening

Lord, smack in the middle of the day
a laziness came over me.
Permit me to lie down and go to sleep, Lord,
and while I sleep, oh Lord, pump me full of Your Strength.
There is much I wish to know
but neither books nor people will tell me.
Only You can enlighten me, Lord,
by way of my poems.
Wake me up strong for the battle with meanings
and quick to the governance of words
and assiduous in praising the name of God
for all time.

* * *
SYMPHONY #2

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said "ech," spat again, said "ech" again, spat again, said "ech" again and left. To hell with him. Instead let me tell you about Ilya Pavlovich.

Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a boy, they moved to St. Petersburg, and there he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did something else; and when the Revolution began, he emigrated. Well, to hell with him. Instead, let me tell you about Anna Ignatievna.

But it's not so easy to tell about Anna Ignatievna. First, I know almost nothing about her, and second, I've just fallen off my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to say. So let me instead tell about myself.

I am tall, fairly intelligent, and dress prudently and tastefully. I don't drink, I don't bet on horses, but I like the ladies. And the ladies don't mind me. They like it when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has invited me home several times, and Zinaida Yakovlevna also said that she was always glad to see me. But I was involved in a strange incident with Marina Petrovna, which I would like to tell about. A quite ordinary thing, but rather amusing. Because of me, Marina Petrovna lost all her hair, became bald as a baby's bottom. It happened like this: Once I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

* * *
SOMETHING ABOUT PUSHKIN

It's hard to say something about Pushkin to a person who doesn't know anything about him. Pushkin is a great poet. Napoleon is not as great as Pushkin. Bismarck compared to Pushkin is a nobody. And the Alexanders, First, Second and Third, are just little kids compared to Pushkin. In fact, compared to Pushkin, all people are little kids, except Gogol. Compared to him, Pushkin is a little kid.

And so, instead of writing about Pushkin, I would rather write about Gogol.

Although, Gogol is so great that not a thing can be written about him, so I'll write about Pushkin after all.

Yet, after Gogol, it's a shame to have to write about Pushkin. But you can't write anything about Gogol. So I'd rather not write anything about anyone.

* * *
Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was one of the key members of the Russian avant-garde literary collective OBERIU, Union of Real Art. Kharms’ work cannot really be classed as surrealist, and Matvei Yankelevich, the most dedicated Kharms scholar working in English, argues that the frequently used epithet “absurdist” is not accurate either. How then to characterize these texts?

Kharms is working at the kind of destructive narrative techniques one finds in another writer in my personal canon: the master French prose poet Max Jacob.

One might also note, from the above, that Kharms was a believer, again like Jacob. The “Prayer before Sleep” is heartfelt, and the line Only you can enlighten me, Lord, / by way of my poems reveals how Kharms understood poetics as it relates to faith or revelation. Kharms considered his work a channel of grace; a quest, through his creative/destructive poetics, for enlightenment.

“Blue Notebook #10” is frequently quoted in introductions to Kharms. When I first read this text, it reminded me of Lichtenberg’s famous paradox: “A knife without a blade, from which the handle is missing.” Kharms was fluent in German and knew German literature well (Gustav Meyrink’s uncanny novel
The Golem was one of his favorite books). Was #10 written in response to Lichtenberg?

“Symphony #2” is of particular interest. It's the most brilliantly orchestrated piece of non sequitur I know of. Kharms moves from an unknown old man hacking, to the dryness of an encyclopedia entry, to self-ridiculing slapstick, to what starts to shape up as something approaching the erotic, but finally collapses in a totally shameful, ridiculous, utterly deadpan blast of absurdity--an anticlimax that couldn't be improved on. I say the progression here is orchestrated, and it is: thus the aptness of the title "Symphony." In a sizable handful of texts, Kharms, like Max Jacob, is above all a consummate conductor.

Both Kharms and Jacob died as victims of the extremist ideologies of the mid-century: Kharms in 1942 of starvation in a Soviet mental hospital; Jacob in 1944 of pneumonia while awaiting transfer to a Nazi concentration camp. Both writers practiced an art of intractable ambiguity, though Jacob, it is true, was victimized for being Jewish rather than for his playfully Cubist texts.

Kharms is best read in Matvei Yankelevich’s collection
Today I Wrote Nothing. I offer two of the pieces quoted above (the prayer and “Something about Pushkin”) in Yankelevich’s translation. The book has been widely praised for giving English readers access to this important voice in Russia’s literature. It is only in the recent couple decades that the Russians themselves have rediscovered Kharms’ work. In his introduction, Yankelevich explains how close the manuscripts came to being lost forever. We are lucky to have them.

The Gospel of Thom Smit

I.-- Once upon a time was the Word. And the Word was without form, and void.

In short, the Word was many words, and sometimes even things.

One could not tell the difference in any place, for all words and things were different; they were all different from each other, and they were even more different from the Word. And the Word, in its turn, was different according to whom you asked, and in what words you asked.

What's more, all was such that one could not fix one's eyes on any thing, or fix one's ears on any word, and expect it even to stay the same as itself.

In short, all words were different from themselves, and all things were different from any words, and also from each other, and also from themselves.

Even one's eyes were different, the left one from the right, and either eye was certainly different, very different, from either ear; and the ears protruded from each side of the head: in short, they were very different.

Then Thom Smit was born.

II.-- And Thom Smit did grow to be a youth of fourteen years, and his virtue did show forth in many ways.

And the people were astonished by his words, for he spoke as one with wisdom, and not as one who watched TV.

Said he: "Just as our elders, weakened by years of compromise, submit to the presence of those they loathe, so do our melons soak the fouled waters of the plain, till they poison both themselves and those that partake of them."

And: "Submit not to both these poisons. Though you eat the melons to the skin, yet leave the elders to chew their own bitter rinds."

And Thom Smit did take ceramics class at the Pottery Barn of the strip mall as you drive into town from Monona.

And he did throw him many a mean pot. And he did paint upon his pots designs and symbols, and the people did look at what he painted, and did say, "What hath this youth?"

For they said: "This youth is not like others, but hath him a perversion of the head."

And the owner of the Pottery Barn in those days was named Chuck, and Chuck did keep the pots of Thom Smit in the back, lest other youths should see them, and lest they should speak of them unto their parents. For on the pots were many things that youths should not see.

And some of Thom Smit's pots did the owner break outright, pretending they had cracked in the kiln. "For this one," sayeth Chuck unto his assistant, "this one is surely too much; I will not even fire this one."

And Thom Smit did suspect Chuck of thus breaking his pots, and spoke sorely unto him.

And Thom Smit did take him a can of maroon glaze, and did pour it into the drawer of Chuck's desk.

And the can was a large can, and did foul the books and papers in that desk, dripping even unto the floor.

And Thom Smit did break seventeen ceramic owls made by the ladies of St. James Lutheran. And Chuck did see him do it, and did hear him speak bitter words as he did it.

And Thom Smit was no longer welcome at the Pottery Barn, but did take up tennis.

Said he: "Our world is all preprocessed, and full of fakes; fakes upon fakes. The boredom of Formica covers all things here, even unto death."

And all of these things were when Thom Smit was still but a youth of fourteen years.

III.-- And it came to pass as Thom Smit was a young man that he went forth like many of his generation to work as a barista.

And this work was as he was a student at the university in the town of Madison; and the cafe in the which he did work was near upon the university, and was often filled with people.

And the people of the cafe were of many sorts.

And Thom Smit did work next to the scribe of that place, and he did serve forth the drinks unto the people.

And the prophet of that place in those days was named Cosmo di Madison. And Cosmo di Madison did preach the word of the Lord unto the people there. But the people heeded him not.

And Cosmo di Madison did resent the presence of Thom Smit at the espresso machine, and did make him out to be a servant of Belial.

And Cosmo di Madison complained sorely to the scribe of that place, and spoke many bitter words.

And the scribe of that place recorded the words of Cosmo di Madison, for in those days did he note down all his words.

And it came to pass when Thom Smit heard the words against him, that he did say unto Comso di Madison, and he said it unto his face: "A prophet art thou not, but art rather a paranoid schizophrenic."

And: "The symptoms are obvious upon you, O Cosmo di Madison, and all do know it. Thou art one who barkest at the moon. Woof woof!"

And Cosmo di Madison did not suffer the words of Thom Smit in silence, but did rail against him to all that would hear.

And Cosmo di Madison would drink no drink made by his hands, but did speak of such drinks as having a poison in them.

And one day Thom Smit did say unto Cosmo di Madison: "Today it seemeth you have not taken your medicine, O great prophet, and so it is that you speak forth loudly your prophecies, and the people heed you not."

And: "Today I have a hangover, O prophet, and care not to hear you. So get you hence through the door, or pay for your coffee like the others. If you cannot pay, so must you go hence to the street. For today I have a hangover, O prophet, and care not to hear your prophecies."

And upon hearing these words a rage did come upon Cosmo di Madison, and he did complain ever more sorely of Thom Smit, and did attribute to him many conspiracies and sundry larcenies.

And the scribe did write down all his words, for in those days did he write down all the words that the prophet did say.

IV.-- From the Scribe's Journals:

Thom Smit--to think he is a student of engineering! He's blond and small, of muscular build. He's a great reader of Gilles Deleuze, and considers himself a Nietzschean. It's lucky for me he's at the cafe. He's proving an excellent foil for Cosmo di Madison. I've recently got him reading Rabelais. --May, 1992

Cosmo di Madison now recognizes in Thom Smit a nemesis worthy of the swiftest action. That I'm responsible for his being hired at the cafe is generally known, and I confess it openly. I should have seen the man's character for what it was. Needless to say, Cosmo di Madison has forgiven this lapse on my part, pointing out that Pseudo-Sergeant Major Smit is obviously a professional and had been trained by Kissinger's people specifically to pull the wool over my eyes. Cosmo di Madison himself was almost taken in. "At first I thought he was just a loser like all the other losers. But it's worse than that. He's a fucking impostor--ya hear me?" --July, 1992

Remarks of Cosmo di Madison on Thom Smit:

1. "That useless fucking bastard calls himself a fucking lieutenant major, but he's just a fucking high school dropout drug addict who couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the ground if his life depended on it."

2. "How many customers do you think that fucking punk is gonna short change before Mark [the owner] wises up and fires him?"

3. "You know he's got his finger in the till and he's supplying all the barbiturates to Craig and Monkey Butt. Kissinger's got him working the joint to make sure they do their job and try to drug me every fucking chance they get. I wasn't born yesterday what do you think! Pssh! That fucking Craig has been selling the barbiturates on the side too.... Oh, don't act so surprised! You know it goes on."

4. "Mark needs to spend more time in his shop. I got enough stuff to do keeping the customers clean. If Kissinger buys out your staff, this place is finished, ya hear me? I won't come back. Ya hear me? You just see what'll go down then. Mark will wish he never even heard of this town. Ya hear me?"

V.-- And soon after these things had come to pass, behold it did happen that the spirit of the Lord came upon Thom Smit, and he began to speak in parables.

And all at the cafe did wonder upon it, and did say, "What hath Thom Smit, that he speakest thusly?"

And he did leave his work at the cafe, and ceased from his study at the university.

And Thom Smit went forth to preach unto the people like Cosmo di Madison, for the spirit of the Lord had moved him.

And Thom Smit did wander the streets on the west side of Madison, whereas Cosmo di Madison did preach in the downtown.

And Thom Smit preached the word unto the people of the west side, as you head out of town toward Monona. And the people heeded him not.

And thus it was that the people said amongst themselves: "Is Thom Smit also one of the prophets?" And these words are as a proverb even unto this day.

VI.-- And Thom Smit built his house on sandy ground, and sowed his seed upon the rocky wayside, and combed his hair with a goblet.

And he took a fox for a mango, and made of it a hairy puree.

And many did laugh at him, and said: "Thom Smit does not know his ass from a hole in the ground."

And they said: "Thom Smit could not find his ass with both hands."

But verily it was said unto them, and it was said by Thom Smit: "A day shall come to pass when none shall be able to tell their ass from a hole in the ground. And then shall a great wailing be heard."

And he said: "Only those who from the very beginning could not tell their asses from holes in the ground--only such as these shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven. All others shall be cast out, and their asses shall be grass, and they will know not if they have been turned into a golf course, or what. Boy, will there be wailing then."

And he said: "Those who mistake their asses for a wheelbarrow shall inherit the earth."

And he said: "Blessed are they who try to catch flies in their mouth. Blessed are they who would rather hang out in a juice bar than flay the fox with the big boys."

And he said: "My father is a colonel and I am a sergeant major. My father could thrash all your male relatives with his left hand if he wanted. My father has forty-seven Cadillacs."

But the people heard him not, and they sent him packing from their patio parties; and their daughters did tend to throw garbage at the back of his head.

But verily, reader, can you tell your ass from a hole in the ground even now?

E.M.

NB: Written in 1993 or so, and published in Heretic Days. Cosmo di Madison, whose real name was Robert Hicks, was a well-known charismatic in Madison, Wisconsin, from the 1980s until his mysterious death in 2008. Thom Smit was, like myself, a student and barista in one of Madison's busiest downtown cafes in the early 1990s. "Monkey Butt" was, if I remember correctly, one Dean Estrada, and worked at the cafe with us and "Craig", Craig Kilander (sp?). Further matter on the Great Cosmo di Madison here: Gospels from the Last Man

Gudding's Bestiary

I first encountered Gabriel Gudding's hair-raising work not six months ago in David Lehman's anthology Great American Prose Poems. Lehman included Gudding's stately, footnoted tirade "A Defense of Poetry," in which the poet unleashes what I now know to be very Guddingesque gambits: no-nonsense direct address, Rabelaisian bodily humor; a subtle, defamiliarizing mix of verbal registers, animals, and more animals. It's fair to say this last struck me most. My own writing tends toward animal tropes and fables.

After reading the piece in Lehman's anthology, I had to place an order to Amazon to get Gudding's first book, which I read and reread while waiting for his second book to arrive, his 436-page road poem entitled Rhode Island Notebook. Written between 2002 and 2004, Notebook records the writer's musings as he drove back and forth between his wife and daughter's residence in Rhode Island and his own residence in Normal, Illinois. It's a journal of sorts, written by a brilliant poet working to keep a long-distance marriage together and struggling in particular to stay close to his young daughter even as the marriage finally fails. There's much agonistic battling of heartbreak in its pages, but there is also, all along, a preternatural poetic verve, a new kind of American beauty that is both virile and playful. I've read nothing like it for years. As writer and humane observer of himself and others, Gudding has accomplished something I wouldn't have believed possible: he's written a long poem that is, through most of it, unputdownable.

Aside from the many themes the poet delves into (dung, the life of rivers, the Iraq war, alcohol, American history) Gudding also displays his penchant for animals. There is in effect a kind of Gudding bestiary one can construe across his two books. Rhode Island Notebook contains one of his many poetic epistles to animals, this time a letter to the whole huddling lot of them:

DEAR ANIMALS

Many of you do not have breasts. This is
undeniable. I think immediately of amphibia,
the reptilians, birds--none of these possess
breasts nor anything upon which a nipple may
be mounted. I for instance have no fur.

. . . Though you and I
have very little in common, and I find your
bodies disturbing, I must say that despite your
biological distance from me, you and I ought
perhaps to have some coffee, should you drink
it--or possess a mouth.

What's more, I know that many of your penises
are odd, your vaginas strange, and your
faces long, flat or otherwise with horns. I
notice none of you wear watches, whereas I
gain distinct pleasure from a new watch . . . .
This is a totally human delight. Yet you must
have your own delights, like honking in a pond
or looking at your hooves for hours.

Sincerely,
Gabriel Gudding

The flatness and wonder are characteristic of many of Gudding's most unsettling and effective passages. Elsewhere we find gnomic evocations like the following:

The chicken will never be let into
the European union because
it is not only impoverished, it is also not a
European country it is a chicken (47)

Butterflies are the bowties of fairies. (69)

Spiders are held together by very small tendons. (55)

I took the pig's shadow and made a
suit of it. The suit smelled of ham
and slop. A suit of ham shadow. (69)

A substantial portion of a cat's energy
goes into the production of fur.

The mentality of the housecat is principally that
of a decentralized bureaucrat, she is a loose soft
clerk who has lost the hallways. The groin
is full of leaks. (47)

A chicken is a chain of meat and bone
and a two-watt brain. (48)

There was no summer because the memo
ordering it was swallowed by the Gar. Stella
should not have. Who but the fish
can fully know worrisome lilies. (122)

I did not understand the dog, I think
that is why it bit me. (121)

A dog at heart is made of dust
and dust is wind that's mad (122)

There is the long sequence on "meat bees" which begins on page 123 and is woven into the next dozen pages:

Just crossed the Hudson. It is
caked w/ ice floes. Very deep
snow along hwy

A mammoth cloud is strapped to a bee
who tows it down to make
a slow fog. The meat of
a bee is weak and tastes of egg.

Meat bees are few in the
winters around Birmingham. Yet
here they fly, like flecks & bolts
of squeaking mutton.

. . .

Bees come from a
land of Clocks.

. . .

The face of the puppy was a
bumpy bacon. Yet we did not
skin the dog for its face. Instead we
sought to catch and flay the meated bee.

The beefy bee was like an large airborne pill
but w/ a coating of meat that made it
juicy.

. . .

If I do so drive my rubber car
through the winds and plains of night
It is for to hunt the bee
and bring my family food.
Illinois State Line 9:52 PM CST
1012 M
But I do so for the sake of Merica,
to quieten its cloying huzzing.

A bee is a pill between wings.

I am like Cordelia who remaineth
quiet. But the bee is not. The
bumblebee reminds America
of the internal combustion engine
--and therefore all bees
must be suppressed:
bee meat is loud. (123-133)

There are the 70-mph drive-by observations:

Intricate nest of dogs and heavy cats
on hillside
garnished in a fluttering of Ducks.(69)

There are many hawks observed as Gudding covers his thousands of miles, many flocks of geese, and two sequences around the eagle, the first beginning:

We burned the eagle w/ Petroleum, pumpin
2 bullets into its tiny knees. We took a
nutcracker to its beak. (32)

I quote these animal passages only because they continue what is for me one of the most interesting strands in Gudding's work: his ongoing poetic adjudication of the oddness of animals and the oddness of our sameness/difference from them. Much of the poet's writing on animals is rough and tumble, but there is fellow feeling: a recognition of the importance of animals to any assessment of our own place in the world.

There's much else in Rhode Island Notebook to slap one awake besides the fragmentary bestiary. Gudding's poetics has in huge measure just the things I most value in literature. Foremost, he has a strong sense of the complex relations of literary humor to both suffering and healing. This is a theoretical or philosophical insight which, for Gudding, is of a piece with his practice as poet. The humor he deploys is not that of the aloof satirist, but rather that of the clown--a clown whose understanding and suffering lead to laughter and who laughs in order to further understand, and perhaps be healed.

Gudding's theory of humor has many antecedents, but I'm guessing one of the more important ones is Rabelais (a writer who, besides, is alluded to in Notebook), particularly in those aspects Bakhtin underlined in his writing on medieval laughter and the carnivalesque.

The poet also has a keen awareness of defamiliarization as one of the essential functions of literary language: namely that literature exists to break the frozen perception of things by exposing it as merely conventional. Literature reawakens the strangeness of all those things we'd come to take for granted. In one interview he puts it thus:

The purpose isn’t to be strange for the sake of strangeness. The point is to slow down the perception of the reader, so that the reader is not experiencing the poem automatically. Once our perceptual habits become automatic, we’ve dampened our innate capacity for wonder. So, one enstranges language not to put on a gratuitous display, but to allow again for wonder, to make, as Shklovsky says, “the stone stony again.”

All poets employ defamiliarization to different degrees: strong rhetoric is often a matter of effective defamiliarizing. Strictly speaking, one may say that tropes do double service: in service to the poetic, they defamiliarize; in service to ideology, they are agents of familiarization. It would be interesting, I think, to study Gudding's own arsenal of defamiliarizing moves and to compare them with the similar/different techniques of his contemporaries. There's something in Gudding that stands apart, and it seems to me that this difference is in the way his work defamiliarizes.

Finally, Rhode Island Notebook shows a poet ever aware of how language is used to hoodwink the gullible--aware especially of how depressingly effective official rhetoric is. Part of Gudding's work, then, is ideology critique, and in this vein his essay on dung is a masterpiece, a concise American rejoinder to the psycho-corporal economics of Freud and Bataille. Gudding pinpoints the "prissy" right there in the heart of what many compatriots take to be the most manly segment of the population: the red-state South. In this he is certainly correct. A central point in this road journal is that America is no longer so much the home of the brave as the echo-chamber of the fearful: security obsessed, isolated, prissily afraid both of the other and of its own private dung.

Alan Sondheim has called Rhode Island Notebook "the first 21st century classic." Sondheim also underlines what the book is not: "What could have been an experiment in conceptual writing has emerged into an exhilaration that makes me glad I'm still alive." This is apt. Gabriel Gudding's theoretical sophistication hasn't kept him from writing a brave and hilarious and readable book.

Rhode Island Notebook is published by the Dalkey Archive Press, the same folks who bring us Flann O'Brien.

Check Rhode Island Notebook book at Amazon.com

Links of interest:

"On Kindness and Hipness as They Relate to Cultural Production":

ttp://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue09/gudding.htm

The above-quoted interview on poetry and creative writing:

http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/2009/08/mipoesias-interview-on-creative-writing.html

Gudding takes part in a roundtable discussion on humor in poetry:

http://jacketmagazine.com/33/humpo-discussion.shtml

Some of my teen students in Taipei try their hand at Guddingesque defense:

11/2009

Happy New Year 2o10

In 3 hours Taipei 101
will ignite As yet mankind's
tallest monument to Business Savvy
and our defeat of Gravity

In 3 hours the building
an oversized Flashbulb
will go off And our rough
Anno Domini 2009
will be laid to rest
with 2008 of the others
some dismal some blessed

Already 10 years of this shit century We'll
eat ourselves into the ground
before the next

Homo sapiens sapiens
We are

Hardly sapiential
Knowing only how to grasp at colorful things
And put them in our Mouths

Mouths serve us to speak
Not even 1 percent inspired speech

99-plus percent planning
Arranging for Input

Of more colorful
things Baubles
To put in our Mouths

Down into the Gullet
of Dust we go
a paroxysm of Cannibalism
Soon 20 billion of us
Fossilized white and brown
Fossilized in the soil
whence we came

End Fruit of Enlightenment Man's
Hope, of Communist Man
Free-Market Man
Blubbering Family Values Man

All buried under a Toys 'R Us
Apt garish mausoleum
for Homo puerilis americanus
Homo invictus sinicus
Homo sick sad ape
Too smart for its own good

Mortar fire between Two Rivers
Mortified Francis Fukuyama
And all the Apologists
of Walmart

To bury Gobekli Tepe
That was a piece of Wisdom
9,000 B.C. too late
already for a reprieve too late
for the mash-up material being
Man

From dust having come
To ashes returned
A poison wind rakes over
The dead steppes of Asia

10 years into our last Mad Dash
A final spate of Happy Meals
Screaming baboon Imperial
machinations
Soundbite justifications
We grasp at the last colorful things
To stuff in the last Mouths

Idiotic Story Contest

This is an idiotic story contest. The rules for entering are as follows:

1) Your story must be in English.

2) Your story must contain no more than 350 words.

3) Your story should be idiotic enough to make the average reader wince at how stupid it is.

Of course I'd love to get stories written by actual idiots. This, let it be said, is my ideal. What I'll probably get, however, are stories of feigned idiocy, or discovered idiocy, or exploratory idiocy--all of which have their literary/philosophical merits.

Given the length of the tales at issue, it's in some sense a matter of "Postcard Fiction" or "Postcard Stories." And since many of the best postcard stories already have a certain idiocy to them, I'm hoping to hear from some of the usual practitioners.

The prose poem is also a genre productive of much brilliant foolishness, and prose poems in narrative mode are of course very welcome. The border between "prose poem" and "postcard story" is well beyond porous in any case.

When I've received one hundred texts idiotic enough to enter the contest, the contest will be over and I will take suggestions for methods of choosing winners. If methods are not forthcoming from contestants, I'll just have to pick some of the idiots I know to help judge the tales.

Finally I'd like to publish an anthology. A tentative title might be Cretinous Tales. Any of you morons have a better idea?

So send me a tale or two yourself and forward this URL to any writers (or idiots) you know. Those who enter the contest recognize that if their stories are accepted they will be put directly on this web page. Writers retain copyright to their work, but the tales will be available online at least until the contest is closed and the anthology is pending.

Sincerely,

Eric Mader

For now I post three of my own tales, in ascending idiocy from first to third. I will arrange submissions on this page alphabetically by writer's name as I receive them. Send to:

inthemargins03@hotmail.com
CRETINOUS TALES
LEFKOWITZ

Jason Lefkowitz had a habit of opening his mouth in any old place and launching into a story even when he had no story to tell. This often caused embarrassment or misunderstanding. Cashiers would interrupt him, “Excuse me, sir, but there are other customers in line,” taxi drivers would say “It’s your penny” and keep driving, and once on business in Edinburgh he was beaten pretty badly outside a pub by a gang of football fans who spat and said, “Fucking poof! Fucking chatty poof!”

Jason’s stories would usually begin earnestly enough. A pleading look in the eye, he’d touch his chosen listener on the arm and begin to narrate in a soft voice: “Once there was a locksmith who’d always dreamt of. . .” or “It happened in the days of Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain. . .” or “It had been three years since she’d last seen Rick.”

But since Jason normally began his stories with no notion of where they were heading, the tale would soon drift into irrelevance or anachronism, each tale becoming a different tale as he told it, and his surprised listener becoming embarrassed or frustrated, the look on his or her face saying clearly: “What’s going on here? What do you want from me?”

It went on like this for a number of years. Jason’s repertoire of stories became no larger because from the beginning he’d never known any single, unified story, nor had he ever sought to construct one. His compulsion was simply the act of narration itself. In this he was like a carpenter who wielded tools on the lumber he was given without any plan to build anything, but simply in order to exercise the use of one tool after another. What would such a carpenter end up with after a day’s work?

Nothing that would stand; nothing that could fall.

E.M.
* * *

HUNTER

Ah, the Black Peruvian Rose! In all the world only one living example remaining! Ever since Hunter had first seen it in a photograph--he was thirteen, paging through a magazine while his mother tried on boots--he’d dreamt of one day setting off in search of this rarest of botanical wonders, of journeys through distant lands in quest of those soft petals of perfect singularity. And so his destiny was decided in the corner of one posh London boot dealer. Hunter would become a world explorer!

How many years struggling over the wilds of Peruvia! How many nights camped on ice-covered passes, the bitter Andean winds blowing through the tent flaps!

The Indians laughed at him, everywhere he went they overcharged him for alcohol. The experts too did what they could to discourage him. Many said the last Black Peruvian Rose wasn’t to be found in Peruvia at all, but in Chile. Others said it was in Ecuador or Colombia. Still others said Peruvia wasn’t the country’s proper name: the place he was in was called Peru. Hunter paid them no mind; he kept up his quest. All along he knew that the last living Black Peruvian Rose was in a private hot house on Chicago’s north side. But even this didn’t deter him. The adventure stories he gained as an explorer helped him with the chicks.

Hunter kept up his quest, his only companion a llama blind in one eye. The Rose finally died in its pot. Discovery Channel is doing a documentary.

E.M.* * *

WOLF-DOG

This story happened 350 years ago in Boston. There was a dog that lived in a rich lawyer’s house. The dog’s father was a dog, but his mother was a wolf. He was a wolf-dog.

The maids in that lawyer’s house were very strict. They would never let the dog go up on the furniture. All the dog smelled every day was sexual repression and intolerance for other viewpoints.

But the lawyer was good to the dog. The dog trusted the lawyer the most because he was good to him.

Then the lawyer went west for the Big Gold Rush. He trained the dog to pull his covered wagon and they headed out over the plains. The Indians attacked them, but the dog killed all the Indians except two.

In California the lawyer found a huge vein of gold and became very rich. Those were days when great fortunes were made. The dog pulled the wagons of gold for the lawyer. But one day at night the dog heard the wolves howl in the forest. So he escaped to join them. Finally he had found his true brothers.

The wolves taught the dog to kill men and to use a rifle. The dog killed many men with them, and they were bloodthirsty together. Many years passed.

Then one day they came upon the lawyer in the forest. He was old now and walking with a long golden cane. The wolves were ready to kill him, and they said to the dog, “Let’s go,” but the dog was confused in his heart, he didn’t know what to do.

When the wolves sensed the dog’s hesitation, their bloodthirsty nature came out. They turned on the dog and tore him apart with their jaws. They killed him that way. It was just like with Actaeon.

E.M.

Idiotic Like Gabriel Gudding

(CLICK to enlarge. From left: "the three Jennys"--Jenny Huang, Jenny Chen, Jenny Lin; Shirley, Sabrina, Jerry, Yoyo, Michelle, William, May, Yvonne, Lillian; absent: Schani, Daphne, Sherry, Ariel)

In my almost fifteen years teaching English in Taipei, I've had maybe three classes stand out for creative enthusiasm. One I began my first year here, and the students and I ended up writing a short teen vampire novel together. I'm teaching another of these gifted classes now at the Zephyr English Institute, under the course title Creative Mythology.

The class is around a dozen preteens and teens, meeting once a week for two hours after school. We've been working mainly on reading Greek myth and writing in response to it. Sometimes however I break into something else. Two weeks ago I took the perilous decision to teach them Gabriel Gudding's brilliantly crackbrained poem "A Defense of Poetry." The poem begins like this:

1. The lake trout is not a furious animal, for which I apologize that you have the mental capacity of the Anchovy.

2. Yes the greatest of your sister's facial pimples did outweigh a Turkey.

3. I was eating Vulture Beast Cream, I was eating Lippy Dung Corn, and I said "Your ugly dog is very ugly," for he is.

4. And that is when I turned and a snowflake banged into my eye like a rusty barge and I killed your gloomy dog with a mitten.

5. For I have bombed your cat and stabbed it. For I am the ambassador of this wheelbarrow and you are the janitor of a dandelion. Indeed, you are a teacher of great chickens, for you are from the town of Fat Blastoroma, O tawdry realtor. For I have clapped your dillywong in a sizeable door.

Recently we've been working through an English version of the Odyssey. After Odysseus' men barbecued Hyperion's cattle, I decided to take a break from Homer and introduce Gudding's American poem. Since the kids know English as a second language, before reading Gudding I had to teach them the new vocabulary they'd find (in these first stanzas, for instance, they probably wouldn't know capacity, anchovy, outweigh, barge, dandelion). I left dillywong undefined.

The kids' English is good enough that we had a riotous time of it. I admit we didn't read Gudding's footnotes and skipped some of the stanzas. At the end of the second class, I surprised them by collecting all their copies of the text, leaving them only the vocabulary sheets and a printout of the first few stanzas. "Why are you taking the poem away?" they wondered. It was because I didn't want them to copy Gudding too closely. I handed out an opening they were to use in writing their own "Defenses of Poetry":

A DEFENSE OF POETRY

by ___________
1. Since your name is _________ and since your ________ is/are like the _____ of/on the _____________, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the _____________

The students were to take it from there, trying to use the new vocabulary they'd learned. Follows some of their work. Many decided to address the class clown, Jerry. Two of them addressed countries (Myanmar, China). The first poem, by Shirley, is addressed to me:


SHIRLEY'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Eric and since your mental capacity is like the dung of a janitor, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the most foolish teacher in this school. We are the pompous students, you are the powdered trout. We are the rusty mitten.

3. You look like a buffalo trying to stab a wheelbarrow.

4. You yap like a feces from the stork, and never think about your disjointed nose. You puke like a pimple, and seldom think about your outsized anchovy.

5. You wear frosting on your head, and eat earwax like a barf bag. You wear sequins on your feet, and sleep on the roadblock.

6. You dream of lassoing Sherlock and Watson, but keep toting Prufrock from your buttock.

7. Upon occasion you argue with Jessica like an airliner in flame-out.

8. Finally your realtor tells you: you will be decapitated with a dandelion.


WILLIAM'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Buffalo, and since your features are like the roses on the feces, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the president of the wheelchair and the sweeper of a sunflower.

3. The salmon is not a pompous animal, for which I apologize that you have a tote bag full of dung.

4. Yes the greatest of your brother's earwax pieces did outweigh an elephant.

5. For I have punched your airliner and burned it.

6. For I am the administrator of that flintlock and you are the chairman of the bowels.

7. Indeed you are the office holder of the barg bag.


JENNY HUANG'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Myanmar and since your face is like the reflector of the moon, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the worker with the bell, and I'm the president with an artificial tooth. You have to lasso the stork since you're a tawdry salesman.

3. If you're a conductor of ducks, I'm the monarch of fishes. People will become crows small as ants.

4. Having no feet, they fly and fly, covering the sky. Having no feet, they cannot rest.

5. The whale planet is drowning in water. The geyser spouts trash, trout, anchovies, dung, wheelbarrows, barges and dandelions higher and higher everywhere.

6. Tens of thousands of crows fall from the sky like rain.

7. The crows really need barf bags in which to die, some earwax to avert going deaf, some frosting to cover their eyes.

8. What a nauseating and beautiful world!


MAY'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Jerry and since your garden is like the sequins on a barf bag, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the pompous pimple, and I will stab you with a rusty knife. Even if you outweigh an airliner, it is still a piece of cake to me.

3. For your earwax piles higher than a giraffe, and an army of janitors would be angry to have to clean it. They know hundreds of wheelbarrows would still not be enough.


YVONNE'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Jerry and since your mental capacity is like the anchovy on an old pizza, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are a stork with rusty bowels. I'd be surprised if the realtors would lend you a wheelbarrow to leave.

3. I write just one syllable for you, beginning with sh and ending in t, and the letter between is not o.

4. But that will have no effect on your pompous peristalsis, to stop which the janitor put a mitten in your fundament.

5. The yapping dog cooks you a pimple.

6. Because the barge has been stabbed by my ambassador, because the buffalo has lassoed your buttock, I give you a barf bag full of powered earwax.

7. At the roadblock you are stopped by a flintlock covered in sequins. They cover you with frosting and decapitate you.


SABRINA'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Sejaisc and since your buttocks are like the side view of a sick bag, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. You are going to get trouble if you keep babbling, and you'll get double trouble if you play with the barbel.

3. When you stop making trouble, you'll be able to get a bubble made with barbule. Hey, stop chewing bubblegum and playing Barbie!

4. For you are a pompous pimple, I will squeeze you every time: juicy bao zi.

5. The pork-flavored Pocky in your pocket makes you look so porky.

6. The door to the restroom holds mold. To beat the boss, flap him to Oz.

7. I overlook your Mediterranean and your toro belly, but look over your purse and pocket. Never-ending love deer, four kids and Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

8. A Whomping Willow lassos pupils to play Wii with it in the Forbidden Forest where crazy things grow.


JOSEPH'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Jerry and since your ears are like the caves on the mountain, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For your are the monkey. I'll kick your ice cream to sweeten my shoes. Then Eric will fall in love with me, for he has a sweet tooth.

3. After that, monkey, go away. Go to the farm and have your pumpkin pie. The pumpkin pie you prefer has bugs in it.

4. Jerry is the stupidest man in this world, singing and playing with his bug pumpkin pie. He takes the bugs into his cave with him, a big happy family.

5. Jerry makes the dandelions achy. Stabbing dung is his favorite pastime. He dreams of toting dung as a career. Anything to make him tawdry.

6. The buffalo is very pompous, proud of its peristalsis. On its skin a lot of sequins, but the sequins will rust. So the buffalo hires a janitor to clean its sequins.

7. Sometimes the buffalo is crazy. Sherlock takes a flintlock to shoot it.


MICHELLE'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is China and since you behave like a gangster soaked in blood, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you think you are the legal master of Taiwan. According to you, Taiwan is not a country but a piece of your territory. You will always be averse to those who say otherwise.

3. Nonetheless, though you can't bear that Taiwan is disjointed. Sorry to say, but for God's reasons Taiwan is not any part of your body--especially not your buttock!

4. Didn't you know that not just Taiwan but all the countries of the world are fed up with you? For your black products and “three deer” milk are nothing but poison. Food made from earwax, clothes from which the sequins fall a week after they're bought . . . Maybe we should just load up a fleet of barges with all the goods Made in China and ship them right back to you.

5. I know you've never needed any ambassador. Because you prefer weapons to long talks. But now you have one, right here in Taiwan! For a long time you were yapping like a dog to no effect, but now thing's are different.

6. Yes, Mr. Ma Ying-“Joke” is your ambassador. Huh? Didn't you know most people in Taiwan and the world think Ma is a joke? Perhaps your mental capacity is not up to understanding this. In this respect, in understanding, we are more fortunate.

7. But one thing you're right about--Ma is really the President of Taiwan. He's like a king actually. So he can do what he wants. But it won't be long before the Taiwanese punch Ma. It'll happen before you have Taiwan in your pocket. You are bigger, it's true, but we will protect our country. Because no one wants to be your bowels, or your little pimple, or any other part of your poisoned body.


DAPHNE'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Vivian and since your legs are like the legs on a stork, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the realtor whose pimples outweigh the houses she sells.

3. The police prepare barf bags when they set up a road block. For the drunks they stop. And so in your neighborhood they should have barf bags too. For when you walk buy.

4. If you keep making noise, I'll kick your buttock.

5. Buffalo dung outweighs itself.

6. It's difficult to lasso a stork.

7. Your hair is like a dried dandelion. When the wind blows, it flies everywhere.


SCHANI'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Eric and since your lips are like the anchovies on the pizza, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are the janitor of this Barf Bag and I am the ambassador of a buffalo. You are from the town of petty Realtors.

3. Your dung collection, your pompous pimples and your dog's rusty feces together outweigh our school.

4. You haven't got a greater mental capacity than that of your earwax.

5. Eric is yapping with a wheelbarrow on a dandelion.

6. Your peristalsis doesn't work because of the barfight in your bowels between storks with rifles made of frosting and lake trout swinging disjointed mittens.

7. That airliner with sequins will be stabbed by a tawdry and pompous pigeon.

8. I am going to powder your buttock with a flintlock.

9. Your poem discomfits even that rusty yapping dog.

10. I am going to punch and decapitate your petty rabbit.

11. Yes, I know that you want to tote a barge made of dung.

12. Yesterday I saw a powdered realtor stabbing a yapping buffalo.


JENNY LIN'S DEFENSE OF POETRY
1. Since your name is Jerry and since you aim your flintlock like a buffalo at an instrument panel, I will tell you that with you I am fed up.

2. For you are barge realtor. I would advise you to see Prufrock and ask him how to lasso mitten realtors.

3. Since you have been bitten in a barfight, your mental capacity may be unsteady and sometimes you wonder if your skull is disjointed.

4. Your favorite cartoon Happy Tree Friends nearly made you stab the janitor and in court you pretend to be an innocent, mad person.

5. Once you saw a stork crossing the sky and threw up your clarinet to knock it down. Then your clarinet hit you as it fell and you yourself fell from the second floor. You may not remember that your clarinet somehow became rusty after that.

6. Another day you ended up in jail because of the Barf Bag Road Block Incident. You were dragged away with your limbs tied tightly and your mouth taped up because you kept asking questions.

7. You yell out, “Help me, someone! Help me!” A voice answers: “Shut up, Jerry! Why are you always so noisy?”

8. You realize you're in ZEI, the class looking at you.