The Cyril Cusack Glib Reassurance

AS Byatt, in her essay about Browning, struggles to capture something about his miasmal wit, which is nearly epic in invective rage without ranting. Keats may anticipate flash fictions and our like of pastels, dying young enough not to wither, but the author of Possession nails the difficulty with Browning. He felt poetry could still argue metaphysics, ideas, striding right along with the reductive nature of positivism, making a careful rereading of R et B move slowly. He is one of the few historical poets I respond to on my own, innately drawn to his voice, without faking it due to the fact poets are supposed to appreciate all poetry-- and because I am tired I will dispense with this simply: fuck that.

Most poetry should be scorned, and if anything has surprised me about late last century poets like my mentor Jerry, it is his ossification into place. What he did in workshop to me had a far more threatening hedonism to it then what I chased down on Google and then contacted him, kicking and screaming-- I told myself not to trust me because I knew I'd burst into tears. In 2002 I cried over Tassoni for two days; in 2007 Frank the ex did not know it, but the remainder of his cognitive function was in danger and my countenance was flushed in pain not because I did not fool around with the bastard back when but because I failed the standards of my best professor and I knew I'd beat myself, and did, and no longer respect his poetry as much as I used to; he ossified. This disappoints me here on my nigger welfare scum sucking throne, cappish?

Commercially or classically, the razor edge of nihilism is comforting, and with spymaster Le Carre, it is a brutally commercialized cynicism that says the same thing as Mitchell really: we'll always find ways to cannibalize each other for our own meat, and we encapsulate this like a warm blanket. The 2010 Canadian Altitude, which reversed my expectations about formula because it had interesting cinematography, almost uses a stem cell approach when dealing with the envelopment of loss. Andrews is almost playing billiards with the narrative of our imprints enveloping us a certain way due to seemingly random tragedy. Every action leads to reaction, one we may not know, but Le Carre overwhelms his characters. Burton through indignation, Guinness, as Smiley, through monastic castration, Fiennes through martyrdom, smiting consciences-- his plots superb and his characters well drawn, many of his endings, are, however, infuriating and deflationary, and yet they console, as much as Browning's palette of metaphysical contests.