At the Folger—Diane Seuss & frank:sonnets

 

 

 Diane Seuss and t’ai freedom ford opened the 53^rd O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at the Folger Shakespeare

Library on October 5, 2021, via Zoom. The Dresser who recently became familiar with Seuss through her publication of a poem entitled “Gertrude Stein” (The New Yorker, August 9, 2021) attended to get a deeper understanding of Seuss who blends high and low culture in surprising ways. Teri Cross Davis as coordinator of the Folger poetry programs made a complementary match in putting these two poets together to read from work addressing voices full of the blues, loaded with down and out problems of life.

 

What caught the Dresser’s ear from Ford’s strong reading was: “all my poems have bullets in them.” What stuck with the Dresser from Seuss’ reading was, “The sonnet teaches you, like poverty, what you can do without.” This prompted the Dresser to order Seuss’ new book frank:sonnets, even before the program ended.

 

So, what does the title mean? Given that frank is lowercase, these sonnets by Diane Seuss are meant to be open, forthright, honest. The cover shows a man naked from the waist up making an odd gesture with his upraised arm—his fist enclosing his thumb. Who is this man, surely not Frank O’Hara whose poetry was open to everything and who Seuss seems to be emulating in this book of 128 sonnets? No poverty being taught in this proliferation, it’s more like obsession. Seuss said after the reading that she is still struggling to move on from the sonnet even as she is going through the divorce. However, this is the story of her life and sometimes in more detail than is necessary.

 

Hearing Seuss’ sonnets made the Dresser want to see how the poet put words on the page. These are not the traditional sonnets with a prescribed rhyme scheme. In untitled poems, Seuss writes fourteen lines in one stanza. Occasionally rhyme occurs. In two instances the fourteen lines span two pages such that we get a folded page in the book.

 

Seuss opened the Folger reading with the second sonnet of frank:

 

The problem with sweetness is death. The problem
with everything is death. There really is no other problem
if you factor everything down, which I was no good at
when studying fractions. They were always using pie
as their example. Rather than thinking about factoring
things down I wondered what kind of pie. And here
I am, broke, barely able to count to fourteen. When
people talk about math they say you’ll need it to balance
your checkbook. What is a checkbook and what,
indeed, is balance? Speaking of sweetness, for a time
I worked in a fudge shop on an island. After a week
the smell of sweetness made me heave, not to mention
the smell of horses; it was an island without cars,
shit everywhere. When I quit, the owner slapped me.

 

Death, suicide, illness, drug addiction looms large in this collection and eventually explains that the man on the cover was Mikel Lindzy, a gay man who provided the poet with much needed emotional support and who died of A.I.D.S.

 

 

The last poem in the book links Frank O’Hara and Mikel Lindzy to Seuss’ poetic strategy which is that the counter chit to death is love, however fraught. But also, Seuss cements her approach to dumping everything about life—her life and the lives of those around her—by the appearance of O’Hara at the moment of his accidental death.  Except that she only refers to him as Frank. If you are a casual reader, you might not know this Frank who got killed accidently on a Fire Island beach.

 

I hope when it happens I have time to say oh so this is how it is happening
unlike Frank hit by a jeep on Fire Island but not like dad who knew too
long six goddamn years in a young man’s life so long it made a sweet guy sarcastic
I want enough time to say oh so this is how I’ll go and smirk at that last rhyme
I rhymed at times because I wanted to make something pretty especially for Mikel
who liked pretty things soft and small things who cried into a white towel when I hurt
myself when it happens I don’t want to be afraid I want to be curious was Mikel curious
I’m afraid by then he was only sad he had no money left was living on green oranges
had kissed all his friends goodbye I kissed lips that kissed Frank’s lips though not
for me a willing kiss I willingly kissed lips that kissed Howard’s deathbed lips
I happily kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed Basquiat’s lips I know a man who said
he kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed lips that kissed Whitman’s
lips who will say of me I kissed her who will say of me I kissed someone who kissed
her or I kissed someone who kissed someone who kissed someone who kissed her.

 

Now, this melding of blues culture and academic/literary life—low versus high culture is what piqued the Dresser’s curiosity about Diane Suess. What the frank sonnets reveal is Diane Seuss, a poet who came up in poverty with a dying father and a neglectful mother who was studying James Joyce.

 

In sonnet 24,  “My first crush was Wild Bill Hickok,” Seuss reveals her mother:

 

…My mother didn’t care if I rescued or killed or swung from a noose until I was dead. That

was my domain. Her domain was TV dinners and James Joyce. …

 

The poem proceeds to its finish by saying Mikel’s first crush was a well-hung TV cowboy who died by hanging but Seuss decides:

 

                                                                                              …my kind of cowboy would read

tall tales from a tall book called Tall Tales about tornadoes and card games and white whales.

 

Seuss drops in names, often first names only, as if the reader should know who they are or at least accept that Seuss’ people are present and if you stick around, you will get more information about them, or not. Is it worth reading frank:sonnets, yes, but you, Dear Reader, are on your own to endure the smear of Little Debbie cake filling on the furniture, the inbred farm animals that were born randomly as Seuss’ mother tried to provide for her children after their father died, and every other gross experience that an unprotected child, youth, and young adult could suffer.

 

                                    …Did you know the dead

can fall in love better than the living cuz nothing

left to lose. The root of all blues.   …

—Diane Seuss, from sonnet 4, frank:sonnets

 

The next literature program from the Folger Shakespeare Library is Ann Patchett (author of Bel Canto) delivering the Eudora Welty Lecture on October 14, 2021.