Burn and Dodge

On Not Being Lynn Emanuel

 on not Being lynn emanuel Here is why I am not Lynn Emanuel. And you know I wish I could be Lynn Emanuel with her fast-talking ventriloquism, first she’s not (for spite) Sylvia Plath then she’s not Emily Dickinson but one narrow room then by god she is Gertrude Stein which feels like having swallowed an ocean liner that can type and then she is Walt Whitman or after becoming a waitress in Dacron Walt Whitman is she. So who’s left for me not to be but Lynn Emanuel. We’re caught in that ecstatic embrace of writer and reader that she and her Walt (perhaps you too, oh reader) know so well. She is the writer and I am the reader and you can tell I’m trying to switch roles but it’s not working so well, I feel like I’m learning Raoul’s dance steps while on the dance floor; now I’m leading but I’m really still following her lead. And even if I am getting Raoul into this poem it’s still her Raoul, her lit window in the attic of her mind I can see inside of but can’t quite inhabit. I’m just too slow, too much the student; the top of my head came off years ago at the Hotel Fiesta. Who am I kidding? We both have our Bella Roma though I never modeled thereonly as a mere child before I had breasts or stockings or barely said “yes.” Because she is the paragon of brains and beauty and I am its epigone, its wannabe. Its paragon of epigones and I have to look these words up to make sure I am getting it right (isn’t English amazing, by the way, how we keep having to learn it?) and yes, I do mean Lynn Emanuel is the “peerless example,” the “unflawed diamond,” “the very large spherical pearl,” but “the type size of 20 points”? No. Go back. She’s not that kind of paragon. The peerless pearl, yes. The diamond, okay. And who am I? I’m the “follower,” from the Greek epigonos meaning “born after” as the sons of the seven against Thebes. But I’ve never fought at Thebes. Nor did my father. But Lynn Emanuel’s father did. And she has, I’m sure of it. Lynn Emanuel has fought at Thebes. But do I even know Raoul, let alone Emily or Walt or Gertrude, on a firstname basis? And if I did become her wouldn’t she be writing this (or  maybe she gave up and this is one of her rejects, one of the poems Lynn Emanuel threw away, called “On Sharon Dolin Not Being Lynn Emanuel”she’s already got one about not being Sharon Stoneand I’ve just plucked it from her trashshe does recycle.) Now, since I have failed to become her (or has she refused to become me?), I must confess I have never described the draperies in the room of a poem (forget burnt orange). But I fear if I don’t at least say I like draperies for the way you can pull them aside for more light, more of a view, I would be misleading you and herand I do like light and so, I think, does Lynn Emanuel, even if it means she has to dig herself out of the Jerusalem dirt and watch as her bones are being reassembled. And I have to salute her, this Lynn Emanuel, I mean you, now that my failed ventriloquism is reaching its end (and aren’t you glad, oh true readers, oh vrai audience), in a moment of surgery never-before-performed-on-the-literary-page, for we are only joined at the mind (and then just barely), when I stop speaking we are severed, this botched suture, this you-and-I, this Lynnand -I. Now I am vanishing so Then, Suddenly Lynn Emanuel may truly appear. ...