Poems for Infidels

I Stand Here Ironizing

11 I Stand Here Ironizing None of the people in these poems have schizophrenia, although all of them are suicidal. None of the people in these poems have been imprisoned for what they believe, or what they’ve seen. This is not, in that way, what you would call testimonial poetry. It is, however, concerned with the things people do to one another. The things people do in their lives. It presupposes, for example, Marlon Brando at the bottom of the tenement stairs with his shirt ripped off screaming the name of his wife. It presupposes Marlon Brando in the biker bar with his beer bottle overflowing. It presupposes him in Paris, wielding his chunk of beurre. It knows that desire for the loved one is simply an extension of the process of identification with an ideal self begun in the mirror stage. It knows that it, too, is another false mirror, a mirror in a painting, say, which caters to our tenacious faith in the representation of reality. It is trying to get the wrinkles out. This page intentionally left blank. ...