Walkman

Description

A new collection from an audacious, humorous poet celebrated for his “sky-blue originality of utterance” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)

Michael Robbins’s first two books of poetry were raucous protests lodged from the frontage roads and big-box stores of off-ramp America. With Walkman, he turns a corner. These new poems confront self-pity and nostalgia in witty-miserable defiance of our political and ecological moment. It’s the end of the world, and Robbins has listened to all the tapes in his backpack. So he’s making music from whatever junk he finds lying around.Praise for Walkman:

“Walkman works in the blunt, epic, bouillon ways of the pop song, unapologetically understandable and generally brief . . . demonstrative and good-natured . . . For Robbins, salvation is found more often in music than in any other vernacular construction with access to the transcendent.” —Sasha Frere-Jones, Poetry Foundation

“Walkman displays a depth born out of experience . . . Robbins’s quicksilver wit hasn’t abandoned him . . . Walkman does have radically new notes, though. The tone is, like [James] Schuyler, more tender. Language still riots, but these poems offer the record of a lonesome, sad, at times hopeful soul.” —Commonweal

“Robbins has perfected the art of Marxist miserabilism in verse, allowing himself a measure of self-pity and nostalgia (and even some unorthodox faith) in the face of political and ecological catastrophe. Still militantly funny, still the realest.” —Drawn & Quarterly

“In Walkman, poetry and pop music do the job of sustaining some kind of attachment to life within an existence that often feels unsustainable.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“If you are a fellow devotee of the old Robbins, take heart: the new style only clarifies why the first books were so good. And if you have never read the guy before, start with this book—with this book, I insist, and not the first two books, because the new tone is as right for our time as the old one was for its time. A decade into the apocalypse, Robbins, God help him, has not yet averted his eyes.” —Cleveland Review of Books

“If all you knew of Michael Robbins was his poem ‘Walkman’ […] you’d know he was the author of a stupendously beautiful poem that’s worth buying a whole book for . . . funny, tender, vulnerable, sad . . . Ultimately, poetic attention to our losses will not save us, and there is plenty of despair, bitterness, and disgust to go around in these poems. And yet Walkman shows us, too, that loss can be mysterious, and can occasionally make the world seem less threadbare and disenchanted.” —Harvard Review

“Passages of lyrical coherence are built on a newly permeable, experiencing voice, capable both of ranging around and cutting through. They are still in competition with the desire not to seem a schmuck, but at their best these poems can say, as in “Equipment for Living,” ‘the world is broken, but this is one of the things we do about it.’” —The Baffler

“Robbins’ ironic distance [is] a roundabout way of disarming the reader and allowing an incredibly potent voice to shine through. This voice carries the collection…. Walkman is a collection that’s ready to address the events of the past year without feeling rooted in that time or place. You’ll be able to come back to the collection in a decade, partly because the poems happen on a personal scale and won’t age as poorly as directly political poems, but also because Robbins’ oblique angle on our compounding crisis is both less urgent and more poignant.” —American Microreviews

“[Walkman] isn’t as nostalgic as its title might suggest. It’s less noisy, a bit slower-paced, than [Robbins’s] earlier work. Several of the longer poems sit somewhere between Wordsworth and Frank O’Hara, and they manage to be inward even when their gaze turns outward. Robbins knows about the trickiness of words, too: ‘I’m / sorry language is a ship / that goes down / while you’re building it.’ Poetry like this helps keep us afloat.” —Bill Manhire, New Zealand Herald

“Much of [Walkman] really is very funny, in a dour way. But it is also a gentler, more wounded book than I anticipated, and at times it gives wonderfully homely (in a good sense) voice to a sense of impending doom and a longing for a safe and quiet shelter from the storm. And yet, in the end, there’s a hopefulness in these poems too—or at least a faith in the possibility of hope, and in fact of love. At times, I felt as if what I was reading was as much private prayer as public performance. It is a genuinely moving collection.” —David Bentley Hart, author of That All Shall Be Saved and The Experience of God

“The title poem sets a wistful, reflective, almost spiritual tone in a collection that addresses such serious subjects as heaven, hell, and faith with humor and self-deprecation . . . Robbins is a master satirist, whether he’s pontificating on the environment, the behavior of today’s youth, or his allergies, and he does it with a nod to taking things less seriously even as the apocalypse approaches.” —BooklistMichael Robbins now lives in New Jersey. He is the author of Walkman and two previous poetry collections, Alien vs. Predator and The Second Sex, and Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music, a volume of essays, as well as the editor of Margaret Cavendish, a selection of the duchess’s poems. He is an associate professor of English at Montclair State University.
 

Walkman

 

I didn’t mean to quit drinking,

 

it just sort of happened.

 

I’d always assumed

 

it’d be difficult, or not

 

difficult, exactly,

 

but impossible.

 

Then one New Year’s Eve

 

twenty years ago

 

at the VFW, Craig and I

 

were drinking beer

 

from brown bottles,

 

peeling the labels off

 

into little confetti nests.

 

In Mexico

 

the previous New Year’s Eve,

 

I’d started drinking

 

again after a year sober.

 

I traveled by myself

 

in Oaxaca for a month

 

and had at least two

 

beautiful experiences.

 

The bus I was on broke

 

down in the mountains

 

and I watched the stars blink

 

on with a Mexican girl

 

who later sent me a letter

 

I never answered. That’s one

 

of the experiences. The others

 

are secrets. We left the VFW

 

at a reasonable hour for once.

 

I never took another drink.

 

I’m not sure why not.

 

I don’t think it had anything

 

to do with me. I think

 

it was a miracle. Like when

 

the hero at the last

 

second pulls the lever to switch

 

the train to the track the heroine’s

 

not tied to. I was always broke

 

in those days, whereas now I’m just

 

poor. I brought a Walkman

 

and a backpack stuffed with

 

cassettes to Oaxaca. I was sick

 

of them all within a week

 

and longed to buy a new tape

 

but couldn’t spare the pesos.

 

I listened to Live Through This

 

at the Zapotec ruins

 

of Monte Alb‡n,

 

Rumours on the bus to DF.

 

At Puerto çngel,

 

my headphones leaking

 

tinny discord

 

across a rooftop bar,

 

I sat watching the ocean.

 

An American man about the age

 

I am now

 

asked me what I was listening to.

 

I said Sonic Youth. He asked

 

which album, I said Sister.

 

He chuckled and said

 

“I’m Johnny Strike.”

 

It probably wasn’t a miracle,

 

but I couldn’t believe it.

 

Here was the guy who wrote

 

Crime’s 1976 classic

 

“Hot Wire My Heart,”

 

which Sonic Youth covered

 

on their 1987 classic, Sister,

 

which I was listening to

 

on my Walkman

 

at the end of Mexico in the sun.

 

Except actually I was

 

listening to Daydream Nation,

 

I change it to Sister

 

when I tell that story.

 

But it’s a beautiful story

 

even without embellishment.

 

That’s another of the Oaxacan

 

experiences I mentioned,

 

but the rest are secrets.

 

Oh Mexico, as James Schuyler

 

wrote to Frank O’Hara,

 

are you just another

 

dissembling dream?

 

Schuyler was too tender

 

for me then, but now

 

he is just tender enough.

 

I love his wishes.

 

That “the beautiful humorous

 

white whippet” could

 

be immortal, for instance.

 

But I can’t always forgive

 

his Central Park West tone,

 

his Austrian operettas

 

and long long lawns,

 

though he wasn’t rich

 

and was tormented

 

enough, God knows.

 

In the summer of 1984

 

in Salida, Colorado,

 

I had Slade and Steve Perry

 

on my Walkman.

 

I drank milk from jumbo

 

Burger King glasses

 

emblazoned with scenes

 

from Return of the Jedi.

 

You can’t buy tampons

 

with food stamps

 

even if your mother

 

insists that you try.

 

Salida sits along

 

the Arkansas River,

 

whose current

 

one hot afternoon

 

swept me away

 

and deposited me

 

in a shallow far downstream.

 

It was the first time

 

I thought I was going

 

to die and didn’t. The Arkansas

 

and everything else are mortal.

 

My mom had been born again,

 

to my chagrin. But lately I find

 

I do believe in God

 

the Father Almighty, Maker

 

of heaven and earth:

 

and in Jesus Christ,

 

his Son our Lord,

 

who was conceived by

 

the Holy Ghost. How

 

the hell did I become

 

a Christian? Grace,

 

I guess. It just sort of

 

happened. I admit I find

 

the resurrection of the body

 

and life everlasting

 

difficult, or not difficult,

 

exactly, but impossible.

 

There is no crazier belief

 

than that we won’t be

 

covered by leaves, leaves,

 

leaves, as Schuyler has it,

 

which is to say, really gone,

 

as O’Hara put it in his lovely

 

sad poem to John Ashbery.

 

But hope is a different animal

 

from belief. “The crazy hope

 

that Paul proclaims in 2

 

Corinthians,” my friend John

 

wrote to me when his mother

 

died. The Christian religion

 

is very beautiful sometimes

 

and very true at other times,

 

though sophisticated persons

 

are still expected to be above

 

all that sort of thing. Well,

 

I’m a Marxist

 

too. Go and sell that thou

 

hast, and give to the poor.

 

On his new album Dr. Dre

 

says “Anybody complaining

 

about their circumstances

 

lost me.” At the risk of losing

 

more billionaires, complain

 

about your circumstances,

 

I say. I listened to The Chronic

 

on my Walkman the summer

 

I worked the night shift

 

at Kinko’s. I was dating Deirdre,

 

who when I placed my headphones

 

on her ears and pushed play

 

said “Why is this man cursing

 

at me?” Said it more loudly

 

than was strictly necessary.

 

A crazy man

 

would come into Kinko’s

 

around two a.m. and ask me

 

to fax dire, scribbled warnings

 

to every news outlet in Denver.

 

He wanted to let people know

 

that God would punish the area

 

with natural disasters

 

if the county succeeded

 

in evicting him from the land

 

he was squatting on. He’d ask me

 

to help him think of various

 

extreme weather events

 

that God might unleash.

 

I’d say “Typhoons?”

 

though we were in Colorado.

 

He’d scribble typhoons.

 

Scraps of dirty paper absolutely

 

covered front and back with ominous,

 

angrily scrawled black characters:

 

attn. nbc nightly news there will

 

be fires tornadoes typhoons.

 

I would help him compose his screeds

 

then fax each one to Denver’s

 

major TV and radio stations, the Denver Post,

 

and the Rocky Mountain News,

 

which has since stopped its presses

 

for good. Except in fact I would

 

only pretend to fax them

 

and then refuse his money,

 

saying I was glad to help the cause.

 

What if he wasn’t batshit but a true

 

prophet? The Denver metropolitan area

 

was not visited by disaster

 

at that time, but this proves

 

nothing. Look at Jonah and

 

Nineveh, that great city.

 

I don’t believe he was a prophet,

 

but Kinko’s is beautiful

 

at two a.m. even if I hated

 

working there. The rows

 

of silent copiers

 

like retired dreadnoughts

 

in a back bay, the fluorescent

 

pallor, the classic-rock station

 

I would turn back up after

 

my coworker turned it down.

 

Did the guy sketch amateurish

 

floods, tornadoes, etc.,

 

on his jeremiads or did I

 

imagine that? I wish

 

I’d thought to make copies

 

for myself. I wish I’d kept

 

the Mexican girl’s letter.

 

I wish I’d kept the copiers

 

with their slow arms

 

of light, the lights of DF

 

filling the Valley of Mexico

 

as the bus makes its slow way

 

down and Stevie sings what you

 

had, oh, what you lost. Schuyler

 

and his wishes! “I wish it was

 

1938 or ’39 again.” “I wish

 

I could take an engine apart

 

and reassemble it.” “I wish I’d

 

brought my book of enlightening

 

literary essays.” “I wish I could press

 

snowflakes in a book like flowers.”

 

That last one’s my favorite. I wish

 

I’d written it. I would often kick

 

for months until driven back to a bar

 

by fear or boredom or both. I saw

 

Tomorrow Never Dies-starring

 

Pierce Brosnan, the second-worst

 

James Bond-in Oaxaca and

 

came out wishing my life were

 

romantic and exciting and charmed

 

or at least that I had someone

 

to talk to. So I stopped at the first

 

bar I saw, and someone

 

talked to me. It’s so sad and

 

perfect to be young and alone

 

in the Z—calo when the little lights

 

come up like fish surfacing

 

beneath the moon and you want

 

to grab the people walking by

 

and say who are you, are you

 

as afraid as I am. And you don’t

 

know that twenty years later

 

you’ll be writing this poem.

 

Well, now I’m being sentimental

 

and forgetting that in those days

 

I wrote the worst poems ever.

 

“I held a guitar and trembled

 

and would not sing” is an actual

 

line I wrote! The typhoon guy

 

could have written better poetry.

 

Today I want to write about

 

how it’s been almost twenty years

 

since I owned a Walkman.

 

Just think: there was a song

 

that I didn’t know

 

would be the last song

 

I would ever play on a Walkman.

 

I listened to it like it was just

 

any old song,

 

because it was.

 

The Deep Heart’s Core

 

We must stop feeling things

 

in the deep heart’s core.

 

That’s where the lies live.

 

If you would see what’s behind you,

 

close your eyes. Shut your mouth

 

if you want to send people to hell.

 

You have to want to go to hell. Deserve’s

 

got nothing to do with it.

 

Yet hell has a waiting list.

 

Well, that’s how dumb I am,

 

feeling my way to hell one

 

name at a time.

 

You Haven’t Texted Since Saturday

 

You haven’t texted

 

since Saturday,

 

when I read Keith Waldrop’s

 

translation of Les Fleurs du Mal

 

on a bench by whatever

 

that tower is on the hill

 

in Fort Greene Park

 

until you walked up

 

late as always and I do

 

mean always

 

in your dad’s army jacket

 

and said “Hi, buddy”

 

in a tone that told me

 

all I needed to know,

 

although protocol dictated

 

that you should sit next to me

 

and spell it out

 

and we should hold each other

 

and cry and then pretend

 

everything was fine, would

 

be fine, was someday

 

before the final

 

trumpet, before heat death,

 

zero point, big rip

 

sure to be absolutely

 

perfectly completely

 

probably fine. And

 

though it wasn’t and

 

wouldn’t be,

 

I walked you to the G

 

then rode the C

 

to Jay Street-MetroTech.

 

Just now I took a break from

 

this retrospect

 

to smoke one of the Camels

 

in the sky-blue box marked

 

il fumo uccide

 

you brought me from Italy

 

and page through a book

 

on contemporary physics.

 

“Something must be

 

very wrong,” it said,

 

and I agreed,

 

although it turned out

 

the author meant that “no theory

 

of physics should produce

 

infinities with impunity.”

 

I’d point out that every theory

 

of the heart

 

produces infinities

 

with impunity

 

if I were the kind of jerk

 

who uses the heart

 

to mean the human

 

tendency to make

 

others suffer

 

just because we

 

hate to suffer

 

alone. I’m sorry

 

I brought a fitted sheet

 

to the beach. I’m sorry

 

I’m selfish and determined

 

to make the worst

 

of everything. I’m

 

sorry language is a ship

 

that goes down

 

while you’re building it.

 

The Hesychasts of Byzantium

 

stripped their prayers

 

of words. It’s been tried

 

with poems too. But insofar

 

as I am a disappointment

 

to myself and others, it seems fitting

 

to set up shop in almost

 

and not quite and that’s not

 

what I meant. I draw the line at the heart,

 

though, with its

 

infinities. And I have to say

 

I am not a big fan

 

of being sad. Some people

 

can pull it off. When

 

we hiked Overlook, you

 

went on ahead to the summit

 

while I sat on a rock

 

reading Thomas Bernhard.

 

I’d just made it to the ruins

 

of the old hotel

 

when you came jogging back down

 

in your sports bra

 

saying I had to come see the view.

 

But my allergies were bad

 

and I was thirsty,

 

so we headed down the gravelly trail,

 

pleased by the occasional

 

advent of a jittery

 

chipmunk. You showed me pictures

 

on your phone of the fire

 

tower, the nineteenth-

 

century graffiti carved

 

into the rock, and the long

 

unfolded valley

 

of the Hudson. At the bottom,

 

the Buddhists let us

 

fill our water bottles

 

from their drinking fountain.

 

We called a cab and sat

 

along the roadside

 

watching prayer flags

 

rush in the wind. I said the wind

 

carried the prayers

 

inscribed on the flags

 

to the gods, but Wikipedia

 

informs me now that

 

       the Tibetans believe the prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread

       good will and compassion into all pervading space.

 

So I was wrong, again,

 

about the gods. Wherever

 

you are, I hope you stand

 

still now and then

 

and let the prayers

 

wash over you like the breakers

 

at Fort Tilden that day

 

the huge gray gothic

 

clouds massed and threatened to drop

 

a storm on our heads

 

but didn’t.

 

Shed

 

I wish I had a shed out back

 

of a house in an open

 

place and I’d sit in the cold

 

shed on quiet nights when all

 

the televisions go out and

 

the wires and the other wires

 

sing, and wonder what the small

 

things think about. A bitumen

 

boat in a royal tomb and a snake

 

and an angel too. Away from

 

loss prevention officers and

 

11 Secrets to Refinancing Your

 

Student Loans. I don’t mean

 

some romantic Unabomber

 

shit, just a shed. The light

 

from a candle in the shed’s

 

single window tosses a golden

 

square upon the snow that I

 

now see should surround

 

and shroud the shed. I hate

 

winter, so these snows must

 

be aesthetic. The December

 

before last I didn’t leave my

 

apartment except for bodega

 

runs to stock up on Diet Coke

 

and peanut butter. I watched

 

every Anthony Mann Western

 

and spent half a day trying to

 

arrange Cheez-Its into the form

 

of Jimmy Stewart’s face, then

 

ate the face. Some sorrow is

 

so baroque you look back

 

on it and feel like a schmuck.

 

Just yesterday the CBD Lifestyle

 

Station clerk asked how I was

 

and I said “Good, and you?” like

 

you’re supposed to, like they teach

 

you in disaster simulations. I

 

know how to feel in my shed,

 

away from these statues

 

of assholes on horses,

 

and I let the shed field

 

the questions. Even in my

 

shed I want a shed.

 

When Didn’t I Know It

 

I was born without language

 

and thus without the ability

 

to formulate a plan.

 

It was a few years after

 

the moon fell

 

to an American incursion.

 

I was smaller then

 

and prone to fits of pique.

 

I began to learn things

 

about dinosaurs and the way

 

a bag of vending-machine chips

 

will sometimes get stuck

 

on the Slinky-like contraption

 

that pushes it into free fall.

 

And there is no remedy;

 

according to the system

 

a fair transaction was concluded.

 

I learned that airplanes hang

 

on wires from ceilings.

 

I feared wasps. I remained

 

outside most churches.

 

I required stitches.

 

I was an expert on Bigfoot,

 

a reputed hominid

 

called s‡sq’ets

 

by the First Nations peoples.

 

I watched the moon

 

precisely blot the sun

 

on the wall of a shoebox.

 

As for Sea-Monkeys,

 

they did not, in fact, ride

 

one another like cowboys

 

on ponies or follow

 

a candle beam as if hypnotized.

 

Cobalt gives off-scientists

 

say “emits”-electrons. I

 

read that. I read about little

 

houses, big horses, assistant

 

pig-keepers, red ferns.

 

In those days of products

 

without clocks, I called

 

a number to hear

 

the time and temperature.

US

Additional information

Dimensions	0.2600 × 6.0000 × 8.9700 in
Series	Penguin Poets
Imprint	Penguin Books
ISBN-13	09780143134909
ISBN-10	0143134906
Author	Michael Robbins
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	POE023000, POE000000
Subjects	plays, self help books, poems, literary fiction, crime books, american literature, gift ideas, poesía, poetry book, gift books, poetry anthology, poetry collection, poetry, POE023000, poetry books, classic literature, POE000000, poem books, american poetry, poem a day, collected poems, poetry collections, contemporary poetry, classic, self improvement, inspirational, adventure, war, crime, mental health, psychology, self help, health, writing, modern, philosophy, comedy, thriller, drama, mystery, vampires, Animals, poem, civil war, short stories, anthology