Public-domain ebook

The Sardonic Arm

Name: The Sardonic Arm
Author: Maxwell Bodenheim

by Maxwell Bodenheim

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Language: en309 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

American poetry -- 20th century

In: Poetry·American Literature

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #60114.

About this book

The Sardonic Arm is a sprawling, experimental poetry collection by Maxwell Bodenheim that opens with a self‑conscious foreword that attacks the conventions of poetic forewords and the “vacant insincerities” of contemporary verse. The opening prose rolls through a cascade of baroque metaphors, condemning the American poetic scene as a “blustering and verbose invitation to boredom” while simultaneously riffing on the noisy, commercial culture that fuels it. From there the book moves into a series of fragmented, declamatory poems that juxtapose grotesque urban characters, clowns, factory girls, gunmen, politicians, with natural images such as oak trees and mud, all rendered in a voice that treats words as “flexible lures” meant to expose the “essential emptiness of life.” The work’s structure is non‑linear, blending satire, philosophical digressions, and theatrical dialogues that resist any simple narrative arc.

Bodenheim’s voice is unmistakably modernist, steeped in the irony and linguistic excess of the early‑to‑mid‑20th‑century American avant‑garde. His style is dense, allusive, and deliberately confrontational, employing long, winding sentences, unconventional capitalization, and a relentless play with metaphor that recalls the experimental poetics of Ezra Pound and the Dadaist provocations of the 1920s. Readers who relish challenging, intellectually charged verse, those interested in the history of American modernism, the critique of cultural commodification, or the sheer pleasure of linguistic gymnastics, will find this collection a rewarding, if demanding, encounter.

The opening · free to read

Reluctant Foreword

If I yield to the remorseful redundancy of a foreword, with its bedraggled battalions of fiercely insinuating words, it is from no mere desire to invite the ridicule of impatient time, or to rail against that host of vacant insincerities which betrays the animations of life. It may be that I do not look upon words as intimidating a fixed content, or beckoning to an inevitable style. It may be that I regard words as flexible lures seducing the essential emptiness of life, with little, false promises--promises of emotional and mental gain and reward; haloes and bludgeons with which a void may attain the mirage of toiling or dancing importance. And perhaps, in the desperate hope of achieving a proper festival of sound, I have summoned words to a reiteration of defeated antics, without in any way attempting to gain those exhausted futilities known as convictions and explanations. And if, through this foreword, I can revel in a pensive obscurity--a veil that must be carefully removed with the reading of poems that follow--I shall feel that I have furnished the exercise of amusement to certain sterile and over-confident rituals of emotion and mind.

The poetic situation in America is, indeed, a blustering and verbose invitation to boredom and a slight, reviling headache. When not engaged in scrubbing the window pane ten times over, lest it prove opaque to an astigmatic public, American poets are discovering, with great glee, the perspiring habits and routines of sex, or naively deifying the local mannerisms of a blithely juvenile country--a lurching, colloquial, fist-swinging melee of milkmen depositing bottles on doorsteps and acquiring dignity in the process; chorus-girls and farmhands telling their troubles in a stilted slang; factory-owners falling in love with their female employees, to the tune of delicate and novel symbolism concerning “a longing to enter the house of her being”; ravings over the strength and poignancy of corn-fields and country-roads--“O, the corn, how it aches!” and “What is better than the patient and sturdy road?”--; much roaring about the importance and hard beauty of mills and factories--crudely smoky boxes of avarice faced by little, kneeling poets.... Ah, the list, when extended, defies amusement. You must leave the theater unless you desire the thankless experience of vomiting.

The commercial cacophony of American lusts and greeds has borrowed a clarinet, a flute, and a saxophone from the admiration of American poets and is one-stepping with thousands of words, after the office and factory have closed for the day, “Swee-et Mama, well your papa’s done gone mad!”--the jerky, leering pandemonium of actual jazz on a polished floor interests me far more than its more proper and adulterated echoes--the glorious American poets of our time.

There are, again, American poets who have turned their eyes to Europe, yes, the fact is apparent--they have turned their eyes to Europe, and they can, on occasion, become cynical animals, discovering seven thousand different ways of describing the contortions that lead to sexual intercourse, and displaying breasts and limbs with an infinite amount of abandoned bravado. Again, they have heard of the European Dadaists, yes, undoubtedly they have heard of the European Dadaists, and they have now reduced the pronoun “I” to “i,” commenced their lines with small letters, and exhibited a brave and startling hatred for commas and separate words. In Europe, this literary revolution holds a distorted incisiveness and many an original thought, heaved up from the catastrophe of words. In America, certain poets, with great gusto, have torn three buttons from their coats and are standing on their heads. Yawning, we turn the page to the greyly psychological school of poets--William James and Havelock Ellis, viewed with ecstasy behind a magnifying glass, while someone provides a blurred replica of Bach’s music.

That tantalizing obscurity of words, luring the nimbleness of mental regard--subtlety--and those deliberate acrobatics that form an original style--both are waiting for the melodrama, comedy and lecture to subside. Alas, what a long waiting is before them--pity these two aristocrats and admire their isolated tenacity. Drop the trivial gift of a tear, also, upon a wilted, elaborate figure thrown into cell number thirty-two and trying to remember that his name was once Intellect. Then deposit the lengthened confession of a sigh upon another drooping form known as Delicate Fantasy--an elusive Liar who ravishes colors without mentioning their names (not the endless blue, green, white, yellow, red, lavender, mauve, pink, brown, cerise, golden, orange, and purple of American Imagists). They have kicked him into the cellar, damn them. Recognize the importance of his bruises. And also, spy, in the loosely naive tumult, an agile, self-possessed pilgrim known as Irony. They have kicked him in the stomach, these symbols of earth triumphant.... And now, you must not look upon these words as a stormy unfolding of conviction and explanation. The American spectacle has aroused a mood; words conceal the essential helplessness; and the lurking emptiness behind life separates into little, curious divisions of sound. The undulations have ended.

Concerning America

Agitated child, Listening to the words of clown, Charlatan, blackguard, clergyman, And vainly trying to follow their commands Simultaneously, with legs and arms Swinging like demented Jehovahs, The plastic shapelessness of mud Waits to receive your castigated fevers. And all the children whose inarticulate Hearts smashed together make your body-- The burly, waggish rogue Paid to dance in your cabarets; The shoulder-shaking girl Who mistakes one shiver for immortality; The roughly earnest gunman Whose blundering insurrection Clutches a cool device; The man whose eyes are coins Encased in viscous white; The fox-like politician Leaping on small prizes in the dark; The farmer, lending his different costume To the ox-like patience of earth; The manual laborers With minds as minute and obscure as bricks, And softly prominent hearts; The factory-girls who try to scold The murmur of their souls With one hundred slang phrases-- All of them will lose Their imaginary differences In the lenient refuge of mud. But their souls, ridiculously Ignorant of national boundary-lines, And amused at the physical promise Or ruin that men extract Tortuously from life-- Their souls will instigate A more conspicuous conflict.

Cry, Naked and Personal

Conversation in oak trees, Better than the talk of men Because it ends where they begin Futilely. Ferns, and invasion of moss, Waiting for the conquest of words To dwindle with the years And find, in the doom of green, A mute and sprightly correction. These trees do not proclaim That men are fools or geniuses. Their rustling tolerance Does not seek to intrude Upon the indifference of time, And it is appropriate That their leaves should wait to contain The discarded syllables Of human erudition.

I have seen a man Gaze upon an oak tree, As one who hates a patient enemy. Sensual desires and mental plots Had marked his face not tenderly. Combat of envy and pride Gained the dilated prize of his eyes As he looked upon the tree. Then his voice achieved The solace of admiration. “The leaves are beautiful in Autumn. This oak tree has a pleasant sturdiness.” When confronted by a tree, Or sunset prowling down the hills, The sensual boast of men Trembles with fear and raises The shield of adoration.

Look upon the oak tree Without that simulated courage Falsely wrung from soothing sound. The oak tree is a living prison Where the thoughts and lusts of men Dangle to the whims of winds And learn an unexpected tolerance. Seek revenge upon the tree; Dress it in capricious metaphor; Fling your costumes on its frame. Or, better still, realize That the oak tree does not Demolish the souls of men. I say that all of nature Is only the mingled womb and tomb With which an ancient illusion Perpetuates the religions that keep it alive. Before I leave the oak tree Laughter captures my lips. Newton, a dry and wavering leaf, Has fallen to the earth.

In the legs and torsos That men hug, frightened, or with glee. He said: “Criticism in Mars Resembles your hours of sleep. Each night we leave creation; Greet the steeply slanting beds; And turn our large eyes inward To a complicated cabaret: Cabaret filled with relieving jigs; Cabaret crammed with irascible magicians Who persist in spoiling their little tricks By proclaiming the honesty of their intentions; Cabaret in which malice, Dignified or torrential, Turns creators into beetles And slays them ingeniously; Cabaret in which Erudition, Tempted by emotional coquettes, Swaggers greyly past the footlights; Cabaret in which Lust Defends itself with thoughtful monologues, Stopping to expectorate Into metaphysical cuspidors; Cabaret in which the mind Scorns the morphine of emotion Until, exhausted, it is forced Secretly to indulge in the drug; Cabaret of toothless bickerings That lisp like market-women At an ancient Fair; Cabaret in which Tolerance and Indifference Sit on the floor below the banquet-table And wait for crumbs that accidentally Slip from the over-full plates; Cabaret in which Logic Swallows the whiskey of dogmas, Reels to the little bed-chamber, And gradually falls asleep; Cabaret in which qualities, Enlarged and beribboned, engage In arguments with smaller qualities, Each longing for the other’s size.” Torban paused, and his smile, A thread of quicksilver bettering his face, Encouraged the purpose of my voice. I said: “The cabaret that you describe Reminds me of criticism on earth.” He answered: “One difference exists. We go to sleep before we criticize-- An excellent antidote for truth and lies!”

“Life is a sensual hunter And only his trophies are real. These protesting animals May sometimes be cleverly scrutinized By six or seven intellects Secreted in the noisy audience.”

Ta-ra-ta-ta! The horn resounds, and its echoes Are caught by an uproar of sounds-- Excited disciples within the theater. “Down with fantasy!” “Realism and flesh forever!” “No more lies about the soul!” “Give us earth and logic!” “Murder the mountebanks and butterflies!” “Down with metaphor and simile!”

The play is about to begin When two unfortunate poets Are discovered in the audience. Morbid, grotesque, and nonchalant, They wear involved, embroidered clothes And smoke emotional cigarettes, Flicking the ashes carefully Into the rage of faces around them. And one poet recommends A ruffled, satirical vest for the hairy chest Of a broad man seated near him. With cries, in which the earthly illusion Mounts its strident throne, The audience expels the two poets With ritual of feet and fists. Unperturbed, the poets Stoop to mend their embroidered sleeves Tom by the frantic audience. With this important task completed, They stroll away.

TIME, INFINITY, AND ETERNITY, DESCEND UPON A BLACK DERBY HAT

Vicious and sincere, The black derby hat flaunts itself Upon the head of an amateur libertine. The libertine is a nervous rascal Asking too many favors From one spear-point exalted by men, But the black derby hat, Poised and incorruptible, Curves its black no to the senses. To those who cannot see, The black derby hat is only a sugar-bowl Turned upside-down and out of place, Or one of many crowns Bestowing their ugly pathos Upon the struggle of a nation, Or the way in which a dreamer Pitifully says hello to the stars, Or a symbol of bulky manhood Swaggering in an ancient trap. But to eyes that can look beyond The surface rites of America Bending over bargain-counters of flesh, The black derby hat is an alabaster Sentinel, defending its realm Against the pompous indifference Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity. The black derby hat is an outline of earth, Bold and abrupt, remaining Indifferent to the desperate commands Of sex and greed, and he who wears it Is only a helpful accident Bringing publicity to the hat. Uncompromising, the black derby hat Suggests the blunt isolation of intellect, And yet it may have been made By some weak serf of emotion. From the contact of incongruities Life evolves the more perfect shape, And so, the black derby hat, Gliding through the frantic defeats Of a city street, Coolly protects its realm Against the scarecrow-contempt Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity.

The book keeps going