The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty): William Stobb [by Angela Ball]

Beep Boop

Once like oxygen these people—
you drove all night across Utah to sob
peel puke-hair celebrate
weddings supervise divorces in everyone’s best interest.

Relationships shriveled in the relentless
attack-phone-election-virus
-five-star-economy-doom-delivery-system.

Against the white glare
of right now sky behind
the surplus auto yard you walk alone
the creek-side trail toward the closed-down
ice cream stand falling
over in long grass along the highway.

You’re only out here because an attractive
television doctor said
active legs fuel immunity.
Something about being a machine
prompted you to shift

from in- to exterior seclusion—some current
of possible nobility triggered by a vision
of a lost appliance wandering in the world.

A can opener seeks its garbanzos.
A dishwasher a nozzle. A father
a son. A Roomba.

Where the creek widens and meets the river
through branches over the bluff line
you notice the moon
setting in afternoon correction
of an idea as basic as night or day.

You are still alive.
Your thinking is not accurate.

The trail drops off where waves lap
at a graffiti rock and a fire pit
littered with empty White Claws.
The sounds of birds and small animals
scrabbling among the twigs.
Something bobs to the surface
and vanishes back in current.

Across the river, people you loved.
A person named Francis
who danced at underground sex clubs
met Tina, got sober, and now goes by Frank.

People. Off in the squirrely distance.

--William Stobb

About "Beep Boop"

I was a little freaked out about having the COVID-19 virus in my body in March of 2020. I was over-dramatic, probably, thinking about "my life." I mean... the whole idea of being alive doesn't compute for me, sometimes. Some things are "alive?" and others aren't? I'm not trying to be cavalier or ungrateful or undermine the value of anything. And I'm not trying to die. I'm thinking that'll take care of itself. Look at Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty saying "I want more life, fucker," and then crying so poetically in that monologue: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.... All these things will be lost in time, like tears in rain." What a beautiful robot. I wish my poem were as awesome as that. Mainly, I'm saying I don't understand what I am.

--William Stobb

William Stobb's most recent poetry collection is You Are Still Alive (42 Miles Press 2019). His five previous collections include the National Poetry Series selection, Nervous Systems (Penguin 2007) and a chapbook of desert fragments focusing on the work of artist Michael Heizer, entitled Artifact Eleven (Black Rock Press 2011). Stobb works on the editorial staff of Conduit and its book publishing arm, Conduit Books and Ephemera, and as Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse.

The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty): William Stobb

“Beep Boop” is a walk poem, a bop whose lightness is belied by a host of losses. Most crucially, it is a lament for friendship, that entity so central to the New York School of Poets. In William Stobb's nature, the depredations of industry and the strains of global malaise confront and confound inner and outer worlds.

The poem begins in deft overdrive, with a montage of bacchanalia, loss, and recovery. In pandemic isolation, the speaker is far enough—several months, a river—from friendship to limn its devolution:  “attack phone election virus / -five-star economy-doom-delivery-system.” The landscape is not the gently modulating elevations of peripatetic William Wordsworth’s Lake Country, but “the surplus auto yard,” . . . “the Creekside trail toward the closed-down / ice cream stand falling / over in long grass along the highway”—a description whose cadence seems to presage a James Wright-style epiphany never reached. We and the speaker (the “you” that includes us ) have insular reasons (“attractive TV doctor,” “immunity”) for moving. The poem zig-zags between perception and half-perceived possible transcendence:

     Where the creek widens and meets the river

     through branches over the bluff line

     you notice the moon

     setting in afternoon correction

     of an idea as basic as night or day.

The daylight moon is recognized; vision “correction” is still possible. An idea can modify, and false separations disappear.

The two lines that follow: “You are still alive. / Your thinking is not accurate” assert and deny possibility. (The first could have been written by James Wright, the second, never.)

The transformation, near the poem’s end, of the “person named Francis” functions to further distance them. We think of another person named Francis, who went by Frank, having a Coke with Vincent Warren and us or walking around at lunchtime in “Personal Poem.” But here, in lieu of construction workers in their lovely silver hats, we have the absent homeless, their quenched fire strewn with empties of their drink of choice, “White Claw”—this so distant from Frank O’Hara’s hopeful urban scene, in which lunch is both favorite meal and poem opportunity, and demolition an entrée to the new. In O’Hara’s city, people prosper; their work and breaks from work are brisk; a louse who shows up on Frank while he is at work in his MoMA office gets a name, “Louise,” and immortality in a poem. In this poem’s purview, relationships shrivel; animals struggle, “scrabbling among twigs,” and we contemplate “—some current / of possible nobility triggered by a vision / of a lost appliance wandering in the world.”

The penultimate word, “squirrely,” both locates that ubiquitous animal and comically epitomizes the tenor of thought that rules the poem. William Stobb’s “Beep Boop,” strongly addresses time’s distempers. Its adroit wanderings—haunted by a ghost appliance, machined appendage—subside to isolation, “the white glare of right now.”

--Angela Ball

Comments

[Jill Newnham]

Fascinating. For example, this observation: <<< The two lines that follow: “You are still alive. / Your thinking is not accurate” assert and deny possibility. (The first could have been written by James Wright, the second, never.) >>> Thank you.

[Angela Ball]

Thank you, Jill Newnham, for this generous comment.

[Jill Newnham]

My pleasure. I've liked this whole series. The NY School sphere of influence is, as you demonstrate, wider than people realize.