Manipulating cultural assumptions: transgression and obedience in David Wojahn's rock 'n' roll sonnets.

Manipulating cultural assumptions: transgression and obedience in David Wojahn's rock 'n' roll sonnets. One impetus for David Wojahn's series of poems about thecultural phenomenon of rock 'n' roll, published as the middlesection of his third collection, Mystery Train (1990), can be fairlywell traced to the issue of historical and poetic novelty. Simply put,almost no one else was doing it. Arguably one of the great culturalevents of the last half century, rock had mostly eluded the interest -or the respect - of his generation as proper subject matter forpoetry.(1) Wojahn was struck by this fact, slightly absurd on the faceof it, as he explained in a 1991 interview:A lot of people I knew as writers and thinkers were very, veryinfluenced by rock 'n' roll music, rock 'n' rollculture, yet it never got into their poems . . . They were writing abouttheir families, their love affairs, but they weren't writing aboutthis particular kind of music that was a great passion in theirlives.(2)His description of the striking dissonance between communalexperience and poets' private art implies that Wojahn sees hispoems as a sort of rear-guard action meant to reacquaint poet (andpublic) with cultural history, even something as tawdry and undeniablyglitzy glitz? Informaln.Ostentatious showiness; flashiness: "a garish barrage of show-biz glitz"Peter G. Davis.tr.v. as pop culture. Throughout the series, Wojahn's rock sonnetsgesture off the printed page towards an attendant cultural/historicaltext shared by poet and reader by virtue of their being situated in alargely communal historical circumstance.While this explanation tantalizes, taken alone it fails to satisfy,especially if we recall that Wojahn's clutch of rock 'n'roll poems is a sonnet series and that Wojahn is no New Formalist. Todecide to write poems about pop culture as historical gloss says onething, but to choose to write these poems as sonnets says quite another.Which leads to another factor, an aesthetic one, inextricably in��ex��tri��ca��ble?adj.1. a. So intricate or entangled as to make escape impossible: an inextricable maze; an inextricable web of deceit.b. boundto the cultural and historical context I've begun to delineateabove. Namely this, writing sonnets about rock 'n' rollfortuitously brings together expressions of what Van Wyck Brooks Noun 1. Van Wyck Brooks - United States literary critic and historian (1886-1963)Brooks haddubbed, as early as the turn of the century, American"Highbrow" and "Lowbrow" culture (82). This comingtogether, part collision and part embrace, enables the poet to work inan aesthetically charged field where breaking tradition often meanssimultaneously upholding it. Wojahn honors both the orthodoxy of thesonnet and the rebellion of rock - all the while breaking from theirrespective traditions as expressions of highbrow and lowbrow art.What is important here is the way Wojahn manipulates culturalperceptions of the sonnet as decorous dec��o��rous?adj.Characterized by or exhibiting decorum; proper: decorous behavior.[From Latin dec and of rock 'n' roll asrebellious. Never mind that the supposedly decorous sonnet has oftenbeen nothing more than a high-falutin invitation to sexual adventure(like much of rock). Never mind that supposedly counter-cultural rock'n' roll has become an institution in itself, a multinationalindustry dominated as much by profit motives as by aesthetic principles.Never mind that the two forms share real and meaningful similarities.What matters most are readers' cultural perceptions - or better,misperceptions - which insist on viewing the forms as opposites. Wojahnuses the apparent tension between the two forms to imply that they havemuch more in common than many of us would readily admit. Through theserock 'n' roll sonnets, Wojahn, in his own words, seeksan uneasy balance - the sort of balance we all contrive con��trive?v. con��trived, con��triv��ing, con��trivesv.tr.1. To plan with cleverness or ingenuity; devise: contrive ways to amuse the children.2. in a worldwhere the traditional boundaries that separate high culture from lowdon't exist. . . . I realized that a rigorously traditional formsuch as the sonnet is not unlike a great three-chord rock 'n'roll song. . . . When I reflect on the sonnet's wonderful symmetryand compression, and the delirious de��lir��i��ousadj.Of, suffering from, or characteristic of delirium. joy I experience when I read the140-odd syllables of a good sonnet, it seems like the same sort ofdelight I experience listening to the Ramones do their cover version of"Needles and Pins." These two cultural poles have a highlysubjective, deeply resonant linkage for me. In Mystery Train I found amethod that would allow me to celebrate that.(3) (Veitch 392-412)Probably to the displeasure of advocates of both forms, Wojahn seemsto understand the necessary and complementary relationship between them.On one hand, he negates the highbrow and yet negates his own negation bychoosing the sonnet form. On the other, he honors the transgressivenessof lowbrow rock while co-opting that rebellion within the essentiallyorthodox sonnet form. One way to give perspective to what Wojahn doeshere is to recall Stephen Greenblatt's discussion of Marlowe'swork. Marlowe's protagonists, Greenblatt argues in RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning, may indeed "rebel against authority," yettheir various "acts of negation not only conjure up conjure upVerb1. to create an image in the mind: the name Versailles conjures up a past of sumptuous grandeur2. the order theywould destroy, but seem at times to be themselves conjured up by thatvery order" (222, 210). This suggests an answer to the question ofwhy Wojahn might select the sonnet form to write about rock music. In myview, Wojahn's rock 'n' roll sonnet sequence sonnet sequencen.A group of sonnets having a single subject or controlling idea. Also called sonnet cycle. underscoresthe notion that radical alternatives in music or poetry or other artsare inescapably tied to the orthodoxy they ostensibly os��ten��si��ble?adj.Represented or appearing as such; ostensive: His ostensible purpose was charity, but his real goal was popularity. reject.Rock's aesthetic revolution gains depth and texture mainly inrelation to the authority it labors to overthrow. In essence, linkingrock 'n' roll's rebelliousness with the sonnet'sorthodoxy sustains and conveys that very relationship.Of course, all poetic forms, even free verse free verse,term loosely used for rhymed or unrhymed verse made free of conventional and traditional limitations and restrictions in regard to metrical structure. Cadence, especially that of common speech, is often substituted for regular metrical pattern. , carry with them thistension. Each aesthetic choice to negate tradition carries with it theshadow of that tradition, ineluctably bound up in both the poet'schoice and in the poem produced. As the Russian critic Jurij Lotmancontends, every effort of "simplification" of an"original" form like the sonnet instead always makes it"more complicated," as those elements removed beyond the textstill reside within it as "minus-devices" present,paradoxically, in their absence (99). This plays on Newtonian physicswhere each action has an opposite and equal response - and yet bothreside, in opposition, within the exclusive parameters of what'sput in the text and what's left out.One curious result is the way the series calls into question thenature of artistic transgression and obedience. The series, much likerock 'n' roll, may not be as wholly transgressive as one wouldfirst assume. Even if the poet were to compose his most brash sex,drugs, and rock 'n' roll sonnet, its rebelliousness would bemitigated by the sonnet's traditional rules governing internal andexternal form. In short, the question becomes just what aesthetic isbeing transgressed and what one being obeyed. For instance, is thesonnet scandalized by being tied to rock 'n' roll, or has rockbeen appropriated (and thus purified) by the highbrow sonnet form? Formand content, as a result, necessarily battle in full view of both poetand reader.By choosing the sonnet, Wojahn is working with a form older and morerule-bound than the relatively new and malleable novel form. Taught inthe schools and praised there - often naively - as the highestachievement of refined expression, the traditional sonnet form can besaid to have been culturally inscripted. Those who write and those whoread a sonnet have been trained by the culture to know a sonnet whenthey see one and further to identify its constitutive constitutive/con��sti��tu��tive/ (kon-stich��u-tiv) produced constantly or in fixed amounts, regardless of environmental conditions or demand. parts. Both writerand reader belong to what Stanley Fish Stanley Fish (born 1938) is a prominent American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is among the most important critics of the English poet John Milton in the 20th century, and is often associated with post-modernism, at , in Is There a Text in ThisClass?, has called an "interpretive community" who sharecommon assumptions about what a sonnet looks like and what it is meantto do (326).(4)Wojahn relies upon readers' shared cultural and literaryassumptions. He subverts rules governing the sonnet's physical andintellectual design and steps over unspoken rules of content by focusingon rock music, a brash and impertinent IMPERTINENT, practice, pleading. What does not appertain, or belong to; id est, qui ad rem non pertinet. 2. Evidence of facts which do not belong to the matter in question, is impertinent and inadmissible. popular art form whose rootexperiences music critic Noun 1. music critic - a critic of musical performancescritic - a person who is professionally engaged in the analysis and interpretation of works of art Peter Wicke describes as "completelydifferent from those suggested by bourgeois artistic norms" (12).Wicke argues that rock music at once sets itself off from and claimsequal value with the more "serious" arts aptly representedhere by the sonnet. In fact, Wicke feels confident enough to cite theinitial instance of rock music's arrival as alternative-but-equalart: Chuck Berry's 1956 hit "Roll Over Beethoven." Heassesses in broad cultural terms the song's effects as one of the"new experiences in art" challenging the acknowledged masters(10):Not without irony, while claiming the same status and culturalrelevance, rock music appears self-consciously juxtaposed to an artisticappreciation, represented by the names of Beethoven and Tschaikowsky,for which we cannot imagine greater contrasts than a jukebox and aself-sufficient sensuousness. (3)Wojahn himself, perhaps unwittingly, alluded to the rebellious natureof his writing poems about rock when he explained in our interview thathis "notion was just to try to break that unwritten taboo"which had kept poets from writing about the music they had grown upwith. Whatever his intentions, conscious or not, Wojahn's sonnetslie at the convergence of aesthetic, cultural, and historical lines, andas such they offer an intriguing look at the ways these forces intersectin the lives of writers and readers.This collision of high and low culture has become a staple of recentavant-garde art. The work of Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.Coover was born in Charles City, Iowa. , Andy Warhol Noun 1. Andy Warhol - United States artist who was a leader of the Pop Art movement (1930-1987)Warhol , LaurieAnderson, Vargas Llosa, and countless other Pop artists illustrates themanifest ways mass cultural forms have been exploited for artisticeffect. True enough, high culture, while not wholly inured to suchunorthodox content, is not so easily scandalized as it once was. A rowof urinals, packaged and displayed as art by a hip young sculptor, ismore likely to fetch a high price than to raise eyebrows. Still, thesonnet has remained largely untouched by these incursions of popularculture. In fact, perhaps the best precedent for Wojahn's rock'n' roll sonnets can be found in the sonnets of RobertLowell's Notebook (1970) and History (1973) that deal with friends,politics, and the day-to-day events of his life.On the surface, rock music violates the sonnet's reputation forintellectual inquiry and emotional sensitivity. Better yet, it replacesthat decorous subject matter with what William Matthews refers to on thebook's dust jacket as the "sleazy heart" of popularculture. Viewed with suspicion by the status quo [Latin, The existing state of things at any given date.] Status quo ante bellum means the state of things before the war. The status quo to be preserved by a preliminary injunction is the last actual, peaceable, uncontested status which preceded the pending controversy. , rock culture is oftenregarded as destroying the moral fiber of America's youth throughsexually suggestive lyrics and glorification glo��ri��fy?tr.v. glo��ri��fied, glo��ri��fy��ing, glo��ri��fies1. To give glory, honor, or high praise to; exalt.2. of rebellion, violence,apathy, even suicide. Its outlaw status is confirmed by numerouspublications like Al Menconi's Should My Child Listen to RockMusic? Menconi's book is meant to help parents interpret thebehavioral warning signals associated with listening to rock'n' roll, for rock can be a "window" to achild's troubled soul. Of course, Christian Fundamentalists haveidentified even more dire consequences for those who listen to rock'n' roll: the loss of their eternal souls. Robert Fullerargues that many Christian Fundamentalists regard rock as the voice ofthe Antichrist - thus the "perfect vehicle for disseminatingapostasy apostasy,in religion: see heresy. ApostasySee also Sacrilege.Aholah and Aholibahsymbolize Samaria’s and Jerusalem’s abandonment to idols. [O.T. and anarchy" among America's youth (174). TheseChristian groups, Fuller contends, frequently demonize de��mon��ize?tr.v. de��mon��ized, de��mon��iz��ing, de��mon��iz��es1. To turn into or as if into a demon.2. To possess by or as if by a demon.3. rock as source ofboth apocalyptic revolution and Communist propaganda, and worse, asmeans for the Antichrist to recruit new members into the fold ofdarkness.(5) Wojahn's simply choosing popular music as subjectmatter for a sonnet sequence will thus be seen by some as an impertinentact.Nowhere is that more clear than in the third of the thirty-fivesonnets in the series, "W.C.W. Watching Presley's SecondAppearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show': Mercy Hospital, Newark,1956." One clue to Wojahn's estimation of his audience isclearly visible in the title; he assumes his readers will recognizeW.C.W. as the poet William Carlos Williams, Presley as Elvis, and EdSullivan as the popular variety show host of the fifties and sixties. Inother words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , he presumes his readers will be literate, music-loving, andat least of baby boomer age. Thus a silent and invisible companion text,based on shared cultural and historical knowledge, necessarily residesalongside the poem. A simple way to illustrate this situation is todiagram what elements Wojahn's assumed ideal readers consider andmanipulate when they read such a poem. On one side appears the poemitself; on the other, the companion text composed of shared historicalknowledge:The Poem - "W.C.W.Watching Presley's Second Appearance...+Reader's knowledge of W.C.W.'s poetry, Presley'smusic, Sullivan's show, and the sonnet's form.The poem's opener reinforces those assumptions, paraphrasingWilliams's remarks on the sonnet form and ending with a partialquotation from his "To Elsie":The tube, like a sonnet, is a fascist form. I read they refused toshow this kid's wriggling bum. "The pure products of America.. . ." etc.(6) (Wojahn 27)"[G]o crazy," the quotation continues in Williams'spoem, which could as easily be said of Presley as of Elsie, the mentallyhandicapped nursemaid of Williams's poem. It's also true thatWilliams called the sonnet a fascist form, an irony only deepened byWojahn's presentation of Williams speaking a sonnet lineated in histrademark "triadic line," the three foot line that falls downthe page with a heartbeat's flurry and pause.That sense of a triad extends beyond the characteristic line and isechoed in several elements of the poem. Its main figures compose a triad- Presley, Ed Sullivan, and W.C.W. - and its apparent subject matterrepresents another - music, television, and poetry. The latter triadjuxtaposes examples of what Pat Brantlinger in his Bread and Circuses bread and circusespl.n.Offerings, such as benefits or entertainments, intended to placate discontent or distract attention from a policy or situation. calls "positive classicism classicism,a term that, when applied generally, means clearness, elegance, symmetry, and repose produced by attention to traditional forms. It is sometimes synonymous with excellence or artistic quality of high distinction. " (in this case poetry) with itssullied cousin "negative classicism" (exemplified here by rock'n' roll and television). The upstart form, "negativeclassicism," promulgated by the mass media of television, radio,film, is viewed as potentially destructive because, Brantlingercontends, it is thought to derive from Roman "imperialdecadence," and we all know what happened to the glory of Rome(17). The poem's triad weaves differently colored threads ofculture within a complex tapestry composed of Sullivan's campytelevision show, Williams' poetry, and Elvis' popular song,"Don't Be Cruel," as the poem's closer shows:Mid- thought. Midwinter mid��win��ter?n.1. The middle of the winter.2. The period of the winter solstice, about December 22.midwinterNoun1. the middle or depth of winter2. , and stalled between the TV screen andwindow. . . . This pomped-up kid, who preens and tell us"Don't Be Cruel." Kid, forget it. You don't know afucking thing about cruelty yet.By 1956 Williams had endured a heart attack and the first of a seriesof strokes. As a physician, he understood his condition and whatprobably lay ahead for him. Perhaps more troubling was what lay behind:his bitter artistic struggle for recognition of his largely demotic demotic:see hieroglyphic. artin an era given to adulation ad��u��la��tion?n.Excessive flattery or admiration.[Middle English adulacioun, from Old French, from Latin ad of T. S. Eliot's hieratic hieratic:see hieroglyphic. andintellectual refinements. Williams remarked that the 1922 publication ofEliot's "The Waste Land" had destroyed his "worldlike an atom bomb." Ironically, his poetry in the "Americangrain" faced the same sort of prejudice that rock music faced; itwas viewed by many as unsophisticated and unrefined, following, as itdid, the counter-tradition of the great American rough Walt Whitman.While poets such as Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Allen Ginsbergwere inspired by his work, at the time Williams must have felt very muchthe odd man out, conversant CONVERSANT. One who is in the habit of being in a particular place, is said to be conversant there. Barnes, 162. with the kind of "cruelty" lifecan bring to a man's art and his physical being. In 1956 Presley,another "pure product of America," was just beginning toattract the attention of the ruling orthodoxy and the fame that wouldeventually bankrupt his art and destroy his person. The rebelliousnessof his music would soon be packaged by mainstream corporations, co-optedand sold for a profit to the masses, despite its supposedly scandalousqualities.In the book's notes, Wojahn warns his readers that some of theevents described are "apocryphal a��poc��ry��phal?adj.1. Of questionable authorship or authenticity.2. Erroneous; fictitious: "Wildly apocryphal rumors about starvation in Petrograd . . . " or "whollyinvented"; thus, the "historical" reality of these poemsis always tempered by the poet's own personal, imaginativeperspective on these lives and these events (85). Whether Williams saidthe above of Presley matters less than the fact that, given theircircumstances, he very well could have made those remarks. Thepoem's irony, conceived and constructed by the poet, proves to beas true as simple historical truth, and there's the rub.That idea troubles many of my students, most of whom expect a literalhistory of rock 'n' roll that nicely coincides with the rockhistories gracing their bookshelves. And they simply may not be familiarwith the historical issues Wojahn manipulates - which makes his idealaudience a rather select one. His rock 'n' roll sonnets takefacts of historical reality and often create invented incidents tosurround and thereby deepen them, to make, as it were, art out of merefact. Which is also to say that Wojahn takes characters some of us knowand places them in narrative contexts that, while faithful to thecultural and historical milieu of the time, may be more true in spiritthan in fact. This may be the case with "Matins: James Brown andHis Famous Flames Tour the South, 1958," which opens as follows:"Please, Please, Please" on the charts permits Four canaryyellow sequined suits And a hulking hulk��ing? also hulk��yadj.Unwieldy or bulky; massive.hulkingAdjectivebig and ungainlyAdj. 1. Coupe de Ville - bought on credit -For the Alabama-Georgia roadhouse road��house?n.An inn, restaurant, or nightclub located on a road outside a town or city.roadhouseNouna pub or restaurant at the side of a roadNoun 1. circuit. Half last night they drovefrom Athens, taking turns At the wheel. The radio hissed National GuardsIn Little Rock, static filling Jackie Wilson's "LonelyTeardrops."The poem's opening lines, composed in quatrains of approximateiambic pentameter and rhymed as a Shakespearean sonnet, make good use offact to establish the period's zeitgeist. Brown and his Flames didrecord a hit titled "Please, Please, Please" and Wilson's"Lonely Teardrops" was a popular radio play at the time. Thatthe group would be surprisingly and momentarily flush with cash as aresult of having a song on the charts also makes perfect economic sense;that they would thus splurge on fancy outfits and a Cadillac portrays anequally believable sense of human nature. But the poem's edge, anda key to its latent power, comes with the mention of the National Guardcalled to Little Rock to quell turmoil brought on by segregation andracial bigotry. This intertwining of musical and social historyestablishes a plausibility for the incident that follows, as well asunderscores the significant link between early rock music andsociety's first timid efforts to cross the color line. Notice howthe closing couplet coupletTwo successive lines of verse. A couplet is marked usually by rhythmic correspondence, rhyme, or the inclusion of a self-contained utterance. Couplets may be independent poems, but they usually function as parts of other verse forms, such as the Shakespearean sonnet, , obedient to the Shakespearean sonnet'sinternal form, offers stark commentary on the racial/historical settingestablished earlier:Parked near Macon in a soybean soybean,soya bean,or soy pea,leguminous plant (Glycine max, G. soja, or Soja max) of the family Leguminosae (pulse family), native to tropical and warm temperate regions of Asia, where it has been field, They sleep with heads in towelsto protect Their kingly pompadours, and as the pre-dawn Mist burns off,they wake to knocks against The windshield. A cruiser with its siren onDyes the fog bright red, Don't you niggers know your place? A billyclub, a face, the windshield breaks.The behavior of the police in this incident - real or invented -mirrors the actions of police throughout the South as white and blackAmericans tentatively began to dismantle segregation. The poem, a looseShakespearean sonnet, expresses this zeitgeist quite successfully.Because white Americans, many safely ensconced in suburbs and countryclubs, initially became familiar with aspects of black culture throughthe medium of rock and rhythm and blues rhythm and blues (R&B)Any of several closely related musical styles developed by African American artists. The various styles were based on a mingling of European influences with jazz rhythms and tonal inflections, particularly syncopation and the flatted blues chords. , this music exerted aconsiderable influence on what Andrew Ross has called a "radicalrearticulation of the color line" (95). One result was whiteAmerica's sudden valuing of original rhythm and blues songsperformed by black artists such as Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley,Sam Cook, and The Drifters, and a commensurate devaluing of coverversions of these songs performed by whites. A brief comparison of, say,Little Richard's version of "Tutti tut��ti? Musicadv. & adj.All. Used chiefly as a direction to indicate that all performers are to take part.n. pl. tut��tis1. Fruiti" and PatBoone's lame cover version was enough to convince most whitelisteners of the superiority of the original performer and performance.By the end of the fifties, Ross argues, being white and "hip"to black R & B music took on the "political connotation"of support for black "social and political aspiration," asevident in songs such as Brown's later hit "Say It Loud,I'm Black and I'm Proud" (96).Rock culture's general overstepping of boundaries, figuredadmirably in this case by its social incursions over the color line, didnot always produce such positive results. Wojahn, to his credit, pursuesthose less desirable subjects with fervor. He delves into rock subjectsas various as Jerry Lee Lewis's secret but soon discovered marriageto his thirteen-year-old first cousin, to the general dissipation ofseveral of rock's most shining lights. Readers are treated toscenes of Janis Joplin slurping Four Roses whiskey on the traindeparting Port Arthur for "Points West," the Beach Boys'Brian Wilson, having grown incredibly long manchu nails, at play in hisliving room "sandbox" with his "live-in shrink," andthe petulant pet��u��lant?adj.1. Unreasonably irritable or ill-tempered; peevish.2. Contemptuous in speech or behavior.[Latin petul behavior of the Rolling Stones demanding that their jetavoid air turbulence because it's "the Stones in here."Indeed it's the Stones' late Brian Jones whose excessive andself-destructive behavior serves as a gloss for all the fallen icons thebook treats individually or collectively. In "Necromancy: The LastDays of Brian Jones," his case seems representative of how thelaudable disregard for boundaries can sometimes lead to drowning in theblue waters of self:Hair fanning out, he'll float upside down Like the end, andbeginning, of Sunset Boulevard. Kicked out of the band, he's comehome To his manor in St. John's Wood - acid,Hard drugs, delivered by minions to poolside, Where for months on thenod he strums his National Steel, Sprawled on a Day-Glo deck chair,lavender strobes Festooning festooning (festoon´ing),n the process of carving the base material of a denture or denture pattern to simulate the contours of the natural tissues to be replaced by the denture. the water. He'll drown on his lastmeal. . . .Central to the series' allure are these acts of"necromancy," conjuring up spirits of the dead to tell theirstories and foretell fore��tell?tr.v. fore��told , fore��tell��ing, fore��tellsTo tell of or indicate beforehand; predict.fore��tell the future, seance-like encounters that also speakversions of our story and our future. This melding of personal andcollective history, of cultural and social milieu perhaps finds its bestexpression in sonnets about Presley. From the relatively"pure" version of Elvis readers encounter in "W.C.W.Watching Presley's Second Appearance . . ." to the rhinestonedand horribly bloated Presley of later sonnets in the series, his riseand fall manifests our culture's fascination with innocence and itsinevitable doom.Several of these sonnets, by mingling fact, imagination, and arhetorical trick or two, insist that we see in these figures versions ofour collective history, as the poem "The Assassination AssassinationSee also Murder.assassinsFanatical Moslem sect that smoked hashish and murdered Crusaders (11th—12th centuries). [Islamic Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 52]Brutusconspirator and assassin of Julius Caesar. [Br. of RobertGoulet as Performed by Elvis Presley: Memphis, 1968" demonstratesfirst with humor and then with subtle politics. Presley, as hisGraceland den confirms, was fond of watching three televisionssimultaneously, and the poem turns on that quaint fact. It opens with anepigraph ep��i��graph?n.1. An inscription, as on a statue or building.2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. , supposedly spoken by Presley, assessing Goulet's stiffmusical delivery, "That jerk's got no heart." The poemthan proceeds down the page in nattily-rhymed couplets, doubly breakingthe sonnet's usual outer form:He dies vicariously on "Carol Burnett," Exploding to glassand tubes while singing "Camelot."Arms outstretched, he dies Las Vegas-ed in a tux, As the King,frenzied in his Graceland den, untucksHis .38 and pumps a bullet in the set. (There are three on his wall,placed side by side.)The room goes dark with the shot, but he gets the Boys To change thefuses. By candlelight he toysWith his pearl-handed beauty. Lights go back on, But Goulet'svanished, replaced by downtown Saigon:Satellite footage, the Tet offensive, Bodies strewn strew?tr.v. strewed, strewn or strewed, strew��ing, strews1. To spread here and there; scatter: strewing flowers down the aisle.2. along Ky'spalace fences.Above a boy whose head he's calmly blown apart, An ARVN ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam colonelsmokes a cigarette.A brutal irony permeates the poem, built and directed by thespeaker's making use of what his audience knows about Elvis. Thespeaker assumes, quite rightly, that readers share his knowledge ofElvis's eventual fate: that Presley died "Las Vegas-ed"in his own inimitable in��im��i��ta��ble?adj.Defying imitation; matchless.[Middle English, from Latin inimit style, purportedly of a "heart" attackprecipitated by excessive use of prescription drugs. Even more strikingis the crucial juxtaposing of historical images at the poem'sclose. Having just witnessed Presley's figurative"assassination" of Goulet, readers now are presented with thereality of heartless wartime violence; the image conjures up the famouswire photo of an ARVN officer putting a bullet through the head of asuspected Viet Cong in his version of military justice. This commoncultural knowledge functions as an unseen historical companion textwhich accompanies and enhances the poem that appears on the page. Insome ways, the ARVN officer's deadly imposition of order on chaosand rebellion mirrors what Wojahn risks doing in this sonnet series. Herisks shooting his rebellious subject in the head with the bullet ofprescribed form, and conversely takes the chance that he might detonate det��o��nate?intr. & tr.v. det��o��nat��ed, det��o��nat��ing, det��o��natesTo explode or cause to explode.[Latin d the form by filling it with explosive subject matter. However, chaos andorder need each other; each carries in opposition the necessary imageand definition of the other. Although the sonnet's outer form isrebellious, its internal form resembles that of a Petrarchan sonnet.Roughly the poem's final six lines offer a surprising historicalcommentary enlarging the violent context featured in its octave.Wojahn has taken two historically accurate facts and invented anartistically true representation, but to do so he has most probablyplayed fast and free with the truth. It's unlikely that mundanereality, even for the King himself, would accommodate the aestheticjuxtaposing of Goulet's symbolic death with "satellitefootage" of real wartime carnage. Some readers may resent the senseof their having lost sight of the pea of truth beneath paper cups thepoet dexterously dex��ter��ous? also dex��trousadj.1. Skillful in the use of the hands.2. Having mental skill or adroitness.3. Done with dexterity. manipulates before them. Still, the mode and mood ofthe poem are honest. The Tet offensive shattered some of America'svestigial ves��tig��i��aladj.Occurring or persisting as a rudimentary or degenerate structure. innocence as explosively as Presley destroyed the televisedimage of Goulet. For one, Tet made evident that America was not on theverge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of quick victory in Vietnam, that the enemy was formidable andresourceful even in defeat, and that our allies, represented by the ARVNcolonel, were not altogether saintly warriors in the battle againstCommunist expansion. It brought home - literally, through the medium oftelevision - the disturbing reality that Kennedy's, andAmerica's, "Camelot" had indeed ended with JFK'sassassination. Presley's figurative murder of Goulet and the ARVNcolonel's killing the boy, of course, bring to mind Kennedy'sdeath in Dallas, prefiguring as well the later assassinations of RobertKennedy and Martin Luther King.Infusing politics into the realm of cultural history emphasizesrock's significance as contemporary America's epic ofinnocence and experience, where innocence, if it exists at all, isdelusional or quickly destroyed. Instructively, the series begins with"Homage: Light from the Hall," in which a thirteen-year-oldlistens in bed, "beneath the midnight covers," to rock'n' roll through "the single earphone See earbuds. " of a fiftiesstyle transistor. The operative word is "Homage," for theteenager listens, foolishly "rapt," to New Orleans' WKEDbroadcast songs he envisions "spinning" a musical andspiritual "alchemy" within the hallway light's"stammering glow." Unlike the miller's daughter of thefolk tale, this child encounters no Rumpelstiltskin willing to spinthese gold records into something redemptive, not even for the price ofa first-born, for it's precisely that childhood innocence theteenager must give up forever on the trip to adulthood. It's notdifficult to imagine this teenager to be the grown-up grown-up?adj.1. Of, characteristic of, or intended for adults: grown-up movies; a grown-up discussion.2. and now jadedspeaker of "At Graceland with a Six Year Old, 1985," thethirtieth poem of the series. Look what the space of twenty-nine ofthese sonnets has done to him. While the six year old he has brought toGraceland wholly admires its exquisite "kitch," including theliving room wall mirrored to give the illusion of a "Pipsqueak pipsqueakNounInformal an insignificant or contemptible person Versailles," the speaker reduces the entire larger-than-lifespectacle to something much more petty: the bald quest for money. Thespeaker acidly conjectures that Presley's death mattered little toPresley's manager, himself a fake Southerner, compared to the cashto be had from feeding off the public's memory of the dead singer:Colonel Parker was asked, after Elvis's death, What he'd donow to occupy his time:"Ah guess Ah'll jus' keep awn managin' him."He's really Dutch. The accent, like the colonel tag, a ruse . . . .Thus one surprising aspect of the series is its vital questioning ofthe aesthetic and cultural assumptions that inform both it and rock'n' roll. Readers hardly get the anthem of praise for rockwhich they reasonably could have expected and into which the serieseasily could have degenerated. Even those who recognized rockmusic's bankrupt artistic values and profit-greedy intentions havetheir clay feet spotlighted. For instance, in "Malcom McClarenSigns the Sex Pistols, London, 1976," the punk rockers are shown onthe occasion of their contract signing to be crass, rude, degeneratefools "throwing up/Into a pail." Though the band may havethought they were offering an anti-art response to standard anti-artrock 'n' roll, their brief and self-destructive career wasshrewdly designed by their manager Malcom McLaren to earn bundles ofmoney, mainly for himself.(7) Such poems violate some of the assumptionsupon which the series is ostensibly built by suggesting that rock'n' roll itself is not as transgressive or counter-cultural asmany of us would believe. In fact, one could argue that rock'n' roll and other sixties counter-cultural forms ofexpression (like the rhetoric of so-called "free" love) simplyacknowledge a rhetoric of "expenditure" that resides at thecore of capitalism. One great irony of the counter-cultural intentionsof rock is that many of those whose music protests the evils ofcapitalism and the deadening values of the status quo also turn a tidyprofit from doing so. Also it's no secret that rock 'n'roll has been handily hand��i��ly?adv.1. In an easy manner.2. In a convenient manner.Adv. 1. handily - in a convenient manner; "the switch was conveniently located"conveniently2. commercialized by the record companies and MTV MTVin full Music TelevisionU.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. , somuch so that even those who set out to dismantle the realms of power,such as Nirvana's late Kurt Cobain, are scandalized by their ownsuccess and the flood of cash it brings. Another, perhaps more ominousangle of looking at this is to suggest that powerful authoritarianforces allow these rebellions to take place as a way to control anddirect them, and eventually to co-opt them within the general orthodoxy.In this fashion, rebellion, as Greenblatt suggests, may indeed become"a tribute to authority."(8)This irony accounts for the manner in which Wojahn, while disparagingorthodoxy, also seems to undercut its radical alternative. first, Wojahnchooses rock music as the outlaw subject of a sonnet series, then hepresents no heroes among the anti-art artists of rock, and finally, eventhose who attempt to trespass the "standards" of rock anti-arthe shows to be driven less by aesthetic than by monetary impulses.Indeed, Wojahn works assiduously as��sid��u��ous?adj.1. Constant in application or attention; diligent: an assiduous worker who strove for perfection.See Synonyms at busy.2. , through the series' carefulchronological presentation of rock history, to isolate elements of rock'n' roll's descent. The seeds of that decline lay notonly in the allure of wealth and fame but also in theself-destructiveness of the form and its participants. Expressions ofthose self-destructive tendencies came to show themselves in rock'n' roll both through the already discussed off-stage behaviorof its stars and through increasingly wild and tempestuous tem��pes��tu��ous?adj.1. Of, relating to, or resembling a tempest: tempestuous gales.2. Tumultuous; stormy: a tempestuous relationship. on-stageperformances. The Who, for example, frantically destroyed theirinstruments after each performance in what Pete Townsend referred to as"Pop Art Auto-Destruction." Jimi Hendrix enflamed the crowd atthe 1967 Monterrey International Pop Festival at the conclusion of thesong "Wild Thing," splashing his guitar with lighter fluid,and then, John Fuller tells us, igniting the instrument while holding it"inches from his crotch crotchn.The angle or region of the angle formed by the junction of two parts or members, such as two branches, limbs, or legs. ."(9) This mix of creation anddestruction, of making and unmaking underscores the perilous connectionbetween self-definition and self-negation. The fire that creates,symbolized by the burning crotch, becomes dangerously identified withthe fire that consumes and destroys. The very idea of self becomesmingled with its negation, as if a statement of oppositional identitydemands a corollary consumption of that identity and everything proposedin opposition to the dominant order. This crescendo of self-destructivemusic and violence somehow eluded the 1969 Woodstock concert but reachedfatal levels later that year at Altamont, a stock car track near SanFrancisco where 300,000 gathered to hear the Stones give the performancethey hoped would rival Woodstock. Crowd control was the job of theHell's Angels motorcycle gang, who John Fuller contends were"hired at the rate of $500 worth of beer" and were"roaring drunk before the first chord sounded and high on cocaineand hash" (86). Not surprisingly, disaster broke out while MickJaggar strutted through "Sympathy for the Devil" within clearview of the stage, a young black man was stabbed and beaten to death bythe Angels. While the broken formal metrics and lineation ofWojahn's "Photographer at Altamont: The Morning After,1969" physically express the incident's violence, note how thepoem's content focuses not on the event itself but on itsaftermath:A dog sleeps with a frisbee in its mouth.A lotus-sitting girl plays flute: She's wearing a Confederatecap. Sleeping bag rolled out, Her friends eat breakfast, orange juiceAnd jug wine. Flute joins with harmonica harmonica.1 The simplest of the musical instruments employing free reeds, known also as the mouth organ or French harp. It was probably invented in 1829 by Friedrich Buschmann of Berlin, who called his instrument the Mundäoline. , Invisible but somewhere, ina slovenly slov��en��ly?adj.1. Untidy, as in dress or appearance.2. Marked by negligence; slipshod. See Synonyms at sloppy.slov duet. A paper bag, twisting its slow veronicas,Plummets - that's the shot he wants -Beside the flute-girl and a broken doll. Dried blood, abstract,sinews the dirt Before the stage,though he's sorry that its details,Earth tones and siennas, will be lost in his prints. The girl lightsa joint for him. He grins - Matthew Brady posing corpses in theDevil's Den.Even the "Morning After" of the title implies that speakerand reader share a common knowledge of what occurred the day before, somuch so that any actual rendering of the killing proves to besuperfluous. For a generation weaned on rock 'n' roll, justthe word "Altamont" invokes images of chaos, frenzy, andviolent death. Speaker and audience, the poem presumes, are part andparcel of the same generational myth, for both to some extent have beenshaped by similar historical circumstances - a fact which makes possiblea kind of historical/cultural shorthand where single words or phrasescarry immense cultural baggage. This poem, as is the case with so manyothers in the series, gestures off the page towards an invisiblecompanion text, historical and cultural in nature, upon which the poemdepends for historical grounding and from which it derives the aestheticfreedom to interpret those facts artistically. Jean-Paul Sartre explainsthe basis of this phenomenon succinctly:[P]eople of the same period and community, who have lived through thesame events, who have raised or avoided the same questions, have thesame taste in their mouth; they have the same complicity, and there arethe same corpses among them. (71)One result is to increase the poem's compression, thepoet's license to leave out most of the story and to focusexclusively on well-chosen and provocative details. Most of the sonnetsamount to highly compressed narratives, telling stories, part truth andpart lie, about characters often familiar to readers. In fact, Wojahnhimself admitted during our radio interview that, despite his intentionsto the contrary, these were mostly "narrative sonnets." Thisis why the poet can train his (and the poem's) eye on the"lotus-sitting," flute-playing, dope-smoking flower childamong the wreckage, assured that readers will recognize the shockingdisparity between this scene and the previous day's brutality. Hermarijuana joint, the drug of choice for those seeking safe passage topeace, love, and a mellowed out sense of well being, can not amelioratethe bitter taste of bitter reality. On their own, most readers no doubtenlarge the picture to include an ominous historical backdrop portrayingthe rock generation's bankrupt values, at least as those valueswere displayed at Altamont. The revolution came to a violent, crashinghalt. What came after was discomfitingly similar to what came before -despair in values and beliefs, failure of the will to change, a nod tothe generally unredemptive state of humankind. Much of this, it'simportant to note, exists outside of the poem and within the realm ofshared cultural knowledge.Still, Wojahn's rhetorical and imagistic manipulations havecontributed to this effect. Much like the Civil War's Matthew Bradyand this poem's Altamont photographer, Wojahn has evocativelypointed his lense towards his culture's shared "corpses,"a host of fallen stars such as Jones, Joplin, and Presley. He too standsguilty of "posing" historical facts in service of artistictruth. One figure in "'It's Only Rock and Roll But I LikeIt': The Fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon (in Vietnamese: Sự kiện 30 th��ng 4 - in English: April 30 Incident or Giải ph��ng miền Nam - in English: The Liberation of the South , 1975," fairly well embodiesWojahn's task and method. As the final helicopter rises above thedesperate crowd storming the U.S. Embassy grounds, a Marine guard bangsthe fists of a Vietnamese citizen until the man falls from thecopter's landing gear. An inspired CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. cameraman, poised in thechopper door, recognizes an aesthetic angle in the chaos:One chopper left, and a CBS cameraman leans From inside its door,exploiting the artful Mayhem.Which is not to say Wojahn's poems are exploitative, but only tosay that in the "[m]ayhem" of rock 'n' roll he hasattentively noted an "artful" quality that reveals much aboutourselves and our culture. He "exploits" that quality byposing, arranging, and manipulating bare fact in aesthetically inventiveways, which may include a touch of the "apochryphal." Whatenables Wojahn to do so is the reality that this series was clearlywritten with an image of a particular reader in mind. This reader sharesthe poet's contemporary historical circumstance and his knowledgeof rock history. Such common heritage enables a presumption of audienceawareness that heightens the series' appeal both as art and ascultural document.It's telling to note that many readers consider the success ofMystery Train to hinge on the appeal of its middle section of rock'n' roll sonnets, notwithstanding the fact that thebook's first and third sections contain a number of long narrativepoems which, in many ways, aesthetically surpass the achievement ofthese sonnets. The rock 'n' roll series has clearly taken on alife of its own Memory Burn A Life Of Its Own was released by Noise Kontrol in 2002. Memory Burn is made up of several high profile musicians who came together to create this special work. . That the book has been assigned reading in a requiredpoetry survey course taken by 1,500 second year cadets at West PointMilitary Academy indicates its surprisingly wide appeal. Despite therebellious nature of the subject matter, or perhaps because of it, thesonnet series' traditional appeal issues from the complexintersection of aesthetic, cultural, and historical lines.Because the series relies on shared cultural and historicalcircumstances, the reader's role in these sonnets is an especiallyactive one. Just as importantly, however, this reader must also knowwhat a sonnet is and isn't and thus recognize violations of theform crucial to the series' unity. Nearly all of the sonnets arefourteen liners; nearly all follow iambic pentameter fairly closely;nearly all of them exhibit a determinate DETERMINATE. That which is ascertained; what is particularly designated; as, if I sell you my horse Napoleon, the article sold is here determined. This is very different from a contract by which I would have sold you a horse, without a particular designation of any horse. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 947, 950. rhyme pattern. Just the same,the sonnets' rhyme pattern and lineation frequently violatestandard sonnet fare, and their internal logic only occasionally accedesto the sonnet's demands. Those traditional elements missing fromWojahn's sonnets, say, the determinate rhyme pattern, invisiblyaccompany the printed poem by virtue of the reader's awareness ofthese elements' absence, or their paradoxical presence in the poemthrough what Lotman calls "minus-devices."This makes perfect sense in the charged realm of aesthetictransgression and obedience, where breaking rules matters as much askeeping them. Lotman summarizes this basic tenet:An artistic text does not merely represent the implementation ofstructural norms, but their violation as well. It functions in a dualstructural field consisting of the tendency to establish order and toviolate it. Although each tendency tries to dominate and destroy theopposing one, the victory of either would prove fatal to art. The lifeof an artistic text depends on their mutual tension. (299)Manipulating readers' (mis)perceptions of artistic orthodoxy andrebellion, Wojahn's rock sonnets operate in the volatile localewhere tradition and readerly expectations converge with poeticexperimentation. On one hand, the climate is enlivened by thepoet's urge to transgress - and thereby extend - the boundaries ofa form. On the other, while readers delight in surprise, they are justas prone to reject a sonnet that so radically alters the form'sstructure as to make the poet appear unskilled, foolish, or merelyaudacious. Wojahn successfully negotiates this tension between violatingand minding the rules, reaching an "uneasy balance" betweenhigh art and low. His work celebrates at once something like theinitial, surging riff of the Stones' "Start Me Up" andthe taut, delicious tempo of a Shakespearean sonnet. We can, and should,be glad for both.ENDNOTES1 Although perhaps no other poet has devoted a sonnet series to thesubject of rock 'n' roll, numerous others have writtenindividual poems touching, at least partly, on the cultural, historical,and personal significance of rock music. An anthology has for the firsttime gathered together many of those disparate poems. Look for SweetNothings: An Anthology of Rock and Roll in American Poetry, ed. JimElledge (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994). In addition, Wojahn'sinterest in the intersection of public and private history, presentthroughout his work, is evident in his recent Late Empire (U ofPittsburgh P, 1994).2 On April 25, 1991, I conducted a radio interview of David Wojahn,broadcast on WCBU WCBU Will the Circle Be Unbroken (song), Peoria, IL.3 Throughout the interview Wojahn speaks of his efforts "toexplore the links between the personal and the historical . . . toexplore the possibilities of their juxtaposition. . . . I wouldn'tcall myself a social poet, any more than I would call myself exclusivelya poet of autobiographical concerns. My poems are often about the cuspor borderline which divides these two poles." Wojahn delineates hisown efforts in "describing a personal history and finding the waysthat history is linked to the culture."4 Fish contends that "shared ways of seeing" exist withinan interpretive community, and thus, this accounts for the way thatpoems are "constituted in unison" by the group'sindividual members (326).5 Menconi, p. 7 Menconi divides rock music into four primarycategories: Dark Music, Hard Rock/Heavy Metal, Rap Music, and Pop/DanceMusic. For each of these forms, Menconi describes at length the kind ofteenager drawn to that music and the kinds of problems they are mostlikely to possess. The analysis is often dangerously simplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple . Forinstance, "metal fans," Menconi contends, "are oftenlooking for validation, excitement, and acceptance by their peersbecause they don't believe it lies within themselves . . . . Theyfrequently admit to not liking or trusting their present circumstancesor environment. These young people will learn that the party always endsand there are always dues to pay" (9). See also Robert Fuller,Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession (New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of :Oxford UP, 1995).6 All further references to the text are to this edition.7 Wicke describes the band's first performance on November 6,1975, at St. Martin's School of Art in London, as exhibiting"wild noise from the stage mixed with graphic insults of theaudience . . . accompanied with a careful dramaturgy dram��a��tur��gy?n.The art of the theater, especially the writing of plays.drama��tur of aggression andforce . . . . It was the concept of the band's manager, MalcomMcLaren, for whom this represented the carefully prepared conversion ofan avant-garde art project. McLaren professed the art philosophy of the'International Situationists,' an (anti-) art concept whichgrew up in France in the fifties in relation to Paris Dadaism and whichexperienced a renaissance in British Art Schools in the sixties, whileMcLaren himself was studying at St. Martin's School of Art"(135-36).8 Greenblatt poses a similar argument regarding containment andsubversion of power in the early modern state in his provocative essay"Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion."The essay was included in Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds,Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (Ithaca:Cornell UP, 1985) 18-47. In short, Greenblatt argues that the ability ofthe ruling order - personified by the monarch - to initiate subversionso as to apply it for the ruling order's own purposes marks"the very condition of power" (45). Such a notion, of course,frighteningly limits the possibilities for personal or communal agencyin the face of dominant governmental or cultural powers.9 Fuller's book studies rock music's "death wish"throughout drunkenness and drugs, to these self-destructive performanceson stage, to the scene of perhaps rock's greatest tragedy: thesuffocation suffocation:see asphyxia. of eleven people, crushed by the press of the crowd, waitingfor a concert by The Who at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum,December 3, 1979.WORKS CITEDBrantlinger, Patrick. Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture asSocial Decay. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.Brooks, Van Wyck Brooks, Van Wyck(văn wĭk`), 1886–1963, American critic, b. Plainfield, N.J., grad. Harvard, 1908. His first book, The Wine of the Puritans . The Early Years. Ed. Clair Sprague. New York:Harper, 1968. Rpt. of America's Coming of Age. 1915Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class: The Authority ofInterpretative Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.Fuller, John. Are the Kids All Right?: The Rock Generation and ItsHidden Death Wish. New York: Times, 1981.Fuller, Robert. Naming the Antichrist: The History of an AmericanObsession. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.Lotman, Jurij. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Trans. RonaldVroon. Michigan Slavic Contributions No. 7. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,1977.Menconi, Al. Should My Child Listen to Rock Music?. Elgin, IL: LifeJourney, 1991.Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals & Popular Culture. NewYork: Routledge, 1989.Stein, Kevin. Interview with David Wojahn. WCBU, Peoria, IL. 25 Apr1991.Ungar, Steven. Introduction. What Is Literature? By Jean-Paul Sartre.Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.Veitch, Jonathan. "An Interview with David Wojahn,"Contemporary Literature 36.3 (Fall 1995): 392-412.Wicke, Peter. Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, and Sociology. Trans.Rachel Fogg. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.Wojahn, David. Mystery Train. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1990.Stein is professor of English at Bradley University. His PrivatePoets, Worldly Acts will be published by Ohio UP in 1996 and his newcollection of poems, Bruised Paradise by U of Illinois P also in 1996.