— Hey, sweetie, look at me.
But what we saw was not flesh — but we saw the soul, which is to say, all the sorrow we have inside.
— Don’t talk to me about sorrow. I am tired of pain, of blood. I want joy.
— It’s not anybody’s soul we want. Every day students come to me to bear their souls, manipulating sympathy through narcissistic exorcism. That’s not what a poet does. The poet is discreet — he shows us not his soul, but our souls, from a center we can all relate to — without falling into triviality.
— I declare, I read the worst paper in this city.
— You read it for the same reasons that Dante descended into hell, to understand the infrastructures and the super-structures.
— Yes, to know what garbage is. To know the commonest. And I think of the New York Times.
— Cold and pedantic compared to Le Monde. There you see a paper thinking. But the French think that the act of thinking is enough. If they think of a solution, they think they’ve solved the problem.
— How wonderful.
— Not wonderful at all. Blanchot writes a theory of an Infinite Conversation, but he doesn’t create the infinite conversation.
— The same happened to me with Theater and its Double. Artaud said what should be done in theater, but he didn’t do it. When I read it, I thought to myself, I am doing in Profane Comedy what he says must be done.
— So you are more American than you think.
— Why?
— Because you do what the French think.
— Excuse me. I also think.
— Then you are British. Britons are the sum of thought and action. That is why they are successful in war.
— Americans are successful in war.
— Not because we strategize, but because we spend billions on technology and weapons. Bombs away!
— I receive so many term papers — without a single thought — neatly packaged bibliographies.
— That’s because we teach them to crank out journalism of the worst kind. But what they say is democracy — ask everybody’s opinion — and then you end up with the voice of the moral majority. If it’s not about sex, it’s about tallying votes, or it’s about giving the impression to have the facts in hand, even if you don’t have them, invent statistics and sound objective.
— What do I know about culture? I was raised by television. I don’t watch it, but I was hooked as a kid. Totally hooked. I know that the cartoons influenced my style. People will write differently with computers.
— How can we bread our heads with something that has no soul?
— Maybe the Russians will soulify them.
— I will always write by hand. Shakespeare did not need a keyboard or spell-check, and he never spelled the same word twice.
— This is my question — how can we make the poetic spirit and the computer work in tune together — so they play the same music: the era of poetry and computers.
— What do you think of our president?
— We want action, not words, said our president, courting an invasion. It bothered me, the degradation of words. As if words were not action. They want action, not words. But words are action, when they work. Words are bullets, dynamite. But to say we don’t want words, we want action, tanks are action, bombs, but not words. Not true, Mr. President. Words are action, when they work.
— You’re full of shit. Why do words have to be bullets and bombs? That’s making it action. And it implies that you do believe that action is more powerful than words. You are uninformed.
— If you cannot formulate your thinking, what good is it to be informed? Information without knowing how to think is a luxury that should be taxed.
— Poetry is not a luxury.
— It is a luxury. Ask Cervantes in The Little Gypsy Girl. Ask Rubén Darío whether his princesses and marchionesses are a luxury. Ask Plato who threw the poets out of the Republic. Ask me who was thrown out of Rutgers for being a poet. What is a luxury? Is an air conditioner a luxury? I would love to be as luxurious in my poetry as an air conditioner in August — to have the capacity to blow so much wind, such a capacity to air us. And it’s a luxury. A gym is a luxury. I would like to exercise all my muscles in poetry. Okay. Money is a luxury. A useless necessity.
— What do you think of our mayor?
— Shrink or sink. He said that. He said:
We have to shrink or sink.
But think about it, I can’t shrink because when I do, I’m scared, I panic, and I sink. And the papers are quoting it: Shrink or sink. Is he kidding us? That’s our mayor. He is asking us to become clams, shrimp, in order not to sink. I sink if I shrink. But if I spread my arms and legs, and if I stretch out, I float, and if I try, try to speed my body along, paddling and flutter-kicking as I go, I’d swim like a goldfish through the bowl. But he is asking us to shrink. I don’t know how to swim, but I know his statement makes no sense at all. It defines him — he should shrink and sink, that’s what I think.
— What do you think of Isabel Allende?
— Wonderful. I find her wonderful. What she is doing — killing García Márquez a little more each day the same way Michael Jackson’s sisters are killing Michael Jackson.
— So you don’t like Isabel Allende?
— Like I said, she’s doing a wonderful job.
— What do you think about a WASP like Glenn Close playing in House of the Spirits? She looks like she never left New Hampshire.
— Perfect casting considering it was written for WASPs. The best definition I’ve heard of Allende was given to me by my mother, who said Allende is better than Márquez because she imitates him more clearly than himself so that when you’re done with the book, all your questions are answered, and there’s nothing left to the imagination. But, like my father says, my mother is above average in business and below average in literature.
— You underestimate your peers, particularly the live Latin ones. Márquez understands sexual politics and the human condition. Your mother could very well be la Mamá Grande.
— I don’t want my mother a la Márquez. I want Superman a la Nietzsche. Do I have to be good to be a good writer? We’re already beyond good and evil. Look at Melville, a misogynist, Pound, a fascist, Caravaggio, a murderer, and Burroughs, an evil genius.
— You’re as mad as a hatter, lady.
— Look, Foucault said: Politics is the continuation of war by other means. I say: Politics is the domestication of war. I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be a revolutionary.
— Who cares what Foucault said? Even Foucault didn’t care what Foucault said. I’m sure you’re taking him out of context anyway. You’re a danger to society. In a way, I’m concerned about being your friend. You don’t know anything about politics. Nothing at all. Yet you talk nonsense with such conviction, such hostility. You live in a fantasy world — protected by puppets — you’re afraid to mature.
— I’m not a puritan. I don’t believe that killing a man makes you less of an artist or that being loyal to your wife makes you a better politician. I don’t, I don’t. Look, there was a whore who offered her tits to the people in Italy and she became a senator. I believe in her. I want a beggar in our house of senate, a garbage man, a plumber, a poet.
— That’s totally ignorant. Whoever she was, I’m sure she was not elected to the Italian senate because she was a whore, you misogynist traitor.
— You said Mick Jagger’s wife should be president of Nicaragua. Because, quote — she is as smart as a whip — end quote. What makes her less of a whore for power? How can she become president of Nicaragua if she does not even live there, and yet you respect her because she is famous?