PERCIVAL BROWNLEE REDUX ____________________________
Writing Business
“This is the end of the ledger's
account of Brownlee, but not
of Isaac's. Brownlee again
interrupts the story that Isaac
wants to tell, of his grandfather's
sins, as Isaac moves his narration
through the Civil descendants.
It seems clear that before Isaac
can discuss his grandfather's
sexuality, his father's sexuality
intrudes.”—Noel Polk & Richard
Writing Business
“This is the end of the ledger's
account of Brownlee, but not
of Isaac's. Brownlee again
interrupts the story that Isaac
wants to tell, of his grandfather's
sins, as Isaac moves his narration
through the Civil descendants.
It seems clear that before Isaac
can discuss his grandfather's
sexuality, his father's sexuality
intrudes.”—Noel Polk & Richard
Godden, "Reading the ledgers,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
07-01-2002
.
Faulkner’s writing style—
It’s full of interruptions
Gaps, blanks, question marks.
It’s up to Readers—
To complete the Narrative
The way they want to.
Like Hawthorne’s ledgers—
The purloined Scarlet Letter
Opens storylines.
And so Narrative—
Veers towards darker thoughts
Shadowy ledgers.
Anticipating—
Future Southern darknesses
Advancing pages.
Ledgers conducting—
The writing business of
A doomed plantation.
Returning again—
To gay oral intercourse
Faulkner’s locution.
Tongues of lovers pun—
Subversively into the
Speech of dead brothers.
Apocrypha
"Apocrypha:
a self-consciously
Other”
—Joseph Urgo
Faulkner's Apocrypha:
"A Fable," "Snopes,"
and the Spirit of
Human Rebellion
Yoknapatawpha—
As a writer’s synecdoche
Producing Others.
Alternatives for—
Other selves, other places
Fabulated now(s).
The ledger entries—
Indirectly explaining
Why Isaac's father…
Bought Brownlee for love—
A business transaction
Cotton field logic.
Pornographic Poetics
“a meditation on
an unsublimated,
pornographic poetics
in the emergence of
Yoknapatawpha”
—Kodat, Catherine Gunther
“Posting Yoknapatawpha,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
10-01-2004
It happens each day—
Armando cute Hispanic
Young Mexican kid.
Supposedly just—
My lawn-boy but really more
Like my Percival.
Arizona slaves—
Continuing the Deep South
Cotton field logic.
Yoknapatawpha—
Auto-eroticism
And intertextuality
Sublimation as—
Satisfaction of porno
Pulp Sanctuaries.
This young alien—
Illegal like all the rest
Needing some money.
Brown-skin slavery—
Arizona just as bad
As Mississippi?
Palin tea-baggers—
Feuilleton Journalism.
A big issue now.
Armando just like—
Percival Brownlee was then
A cute kept slave-boy
Gossip magazines—
Aspiring to poetics
Flaunt Porno erudition.
Delta Poetics
“The legers: a text
virtually unmoored
from conventional
linearity & periodicity.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Armando a slave—
Is that what I’m saying now
With these new ledgers?
The way text is—
Unmooring itself from the past
Into the future?
The irony is—
Like Uncle Buck I’m the slave
The real slave to love.
“Don’t mow the lawn kid,”—
Skip all the goddamn yard work
I want you in bed.
Put on some porno—
Smoke a joint & get naked
I be his sex-slave.
“Having used verse,
I would now allow verse
to use me if it could.”
—William Faulkner
Early Prose and Poetry
Perhaps with the same—
Secretly unscrupulous
Intentions for love.
Without repression—
Translating this postage stamp
World like Faulkner did.
Brownlee a good lay—
Even tho aint no bookkeeper
Or cotton picker.
Armando’s the same—
He’s only good for one thing
To love and be loved?
Faulkner’s writing style—
It’s full of interruptions
Gaps, blanks, question marks.
It’s up to Readers—
To complete the Narrative
The way they want to.
Like Hawthorne’s ledgers—
The purloined Scarlet Letter
Opens storylines.
And so Narrative—
Veers towards darker thoughts
Shadowy ledgers.
Anticipating—
Future Southern darknesses
Advancing pages.
Ledgers conducting—
The writing business of
A doomed plantation.
Returning again—
To gay oral intercourse
Faulkner’s locution.
Tongues of lovers pun—
Subversively into the
Speech of dead brothers.
Apocrypha
"Apocrypha:
a self-consciously
Other”
—Joseph Urgo
Faulkner's Apocrypha:
"A Fable," "Snopes,"
and the Spirit of
Human Rebellion
Yoknapatawpha—
As a writer’s synecdoche
Producing Others.
Alternatives for—
Other selves, other places
Fabulated now(s).
The ledger entries—
Indirectly explaining
Why Isaac's father…
Bought Brownlee for love—
A business transaction
Cotton field logic.
Pornographic Poetics
“a meditation on
an unsublimated,
pornographic poetics
in the emergence of
Yoknapatawpha”
—Kodat, Catherine Gunther
“Posting Yoknapatawpha,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
10-01-2004
It happens each day—
Armando cute Hispanic
Young Mexican kid.
Supposedly just—
My lawn-boy but really more
Like my Percival.
Arizona slaves—
Continuing the Deep South
Cotton field logic.
Yoknapatawpha—
Auto-eroticism
And intertextuality
Sublimation as—
Satisfaction of porno
Pulp Sanctuaries.
This young alien—
Illegal like all the rest
Needing some money.
Brown-skin slavery—
Arizona just as bad
As Mississippi?
Palin tea-baggers—
Feuilleton Journalism.
A big issue now.
Armando just like—
Percival Brownlee was then
A cute kept slave-boy
Gossip magazines—
Aspiring to poetics
Flaunt Porno erudition.
Delta Poetics
“The legers: a text
virtually unmoored
from conventional
linearity & periodicity.”
—Noel Polk & Richard Godden,
"Reading the ledgers,” The
Mississippi Quarterly 07-01-2002
Armando a slave—
Is that what I’m saying now
With these new ledgers?
The way text is—
Unmooring itself from the past
Into the future?
The irony is—
Like Uncle Buck I’m the slave
The real slave to love.
“Don’t mow the lawn kid,”—
Skip all the goddamn yard work
I want you in bed.
Put on some porno—
Smoke a joint & get naked
I be his sex-slave.
“Having used verse,
I would now allow verse
to use me if it could.”
—William Faulkner
Early Prose and Poetry
Perhaps with the same—
Secretly unscrupulous
Intentions for love.
Without repression—
Translating this postage stamp
World like Faulkner did.
Brownlee a good lay—
Even tho aint no bookkeeper
Or cotton picker.
Armando’s the same—
He’s only good for one thing
To love and be loved?
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