T=I=D=Y Langauge

I came — admittedly — a little late to Daniel f. Bradley’s poetry, getting a copy of his A Boy’s First Book of Chlamydia (yes, awesome title), published by Jay MillAr’s BookThug in 2005. My favorite poem in that collection, “Privilege,” had me smiling wide with its final lines, which I always return to (if I open the book it’s the first thing I read, without fail): “Wang worldwide / with the spiffy stuff.” How’s that for summing up the shitty condition we’re all in? A very cool moment came a few years late: Bradley came to the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, accompanied (I believe) by Rob Read and Jay MillAr. There, to an audience of Daniel and Rob and my girlfriend, I read a couple limericks (then, unpublished) and read “Privilege,” too, for the awesome audience of three. (The other notable: Daniel hooked me up with a CD of some Texas Swing.)

Last fall, arriving in my mail, T=I=D=Y Language. It's Bradley’s book-length prose-poem, filled with anger, contempt, and humor (most often, parody), each aimed at a variety of things: the Toronto poetry community, Canadian poetry tropes, the symbolic capital of modernity (which is often used then, immediately, disavowed, so as to enable claims to aesthetic progress), literary criticism (or what passes for it) and propriety, linguistic or otherwise (i.e. property— he’s not interested in copyright but “copywrong,” as he writes at the end of A Boy’s First Book of Chlamydia).

In one word, Bradley poetry is all about the abject: it throws out (spews, ejects, so that the words of the book may be “jammed up their [readers] asses”) and throws down (ie. the gauntlet). His prose-paragraph chunks— absent of grammatical markers (“i can’t even spell punctuation”), composed of dictated, a la Spicer, linguistic detritus— accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, with words, phrases, and ideas banging violently into each other. The effect is, in fact, an overwhelming— sometimes brutal, sometimes banal (purposely so)— reading experience. It’s not nice, nor is it meant to be. It is a “slow book that lasts at levels that deliver over time” (54). Yet, paradoxically, in the absence of syntax, it’s as if Bradley’s prose paragraphs don’t exist in time.

At this point, I would usually provide a couple quotes, as is the generic norm in the review. But it’s a dangerous thing, given that critics are on Bradley hit / shit list: “doubt their intentions as critics when they fill up on junk culture smug ironic all the homage and gang rape and each and everyone of them reaches for the lame epiphany.” This, followed by the parodic, “take a look at those last lines cut out from the stanza before breath so savor the reveal” (54). It’s not that Bradley is against criticism; rather, he’s against the circle-jerk sort of criticism, which has nothing to do with drawing attention to the text itself.

Here’s Bradley having a little fun with some cliché Canadian poetry, which aspires to a seriousness and severity, but is neither: “how when she dreamed blue language was suspended.” Ridiculous. Absolutely. But accurate. Consider that, recently, there was book of Canadian poetry published under the title, What if red ran out… (I'm just sayin', he ain't off the mark). Or, here’s another similar passage: “rereading river sun scent lilac outside the window worshipper walk through walls touch.” Think of it this way: through his form, he’s submits such poeticisms to a process of adulteration. And here he is giving it to Christian Bok (I assume): “yea that’s his thing his street barker lame fucking parlor trick I heard merz cough up bile in the grave athleticism.” It's that "bile" that Bradley is channelling.

I just want to end with three things, from near the end of the book. First, my fav. quote from the book (sorry for taking it out of context, Daniel, but it’s just too good):

“just going to church doesn’t make you christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car number one you ain’t”

Second, Bradley writes, “there is no literary references at all in the work” — of course, not entirely true. Perhaps, he’s not using allusion in the same way as other do, those who foreground it so as to claim the symbolic capital of the reference. However, the key literary reference is the book’s title, which swings — boldly — at a certain group of 1970s American writers and their Canadian descendents, who Bradley suggests are trying to revive (the modernist “pant”), though in fact only desecrating (or self-servingly piggy-backing on), the best of modernity. Whether true or not, I have no feeling one way or another. But it’s worth pondering his suggestion.

Finally, the final line of T=I=D=Y Language suggests what you’ve been reading is some twisted or adulterated “Canadian poetry” fairytale, but those who live “happy ever after” are anything but poets and anything but deserving of their happiness: “then they all went back to teaching their workshops.”

(Go to fhole.blogspot.com to find out how to buy a copy of T=I=D=Y Language. He kindly mailed me a copy, so I have no idea, really— BookThug’s a good bet, though).