The new Adam Fieled Argotist Online e-book is The Great Recession. Many thanks to Jeffrey Side.
"The Great Recession focuses on several specific issues in poetry: the first, and most salient, is an attempt to rid the text of first person singular influences, and deliver a series of vignettes or miniaturized dramatic monologues, narrated by characters attempting to cope with the harsh, desolate landscape, the abrasions and depreciations, of the last decade to pass in the United States. This era the U. S. press often calls The Great Recession. The text should thus demonstrate a kind of cleanliness, apart from the ego concerns and obsessions of the poet at hand. The second issue is ancillary to the first: once characters are established within poems, how to make them interesting, and how to make the incidents and situations they are forced to confront emotionally and intellectually resonant on a wide basis. The third is what kind of language specifically this textual ambition calls for."
Of the approximately eight months I spent in West Philly in the Aughts, approximately four of them were spent here, in a flat at 42nd and Baltimore which Mary and Abby moved into in January 2003. Which means, in the economy of things, that I did spend four months living with Abby in the Aughts. Chez Mary & Abs was not maintained chaotically; it was kept relatively tidy; but Abby liked to throw parties, and Mary & I would have to help her clean up. Mary's windows faced 42nd Street, and she would sketch in her room, but serious painting had to be done elsewhere. Abs more or less had the same situation. Mary's room was also the big hang-out space for the three of us in the flat, where we could lounge, get high, watch movies, or do other meanwhiles.
Over the course of the Aughts, especially in the concentrated periods of 2002-2003 and 2007, and through my relationship with Mary Harju, I probably spent about eight months living in West Philadelphia. Mary probably spent about a year living in Logan Square right back. I have a sense of pride about this now: more territory for both of us to take, and conquer. Logan Square and West Philly are also an interesting contrast: the rustic (West Philly) against the newfangled, ruggedness versus sleekness, weathered wood & green yards balanced by a perfect view of an exquisite skyline. Even as our dramas unfolded both within and between the two neighborhoods, too.
P.S. Also worth noting: I spent the fall 2012 semester teaching two sections of first-year writing at the University of the Sciences in West Philly. I made the Green Line Cafe at 43rd and Baltimore my office!
Well, Stephanie, I thought, here
we go again. You’re here, in Harrisburg,
by accident, right? I would’ve noticed by
now if you were going to Penn State. So:
here she was. Blistering sunlight singed the bus
terminal, my cheap luggage. I flashed back to senior year:
everyone giggles at the exclusive soirees
held at her mansion. Ted gets booted one
Friday night after fifteen minutes, never
recovers. Chris & I maintain a disrespectful
distance. Does she know something we missed?
Only how to try to occupy the class-center, fail.
Now it’s surveillance time for the infidel.
Is it not for the know-it-all to go to hell?
"as if, Adam; as if I had any idea how to handle you, or us, or what Cheltenham had turned into by then. You: always special, always different, always such a fierce disruption against our lives. Remember— I never liked you much anyway. There's no room for special people where I come from. What's special is the order of who gets placed where when, & why. So, as I followed you out that stupid door, it's with no special anything. Philosophy? Where I come from, its this: where you come from is who you are, whether you like it or not. You were lower than us, lower, & still are, you little shit— & that luggage you had was pretty cheap, wasn't it?"
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