Doomed Fan Letters

Have you ever written a literary fan letter that you really, truly believed deserved an answer? Well, neither have I, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I wrote a whiny, begging letter to Phillip Levine about 10 years ago, after reading an article of his about the state of poetry that struck me as both perceptive and encouraging. Here was a man who would immediately see the merits of my work, I thought, so I sent off a few sample poems with some soothing flattery to help the medicine go down.
Did I hear back from the illustrious Mr. Levine? Sadly but unsurprisingly, no.
So this summer, ten years later, I decided to aim a bit less high. I’d been in Montreal and had picked up a pretty darn good book of poems (entitled "Hello Serotonin") by a semi-hipsterish-looking dude named Jon Paul Fiorentino. Not a major literary celebrity, that’s for sure. I mean, he’s from Winnipeg, though he rails violently against that fact, and claims Montreal as his second home.
I am still willing to say that the poems are pretty good, though I will now add the caveat they’re somewhat marred by an excessive use of theoretical jargon (he sprinkles in the word "performative" a bit too often for my taste). They hooked me by their skewed lyricism; the speaker knows he’s in bad shape, but can’t resist making a poem to celebrate that fact. A poem about singing with a throat full of strep is representative.
He also manages to seem quaintly rebellious without really offending my sense of social decency. He writes in tongue-in-cheek fashion about burning down Westmount, Montreal’s wealthy Anglophone enclave, where I lived for a year before deciding it was too anal retentive for me.
I’ve misplaced the book, so I can’t quote from it. Sorry. J
So for this month’s blog entry, I’m going to post the verse letter I emailed him. Qua poem isn’t not my finest effort, and qua fan letter it’s probably infuriating, but as a blend of the two genres it’s at least faintly readable.



Fan Letter
(For Jon Paul Fiorentino)

I bought your book on a whim,
on a wager with myself:
I offered to stop hating poetry
if I could read three pages without feeling
insulted, prodded or coddled.

I saw that you were as good as me,
maybe. Good enough not
to be threatened by me. And to say so.
Maybe even good enough to help me
get my difficult next book published.
(Forget I just said that,
but let the suggestion operate
on a nagging subliminal level.)

Let’s start our own school
of hypochondriac, narcoleptic poetry,
with honorary correspondence degrees
conferred on unsuspecting students.
Let’s read each other’s work and compare it
to what we thought our own could be.
Let’s be thankful for the silence
that distance enforces.
Let’s keep the secret of our perfect sanity,
insulated and apologetic.
Let’s respect each other’s jargon of innocence.
Let’s compare influences
and gauge their collateral damage.

Two men haunted by Sylvia Plath
are made for each other, in a medical sense,
as if growing alternate, duplicate organs
for sudden and gratuitous swaps.
This is not an emergency yet.
But do answer instantly, just in case.

Now why would anyone fail to respond immediately to this mixture of impertinence, grudging admiration and presumption? I ask you. No doubt I happened upon a dead email address. Though it never bounced back to me.

Feel free to share your experiences with this frustrating genre. See you next month (summer hiatus is over)

Brad