2/20/2021
in an effort to refrain from the waxing lyrical…
which is the best way to phrase this tricky thing that I’ve been fighting in my poetry. Maggie Nelson brings in Snediker in her book, saying that one problem with ‘lyrical waxing’ is that “it often signals an infatuation with overarching concepts or figures that can run roughshod over the specificities of the situation at hand.” Or as Foucault says, “any term which tries to cover too much threatens to cancel all the way through and end up signifying nothing.”
and then what do you really have to be consumed with? something intangible, something really vague. and then, the specificities, the details that actually make the heart move, are pushed to the side. I don’t know. I think there’s also something really beautiful about an infatuation with lofty yet void concepts. like, to use that obsession as a subject to dial into in poetry. like, why does existentialism exist, right? it becomes curious and, (in my opinion), does make the heart move, when the limitations of the waxing lyrical are acknowledged, when they’re illuminated in writing. when the waxing lyrical is both described in acute detail, made to feel real, and then also made clear to be truly, at the end of the day, purposeless. why do we create and use terms that cover too much, that ultimately “cancel all the way through and end up signifying nothing”? like, okay, the waxing lyrical is fancy and smart-feeling, and maybe incites thought, but yes, it is pointless, it is lofty, and it does not exist, and what’s the interesting thing about that? about that pointlessness? why do we love pointless things? and then isn’t that an even further abstraction? why must it be pointless? what is it to be pointless? isn’t pointlessness then, pointless? what even are ‘specificities’? who’s to say what’s legitimate? what “signifies” something? who decides?
I enjoy the attention of it all, the fact that eyes are on me, and eyes all over, and that sweet things are said. I do look at him and marvel, but then, i’m not sure what i’m actually marveling at. I do not want to be consumed with the waxing lyrical, in art and in life. I don’t want an infatuation with abstractions to dictate my real, genuine human emotions. but then, what constitutes genuine? perhaps the goal after all is for society to be in a systematic propulsion of abstraction perpetuation, everyone scrambling for the elusive thing they cannot name, cannot see, cannot smell, hear, taste, knowing that those things, that words, sight, smell, noise, and taste are also, yes, things that are unnamable, unseeable, unsmellable, unhearable, untastable. I’ve wanted to love for so long, for some gear to shift into place, for the release of a breath to occur, the oh yes, this is it. the feeling of, this is exactly what it is. but i don’t know if i feel that right now. but then again, I might just have a problem with expectations. I desire the eyes, the touching and smelling and hearing. the compliments, the time spent together. but what is this talk of souls that are made of the same thing? that is an abstraction i will put my foot down for. too far, too abstract. I don’t think that’s something i’ll ever find, something that’s, frankly, findable. I’m wondering if my obsession with the waxing lyrical is incapacitating me from really feeling the waxing lyrical. does that make sense? maybe i should attempt to merely dial in on the “specificities of the situation at hand.” and i do think that’s what i’m doing. I’m more than glad to settle into the details, the way that sex feels like sinking, or swimming, the way that i am not only held by happenstance but because someone there wants to hold me, the way that i am made to feel sexy, made to feel like a body of want, a person, a person with a body! the way that he reminds me of my skin, my eyes, tears, hair, all the things that feel too close sometimes to ever be waxing lyricals but the way that maybe, to someone, they could be. and maybe he feels that grand thing, that grand indescribable thing, that grand waxing lyrical, and how does that make me feel, then?
(this was written earlier & now i am thoroughly in love! so much for being critical of waxing lyricals! but maybe that is the point! there is an impasse and once you reach it, this whole theoretical conundrum is rendered null. it’s just true and real at that point because you feel it.)