ABSTRACT COLLECT by Jacob Carl Harksen This collection of poems seeks to explore the individual’s relation to the self and others, and between the lyric “I” and forms of collectivity, under the duress of 21st-century capitalism. The poems respond to certain political and economic pressures, including namely debt, and assert that poetry can be a meaningful aid in, if not site of, resistance to those pressures. The collection seeks to enact in poetry a political content, which is typically the province of a highly theorized discourse, by direct treatment of the lived world of feeling and belief. A narrative arc is developed over the course of the collection that tracks the radicalization of those feelings and beliefs in the life of an individual as they attempt to make answer to the pressures of capital in a variety of modes and forms. COLLECT A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the reQuirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English by Jacob Carl Harksen Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2013 Advisor: ________________________________________________ cris cheek Reader: ________________________________________________ Keith Tuma Reader: ________________________________________________ Catherine Wagner Jacob Carl Harksen 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS the fox……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Dinghy……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2 State of the Union……………………………………………………………………………………………………………3 * White Flag……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 swell………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6 State of the Union……………………………………………………………………………………………………………7 Portrait with Avocado……………………………………………………………………………………………………..9 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….10 * White Flag..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...12 love song………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………13 Diamond Rings……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..14 slow song……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..15 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….17 debt locker…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...18 State of the Union…………………………………………………………………………………………………………19 swell…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….21 Haute Couture………………………………………………………………………………………………………………22 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….23 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24 hold……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...26 iii lend and borrow…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...27 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….28 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30 As I Said to My Boss, …………………………………………………………………………………………………….31 redline………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….32 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….33 land……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...34 Take Care……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..35 cave art………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...37 swell…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….38 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….39 Self-Portrait as Richard Nixon……………………………………………………………………………………….40 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….41 So Long, Castro……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..43 Lecture, March 18…………………………………………………………………………………………………………44 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….45 Statement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..46 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….47 hotline………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….49 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….50 Ahoy Anarchists……………………………………………………………………………………………………………51 Fuck Cops……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..52 Ahoy Punks…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..53 iv Another Cop Kisser……………………………………………………………………………………………………….54 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….55 fire season……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………56 zero……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...57 State of the Union………………………………………………………………………………………………………….58 swell…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….59 account………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...60 * White Flag………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….61 Ahoy Outlaws ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….62 collect…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..63 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………64 v the fox they will hunt you out of every hollow place they turn dogs on you they are the dogs and sometimes you have to put a dog down first 1 Dinghy The thing was, she said, she’d never been made to love being made love to. The warm fuzzies spiraling out of control, what I said back was psychobabble and intimacy and trial and error and so beautiful really heartfelt shit because the thing is, I said to her, they will always be trying to fuck us and it’s just unbearable if you can’t find some enjoyment once in awhile even if it’s just to fuck them back. And she hates it when I get political so she just said uh huh and huh and so I’ve been reading Rilke, these dinghy-dicts or whatever. Yeah, I said, it means something like thing poems, and the thing is they are like little boats so I didn’t correct her, I just imagined them folded up like the paper hats kids make out of newspaper, or something more complicated like origami ducks, each one with a candle on its back, drifting on a pond until the wick burns down and ignites the paper and the little ship sinks and fizzles out. The thing is, even if I had said all that the difference made would be nil. We talk into each other like calling down a well. Hello please accept this thing I call my identity and allow it to echo around in your mouth for awhile. Pick up and we’ll chat. I’ll sip you through the wire like a silly straw of indefinite length. The thing is, I know it must be hard for you to determine exactly how I am saying this without the use of my voice. 2 State of the Union Mr. Speaker, it’s a privilege to approach our country. I thank you for your Congress. I want to discuss important issues. We’re off to a good start, making a new President. I came to take an oath I pledged to honor greater resources. An artist could picture warning signs: prices, the stubborn budget surplus a military at peace with technology. Revolution concerns a picture complete of itself. A picture to solve the problems of Government—some but not all. Government crowds work the private economy on a limited philosophy. It is very responsible. And then when money is still left over it is counted in dollars but measured in percent increase. Education is not my top priority —education is my top priority. Reading is learning, right. I like teachers so much I married one. Dollars do not always make reform. We will not run the Federal Government on results. Measuring is the only way to know and I want to know. The logic of basic math. That’s the whole idea. Choose between buying food and all $2.6 trillion. Yr insurance company doesn’t care and won’t pay. This President gives hope to serious disease. 3 Our prayers are a cancer to Congress. The New Freedom makes our society more welcoming. I’m reQuesting $5.7 billion in increased pay and benefits and health care and housing. We owe it to I. A billion faster decisions will improve our accelerating cleanup of toxic treasures. Government cannot be replaced by volunteers. Good people itemize or not, deduct for compassion a prison to fight illiteracy and other difficult problems. With us tonight is the Street. I’m aware the Street’s a Democrat. Let the record show— big time. Earlier today I asked John Ashcroft to end racial profiling. We owe our grandchildren in debt. We have all the debt that is available. We need to sell our farmers for a trillion dollars. That is one trillion additional reasons you can feel comfortable supporting this. And we still have Yogi Berra. We have choices. Let the people spend their own money to throw darts at a board for tax relief. I didn’t take a poll or formula the cost I targeted everyone who pays in grief. That’s real money. My attitude is achieving dreams. Government is the people’s money. Hard work sends a terrible message: “You’ll never get ahead.” Millions of additional Americans will be removed from the rolls entirely. Well done, good and faithful servants. 4 * White Flag When the first true realization of the debt I would owe was known to me, I doubled down. What’s another ________________________ when you already owe _________________________________. My mother taught me it was impolite to talk about money. I think we believed this because we didn’t have it, or when we did, it was the negative money of debt. But when you’re poor, you know you’re poor, and you know you will be in the future, if you should live to see it, so why live like you’re poor now (you are) when you can pretend not to be, when it’s so easy to say yes to the money the banks hold out to you, or the government, or both. I took the money, and I’m still taking it, knowing this will end badly, as it always does—or maybe. Maybe I can hold out long enough to die first, or long enough for the whole thing to collapse (and maybe it will), or long enough to run (and maybe I will). There are degrees of debt. I am collecting them all. 5 swell let me be your subprime domesticant, tumescent irascible in your hour of need-erasure the highest plateau of being is an unremarkably