Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note
(For Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959)
Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
the ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus . . .
Things have come to that.
And now, each night I count the stars
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Nobody sings anymore.
And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter’s room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there . . .
Only she on her knees, peeking into
Her own clasped hands
- LeRoi Jones
Even now, when I’ve so long abandoned literature for rhetoric, it’s poetry that saves me.
Comments
Wasn't poetry long considered a branch of rhetoric? And maybe it still should be considered such. If poetry is not rhetoric what is it? "A volcanic eruption." - Byron.
Posted by: Tutor | February 26, 2005 2:11 PM
I'm with the Tutor on this one. Poetry has its rhetoric, just as fiction does (as we understand from Wayne Booth and from Plato's Ion, among others). And as I think your post shows, one doesn't ever really abandon literature. . .
But what initially got my attention was the poem itself, since its title has long been my favorite title of any poem, ever.
Posted by: Mike | February 26, 2005 9:08 PM
You two are right, of course, in a technical sense. It was different in practice for me because my undergrad Rhetoric and English Departments were separate, having gone through a Southern-Baptist-type split about 10 years before. The Lit folks were convinced that anyone studying Rhetoric was a traitor, and while the Rhetoric folks weren't that bullheaded, they weren't exactly that far behind either. I double-majored in both as an undergrad and then did a Masters in the Rhetoric Department. It very much felt like abandoning literature, both because of the department politics and because studying Rhetoric just didn't leave much time for reading anything else.
Posted by: Krista | February 27, 2005 1:00 PM