Angle of Yaw - Ben Lerner

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       For my parents

       For my brother

       In memory of Rose

      Printing, having found in the book a refuge in which to lead an autonomous existence, is pitilessly dragged out onto the street… If centuries ago it began gradually to lie down, passing from the upright inscription to the manuscript resting on sloping desks before finally taking to bed in the printed book, it now begins just as slowly to rise again from the ground. The newspaper is read more in the vertical than in the horizontal plane, while film and advertisement force the printed word entirely into the dictatorial perpendicular.

      Walter Benjamin, “One-way Street”

      Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;

      And silent answers crept across the stars.

      Hart Crane, “At Melville’s Tomb”

      Contents

       Title Page

       Note to Reader

       I Begetting Stadia

       II Angle of Yaw

       III Didactic Elegy

       IV Angle of Yaw

       V Twenty-One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan

       About the Author

       Acknowledgments

       Copyright, Credits and Feedback Link

       Donor page

      I

      BEGETTING STADIA

      I

       for Marjorie Welish

      Demands indefinitely specified,

      demands incompatible with collective living

      beget stadia

      with indefinite seating

      delicately tiered.

      Resembling its shape

      and therefore suggesting its function:

      a wave.

      Or repeating its shape

      and therefore undoing its function:

      a wave,

      which I will here attempt to situate

      in the broader cognitive process

      of turning the page.

      Just because these tears were on your face

      doesn’t mean they’re yours.

      The tree in your mind

      is mine.

      The redistribution of tears

      reflects our collective commitment

      to storm and stress,

      to attitudes befitting participants in sports

      and sports writing.

      The conventions governing weeping in novels

      do not apply to weeping done on-camera

      or in teams.

      Eldest sons dispossessed of ancestral tears

      mock the tears of the nouveaux riches.

      You call that weeping?

      We call it sports entertainment

      because the loser gets paid more,

      because losing is hazardous,

      because hazards are for losers

      in the collective economy

      of variable stars.

      Rational actors wearing wrestling masks

      would choose to lose collectively,

      to collectivize losing

      in the service industry.

      I perform a valuable service

      (I lose)

      and I work from home.

      Am I not then entitled to drink six beers

      and watch some losing gracefully performed?

      The sorcerer’s apprentice is an animated mouse

      losing control over water-toting brooms.

      Now, what does that say about cleaning?

      Sorcery cuts grease and glass like lightning!

      Now, who will clean up this water?

      What will we use to remove this water

      from our jerseys? I suggest sorcery.

      My Little League team is made up of animated mice

      losing control of their jerseys

      and delaying the game with lightning

      in the manner of Fabius and Disney.

      General Disney gets clothes clean (with sorcery).

      General Disney’s Chicken (with sorcery sauce).

      The novel hurled to the ground breaks into

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