Primary Source - Jason Schneiderman (Red Hen Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Primary Source.  Jason Schneiderman.  Red Hen Press.  Pasadena, California.  2016.

Winner of the Benjamin Salter Award, 2014

To Please and Instruct

       The purpose of art is to please and instruct

       -- Horace, Arts Poetica

The moral of this poem is fuck you.

The moral of this poem is I'm drunk.

The moral of this poem is I'm too drunk to be held responsible for what I'm

saying to you right now.

The moral of this poem is you're fat.

The moral of this poem is if you come after me, I will have your Hotmail

account turned off, true story.

The moral of this poem is herpes.

The moral of this poem is the Pope's a liar.

The moral of this poem is I'm sorry I threw up through my nose on you.

The moral of this poem is getting through customs without a passport.

The moral of this poem is gestalt therapy.

The moral of this poem is terrorists.

The moral of this poem is you like Tarantino movies because you're stupid

and I like Tarantino movies because I'm smart.

The moral of this poem is cats that look like Hitler.

The moral of this poem is reality television.

The moral of this poem is don't have sex with your siblings, parents, or

anyone under eighteen, sixteen if you're in Greece, fourteen in Denmark.

The moral of this poem is meth mouth.

The moral of this poem is gun-show loophole.

The moral of this poem is Gawker.

The moral of this poem is two state solution.

The moral of this poem is too much rage.

The moral of this poem is rehab sucks.

The moral of this poem is your wife being fingered in the bathroom at a 

party by this guy you invited because you thought he was cool and look

where that got you. 

The moral of this poem is rules change.

The moral of this poem is George Washington filling his dentures with

teeth pulled from his slaves.

The moral of this poem is kill me.

The moral of this poem is hip surgery.

The moral of this poem is drone strike wedding massacre.

The moral of this poem is thong.

The moral of this poem is shut up.

The moral of this poem is make me.

...

Let's get this party started with a kick-ass list poem.  That's the ticket.  Today's book of poetry loves a good list poem and "To Please and Instruct" is a stone-cold killer and the best list poem we've come across in a good while.

Jason Schneiderman's Primary Source is a playground for avid readers of poetry.  There is no commitment by the poet to any particular school or style of poetry, Schneiderman is all over the stylistic map and that is a total win for the reader.  This poet tears it up with ribald wit, no obvious sympathies, and a willingness to go in for the kill.  If Schneiderman were an athlete Today's book of poetry is convinced he'd be a wicked smart decathlete.

My Rich Friend

My rich friend wasn't always rich

but now he's very good at it,

by which I mean he's generous,

has excellent taste, never makes

anyone uncomfortable, has good

boundaries, and please don't tell him

but if I were ever to kill myself,

he has this wonderful window

in this perfect little dining nook

that's fifteen stories up and opens

all the way. The last thing

I would see is a soapstone zodiac

carved into a recess in the ceiling,

and then the city going by

ever so fast. I'm not usually tempted

by an open window. I don't know

how he survives it every day.

...

Primary Source does all those things Today's book of poetry looks for in a book of poems.  These poems are clever but not coy with wicked dry humour and instructive without ever being overbearing. 

Schneiderman dives into Cole Porter water with a pseudo-song of three verses that he uses to start off each of the three sections of Primary Sources.  Schneiderman is tipping his hat and it is a big hat because he has something to say and is surrounding himself with a litany of poets and a peppering of cultural pop shots.  Here's a partial list:  James Merrill, Helen Vendler, Stephen Spender, Yoko Ono, William the Shake, Thom Gunn, David Lee Roth (of all spandex wearing people), Marie Howe, John of Ashbery, Farah Fawcett, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Dale Young, Ashton Kutcher, Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, William Matthews and so on.  It's a hearty list of playmates and influences and guilty pleasures.

Jason Schneiderman knows how to play hard and in these poems he talks about gender and the performative nature of gender and how cruel and ignorant love and lust can be.  Schneiderman also muses on racism, John Cage and the fear of bears.  Today's book of poetry found it all compelling.

The Turing Test

        It might be urged that when playing 'the imitation game' the best strategy for

          the machine may possibly be something other than the behaviour of a man.

          -- Alan Turing

Who do you think he is, this boy in the Midwest

jerking off to the end of Alan Turing's biography,

getting aroused by the parts where the shame

and degradation are exactly what he's always wanted,

at a pornographic remove, and his history teacher

knows nothing about the end of Alan Turing's life,

which this boy will wisely leave out of his report.

Chemical castration? Hot. Nascent breasts? Hot.

Driven to suicide? Hot. Hot. Hot. And yes,

in the morning, on the school bus, or in the passenger

seat of his friend-girl's car, he'll think, That was

seriously fucked up, jerking off to that, and he won't 

even tent his pants by the light of day, knowing

he erased his browser history of all the chastity

blogs, and all the chat rooms where he gets to be

six-foot-two and the captain of the football team

who always just turned eighteen yesterday and

is enslaved to his coach, but that fantasy is getting

tired, and his mind wonders to tomorrow's trig

exam, and soon he'll get back to Alan Turing,

cock-slave to his government. Hot. Defeater of Nazis.

Hot. And by day, this you're-not-fooling-anyone

president of the Gay/Straight alliance may be furious

at how this hero was treated, will start a petition

to get the science lab named for Alan Turing,

but at night he wonders, in one recurring fantasy,

if he could ever pass the Turing test, but in the other

direction. If maybe, just maybe, no one could ever tell

he was human.

...

Sunday morning usually makes for a quietish office read but the Today's book of poetry staff were full of piss and vinegar today.  Schneiderman isn't just brilliant he can be incendiary.  Milo, our head tech, was particularly taken by the strong and fearless head on Schneiderman's shoulders.  Milo insisted we include a fourth poem today and he made a good case for it.  Today's book of poetry was easily swayed.

In the Next Room

She said, "Remember when you liked me

more than crack?" and he said, "Yeah, that

was when I hadn't met crack yet." and when

she huffed and tried to leave the booth

he grabbed her arm, and pulled her back

and said, "We have to talk about the dog,

remember?" and she said, "I thought

we were talking about the dog?" and he said,

"We have to finish talking about the dog,"

and she said, "So fucking finish talking

about the dog." and he said, "So stop being

a giant cunt and I will," at which point,

in a single sweeping movement of her arm

she knocked every single thing off the table,

and the cups and plates broke against

the floor, and the coffee flew up and stained

my pants, and the silverware clattered, and

we weren't overhearing anymore, we were

paying rapt attention, and he said, "You're paying

for that, you bitch," and she said,

"Pick up the tab, asshole," and not one

single person tried to stop her as she left.

...

Jason Schneiderman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason Schneiderman was born in San Antonio Texas, but was raised around the United States and Western Europe owing to his father s military service. He holds BAs in English and Russian from the University of Maryland, an MFA from NYU, and a PhD from the Graduate Center of CUNY. He is the author of two previous collections of poems: Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004) and Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press, 2010), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize. He is also the editor of the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2015). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, Verse Daily, The Poetry Review, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Schneiderman has received Fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and is the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Michael Broder."

BLURBS
Jason Schneiderman's Primary Source is a sparkling demonstration of this principle: a poet evolves by making as many aspects of the self as possible available on the page. By turns sardonic and sincere, nakedly vulnerable or armored in irony, the wild magpie intelligence shaping these poems plucks threads from Shakespeare and Stein, borrows forms from Cole Porter and Wittgenstein, and bows to a variety of influences so vast (Sylvia Plath and David Lee Roth?) as to constitute a way of situating the self, influencing the dizzily happy reader to a queer subject, a livewire thinker at work, a breathing human presence."
     -  Mark Doty

Schneiderman's poetry goes beyond camp, slapstick, and coterie aesthetics, although that's his terrain, too; his quick-dazzle intellect is its own happening, a commedia dell'arte cutting through the noise, offering both literary and social critique. The pleasures are here, the mystique of Schneiderman is Schneiderman."
     --  Major Jackson

 'Elegy VII (Last Moment)' by Jason Schneiderman

Video: PBS Newshour

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