Louis Esterhuizen. Mary Karr se poëtiese woede na David Foster Wallace se selfmoord
Friday, October 19th, 2012
Die veelbekroonde skrywer David Foster Wallace (foto) het hom sedert sy debuut in 1987 gevestig as een van Amerika se gewildste en mees innoverende skrywers; ‘n reputasie wat veral met Infinite Jest (1996) bekragtig is. Na ‘n jarelange worstelstryd met depressie het hy egter op 12 September 2008 selfmoord gepleeg deur homself op te hang.
Enkele weke gelede is daar ‘n huldiging, “Rereading David Foster Wallace“, vir dié begaafde skrywer gehou tydens die New Yorker Festival. Een van die paneellede wat oor Wallace se lewe en werk gesels het was die eweneens bekende digter Mary Karr met wie Wallace ‘n bra stormagtige verhouding gehad het in die 1990s. Veral haar gedig “Suicide’s Note: An Annual“, wat kort na Wallace se dood in Poetry Magazine verskyn het, was vierkantig onder oë geneem aangesien dié gedig baie direk met Wallace in gesprek tree.
Mary Karr
Volgens die dekking wat Slate aan dié paneelbespreking gee, die volgende by wyse van inleiding: “It’s a knotty, complicated poem, one that bears sitting with and puzzling over. Beginning with that title. Why ‘an annual’? It is as if Wallace’s death were something that happened over and over, both defeating the finality of death and hammering it home. The title keeps dragging its subject to life, for better or worse.”
Die gedig self bevat vele biografiese verwysings; soos die insident toe Wallace Karr met ‘n koffietafel gegooi het, of die keer toe hy haar uit die motor geboender het in ‘n minder as veilige buurt … Tydens die bespreking het Karr wel genoem dat sy ‘n brief by wyse van apologie ontvang het: “Karr recalls a ‘letter of apology’ Wallace wrote her, in which he regrets ‘being such a dick.’ Reading the poem, you’re not sure if Karr has forgiven him. ‘Every suicide’s an asshole,’ she writes. ‘There is a good reason I am not/God, for I would cruelly smite the self-smitten’.”
Sjoe. Dat Karr se gedig in woede gepekel is, is gewis.
Ten slotte, die slotparagraaf van Slate se berig, gevolg deur die betrokke gedig.
But beneath the anger is a remorse that feels deliberately exposed. I’m sure Karr’s pugnaciousness and humor-“I just wanted to say ha-ha, despite/your best efforts you are every second/alive”-are meant to read like defense mechanisms. After all, she groups herself among the many who administered to DFW “collective CPR.” Every poem contains layers of revelation and control, and the line “There is a good reason I am not/God” feels unguarded in its despair. Karr implies not only that she lacked the power to save Wallace, but that such power could never have been rightfully hers.
***
Suicide’s Note: An Annual
I hope you’ve been taken up by Jesus
though so many decades have passed, so far apart we’d grown
between love transmogrifying into hate and those sad letters
and phone calls and your face vanishing into a noose that
I couldn’t
today name the gods
you at the end worshipped, if any, praise being
impossible for the devoutly miserable. And screw my church who’d
roast in Hell poor suffering
bastards like you, unable to bear the masks
of their own faces. With words you sought to shape
a world alternate to the one that dared
inscribe itself so ruthlessly across your eyes, for you
could not, could never
fully refute the actual or justify the sad heft of your body, earn
your rightful space or pay for the parcels of oxygen you
inherited. More than once you asked
that I breathe into your lungs like the soprano in the opera
I loved so my ghost might inhabit you and you ingest my belief
in your otherwise-only-probable soul. I wonder does your
death feel like failure to everybody who ever
loved you as if our collective cpr stopped
too soon, the defib paddles lost charge, the corpse
punished us by never sitting up. And forgive my conviction
that every suicide’s an asshole. There is a good reason I am not
God, for I would cruelly smite the self-smitten.
I just wanted to say ha-ha, despite
your best efforts you are every second
alive in a hard-gnawing way for all who breathed you deeply in,
each set of lungs, those rosy implanted wings, pink balloons.
We sigh you out into air and watch you rise like rain.
© Mary Karr (Poetry Magazine, 2012)
