Autobiography: Urn Burial

1

I could say“authenticity”

will have been about tryingto overtake the past,

inhabit itlong enough to look around,

say “Oh,”

but the past is tricky,

holds off.

So are we really moving?

Or is this somethinglike the way

form appearsto chase function?

2

I might hazard that my life’s coursehas been somewhat unusual.When I say that, I hear bothan eager claimand a sentence that attempts to distance itselfby adopting the styleof a 19th century English gentleman.The failed authorityof such sentences is soothing,like watching Masterpiece theater.

When I recount my experiences,whatever they may have been,I’m aware of piping tunesI’ve heard before.Or jumbled snatches of familiar tunes.

The fancy cannot cheat4for very long, can it?In the moment of experience,one may drownwhile another looks on.

(From Money Shot, Wesleyan University Press, 2010, pages 30-31).

4 The complete quotation is “the fancy cannot cheat so well”, from Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Notice that the beginning of part 2 of the poem is deliberately written in an old-fashioned style: thus is the problem of inherited discourses (and therefore thoughts) within oneself pointed out.