SoMa Literary Review - Warriors - Or, I Bought a Bestseller at the Bookstore of Pain

Warriors
Or, I Bought a Bestseller at the Bookstore of Pain

By Jon Alan Carroll

The interview took place at a sad-boho cafe with the usual mismatched tables, local art, and classical music playing quietly in the background. Probably early Blue Oyster Cult, off the Tyranny and Mutation album.

What's left to be said about Matthew Guzzi? Poet, drunk, madman, voice of our degeneration?

Condemned by critics as unrelentingly bleak and dark, Guzzi's long-poems, Moneypain, In Praise of Nothingness, and Nihilism for Beginners, are notorious for inspiring at least 15 suicides, including several poets, three book reviewers, and one cashier at Borders.

Chapter 2

Q. So, Matt Guzzi, what was your take on last week's poetry riot?

A. Well, hell, I had nothing to do with any of the arrests and property damage. Yeah, sure, we showed up to picket Simic's reading, just like we protest every poet laureate.

Q. I heard the chant on Channel 2 news: Hey Hey, Ho Ho/Witty Professors Have to Go!

A. Yeah, great, but it was the Beer-Guts and a renegade Deep Imagist faction that started smashing windows and torching cars and duking it out with the riot squad. We had nothing to do with it.

That said, I did enjoy that new strawberry-kiwi tear gas the cops are using now. It's so...flavorful.

Chapter 3

The interview is interrupted as a large group of Techies show up, push together some tables and plug in their laptops.

Off the record, Guzzi mutters about the goddamn Techies and their fucking $9,000 laptops and wonders why don't they try doing something socially useful, like becoming rogue traders or drug mules or crazed mall gunmen.

Chapter 4

Q. Four poets have died in a series of shootouts between the Tiki Formalists and the Neo-Confessionalists. The District Attorney recently got a court order to prevent what she called "vicious packs of MFAs" from loitering on streetcorners.

A. Yeah, as it stands now, the Neo-Confessionalists are aligned with the Goth-Sloths, New-Meats, Avant-Garagists, and Post-Rockabilly Vorticists.

On the other side, the NoBrows, Brutalists and Belligerents have formed some sort of temporary alliance with the Tiki Formalists.

And, of course, the Flarfians and Slanguage Poets are always ready to go to the mattresses with anybody at any time.

Q. So what's your current position?

A. I've got no love left for the Neo-Confessionalists, the way they strut down the street in their sweater sets and elbow everybody off the sidewalk. And that small, quiet voice that whispers, KILL THEM ALL.

That said, everybody knows the Tiki Formalists don't care if you love them or not, they're way past that, just as long as you shit your pants when they roll by.

Q. A Retro-Pomo Narrativist gang released a statement, but it turned out to be a fragile narrative that crumbled into language itself, etc., etc., and as such not much use as a press release.

The Schizographs and Mallarm�ttes also issued a joint communiqu�, but it seems unclear if they were taking a position, and if so what it was, or even if they believe in taking positions.

A. So what if poets don't worship at the shrine of the Simple Declarative Sentence? For all I care, they can blow up the whole damn construct--the whole Strunk & White/Orwell/Freshman Composition construct--and bulldoze the rubble.

Q. The poetry authorities have appealed for calm. Will there ever be peace?

A. Yeah, no, they bought in some Post-Structuralist professor to mediate, but she pulled a Wittgenstein and decided to say nothing.

As a practical matter, eventually they'll realize that you just can't kill all the assholes in the world. At that point, there'll be some sort of truce or non-aggression pact.

Chapter 5

The interview is interrupted again as the coffee kicks in and some of the Techies start talking about Matthew Guzzi and his head of long, gray hair.

Two of the Techies smirk and yell over, It's Rainbow, Last of His Tribe, and Hey, Spark of the Infinite, your food stamps are here!

And all the Techies tittered.

Guzzi walks over to the counter and grabs a handful of chocolate biscotti and starts throwing it at the Techies.

Fuck you, you stalinoid apparatchik dickwipes, Guzzi screams, beaning one Techie with a biscotti. Fuck you, you fresh-faced techno-twats, fuck you, how do you know you're not dead already?

As the Techies duck and cover, the owner walks over and tells Guzzi to please leave and not come back. Guzzi refuses, saying it was the Children of the Apparatus who started it.

So ends the first half of the Matthew Guzzi interview. Look for Part 2 at some point eventually, presumably after he posts bail.