From the Collected E-Correspondence of Sparrow & Mike Topp
§
TO: Sparrow
FR: Mike Topp
RE: Horses That Imitate Dogs
Dear Sparrow,
I have been working on a short piece about horses that imitate dogs. In the meantime, here is something my friend Jeff Johnson wrote. Hope you are well. . .
Mike T.
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Jeff Johnson
RE: My millennium thing
If you examine some of the so-called greatest inventions of the last millennium -- the screw, the steam engine, the toupee, various ointments and medicines, the telephone, the airplane -- and all their societal ramifications, I think you'll find none finer than nachos. Undoubtedly, the sourpuss will scoff, “Aren't nachos a tad whimsical for a millennium recap?” Well, I'm sorry. Maybe nachos haven't had the profound impact that the airplane has, and maybe nachos can't take you from Akron to Zurich in eleven and a half hours, but everything being relative, nachos have never crashed. No one has ever had to search the ocean floor for nacho remnants.
Anyway, I think nachos epitomize the gentler side of man's willingness to adapt and explore, all in the name of exotic foodstuffs (except haggis, or any beet-based dish). Could you get most folks to wear a kilt? Dance a jig? Put a plate in their lower lip? I doubt it. But bring up ethnic food and everyone loves one another again. That's why nachos are so popular, and are often served at state dinners, treaty signings and most restaurants and ballparks from Pawtucket to Perth. They are loved by diplomats and janitors alike.
Here's why nachos have been so important:
- The Nacho Trade vs. The Cocaine Trade -- Historically both nachos and cocaine connote a sort of “south of the border” vibe. But both truly rely on two cultures (first world and third world) working together, overcoming geographic and cultural boundaries, and identifying and satisfying each other's needs.
Both nachos and cocaine started out in the third world -- very different than they appear today -- but they have always been fuel in the gas tank of manifest destiny. Coca leaves were consumed by cheap laborers and slaves to keep them going during long days in high altitudes. Nachos, a derivative of a wild grass that we know in this part of the globe as corn, also had the same humble beginnings. The corn crop was the least expensive way to keep the bellies of exploited laborers full.
When co-opted by rich white people, coca leaves were processed into cocaine, thus beginning the highly profitable but centuries-long scourge of global drug addiction. The cocaine trade is evil and happens to be illegal. It has cost many countries trillions of dollars, caused scores of overdoses, homicides and broken up families. Nachos really aren't that bad. There are only a half-dozen or so documented violent nacho incidents on record. Comparatively speaking, that's not too shabby.
- Nachos are affordable and promote sharing. -- Most of the world's population will never travel in an airplane. However, most places in the world could grow some version of corn, and could fry it into a sort of chip-like format. Ditto for melted cheese. Melting things is not complicated; the trigonometry of flight is. Regarding sharing, it seems with most other snack foods like bananas, licorice, Rolos, Life Savers, chewing gum, or even tobacco cigarettes, everyone is always keeping score. It can all be measured somehow: “Remember that stick of gum I gave you?” With nachos, usually the chips and the melted cheese distribution on said chips is never an exact science. Everyone can enjoy them without fear of future retribution and guilt.
- Nachos are easy to clean up after and disposable. -- Sure, dumb gas stations have allowed nachos to be served in environment-hampering plastic trays. But the best nachos have always been served in a recyclable cardboard boat. You won't see them clogging landfills in future millenniums. Also, nacho cheese coagulates like candle wax when it dries. If you should spill nacho cheese, ninety percent of the time you can just scrape it off whatever it landed on once it hardens.
Sadly, nacho cheese is not without its perils. The impact of years of melted cheese consumption has not gone unnoticed in today's population of decidedly portly and shapeless Americans. The effects of melted cheese abuse can lead to gout, harden arteries and in extreme cases, cause heart palpitations. If you look at old portraits and sculptures of kings or other people who had it pretty good around the world over the last millennium, they all had fat, slucking, almost liquid jowls, but skinny turkey necks. A disturbing trend among full-time nacho-eaters are thick, indefinable necks that resemble the thighs of chubby casserole-eating church organists. Still, I wouldn't let that get in the way of proclaiming nachos the most innovative food of the last millennium.
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Sparrow
Subject: Prowessssssssss
Mike, one more time you have shown your prowress in poesy!
awkwardly
sparrow
§
TO: Sparrow
FR: Mike Topp
Subject: Nixon’s Birthday
Dear Sparrow,
Some things for today, Nixon's birthday.
Best,
Mike T.INTUITION
Is intuition what I think it is?
POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT
Marianne Moore
Randall Jarrell
Dylan Thomas
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Creeley
Robert Lowell
Charles Olson
POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT
John Skelton
Sir Walter Raleigh
Edmund Spenser
Barnabe Googe
George Peele
William Shakespeare
Thomas Campion
POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT
Maxwell Bodenheim
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Weldon Kees
Daisy Aldan
Louis Zufoksky
Hilda Doolittle
Harry Crosby
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Sparrow
Subject: Chinatown PhysicsCHINATOWN PHYSICShogs are trump,
According to
Chinatown physics
I am 18
feet tall.
sparrole
§
TO: Sparrow
FR: Mike Topp
Subject: Pete and Repeat
Don't mess with me.
You sent most of these before. I like this mode of yours:PoemsI know it hurts for you to type, so I will ask you a yes-or-no: Did you send Exquisite Corpse stuff? They love you.
cent a cent
sent assent
scent ascent
xxx
King Vidor
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Sparrow
Subject: Food Dog
Mike top,
My, how fast you sends out these poems! Thank you for your benevolent's. I hope you receive my own messages when I was recently in our fine island of Manhattan. I like your new poetry. Here is mine:FOOD DOG
I call him a food dog;
he loves his food.
Bananas, eggs, crackers, greens. . .
Loves his food!
YIDDISH BATH POEM
Bubbles, oy vey!
PAY THE POEM
Don't pay the poet,
pay the poem
that comforts you.
Put money in the book
you read.
§
TO: Sparrow
FR: Mike Topp
Subject: Minus Times
Hi Sparrow,
Hunter Kennedy wanted me to pick some poems of yours to show him. This is what I sent. Your poems inspired me to write these:FOUND POEMHERE ARE SPARROW'S POEMS FOR HUNTER:
WE WERE ALL IN LOVE
WITH THE CYCLOPS.
GAME FOR PARTY
See who can get most string in mouth.
ZUG
That person is
a Zug.
(A Zug is mentioned in the 1926 book Topper -- it's a person who doesn't do what they want to.)
HONEY
Honey, I rearranged
the furniture to
show that we are
nice people.THE ANT
Come here, little
ant.
I want to show
you something.
FOUND POEM
THE POLICE
ARE RAPEST.
RECIPE FOR SOUP
1 c. water
1/2 c. soup left over from last time
CHANGE
My change is
4 dollars.
YOU
You are reading
this poem after I
have forgotten it
exists.
DILETTANTE
I am a
dilettante.
I wrote this poem
in 12 seconds.
Who cares?
You read it in
12 seconds.
POEM
November dawn on the ridge.
I feel like a monkey.
NIGHTMARE
a fork with nine tines
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Sparrow
Subject: Laggardy
i am laughing pleasurably about your sinatra poetry. Can you give me holman's address again?
your laggard,
spaero
§
TO: Sparrow
FR: Mike Topp
Subject: No Handles
Dear S. Sparrow:
I like “No Handles” a lot. It's good. Have you gotten around to Bob Holman? I think it's supposed to snow a whole bunch again soon. Here is my latest thingy.
MikeSINATRA HAIKUS
Pissing in the snow,
my kind of town
Chicago is.
The old pond;
a frog jumps in--
doobie doobie doo.
No one spoke,
the host, the guest,
the dry martinis.
Fly me to the moon--
by myself,
chewing on dried salmon.
One broad
after another--
how stupid.
This audience,
they just don’t seem
Vegas.
Why mention people?
Even the horses
are crooked!
How
did all these people
get in my room?
I look into the dragonfly’s eye
and see Hoboken
over my shoulder.
§
TO: Mike Topp
FR: Sparrow
Subject: new poems:GULL BIRDMY LITERARY TASTES
The gull bird
lifts over the school
into a wind--
so sooth!
NO HANDLES
Thank God animals
don't have handles, because
some people would carry
them everywhere.
DOZENS OF DOLLARS
I've made
dozens of dollars
as a poet--
all at once!
by sparrow
As for my literary tastes, I hated almost everything we read in school -- certainly all poetry, Longfellow and Shelley. I didn't even read the Odyssey in ninth grade (which embarrassed me and shamed me). Portrait Of a Lady was boring. (Although the luridness of The Red Badge of Courage and The Tale of Two Cities chimed in me -- they had the spirit of a comic book.)
In high school, I read J. D. Salinger (all his books, and a book of criticism in the Inwood library) and beats: Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg (my parents' friends, the McCluskeys, had a censored version of Howl, with the word “****” instead of “fuck,” which I found superior), Jack Kerouac (just On the Road and Dharma Bums), William Burroughs (I found a cheap copy of The Ticket That Exploded). And I idolized T.S. Eliot. The minimalism of his tiny book, Selected Poems (with a yellow cover) inspired me with a contagious perfectionism.
In college, I only took one literature course, comparative literature, and I was solitarily invigorated by The Tin Drum, and Death in Venice. Also I taught a poetry class to my friends, in the dorm -- we read Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, A.R. Ammons. I would just find books in the library and bring them to class; a book called Space Law fascinated me, about the legality of space. Also Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima were my favorites.
When I flunked out of college I read Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto. I grew fond of William Carlos Williams, and his poems about small urban life. When I moved to Florida, I read the entire book of the complete William Blake poems, which meant almost nothing to me.
In most of my hippie life, I read easy books: more Ferlinghetti, Franny and Zooey (again), Be Here Now, Brautigan, books about the Beatles. I did read The Sound and the Fury, because I found it in the garbage (along with a book of gay pornography, Cherry Boy, which I also read).
my new essay, plus my new poems:BOX OF SOAP
For Christmas,
I got a bar of soap.
Five bars:
yellow, pink, lavender, blue, lime.
How sad!
How shameful!
PSALM
God, forget your defeats,
and gather around me.
This morning I need your assonance.
No friend have I,
my solitude is searing.
Where is treasure? Where is love?
Come, anoint my face
with your soft tongue.
CLOUD VINE
Inside the cloud
is a vine --
a silvery vine, with oval leaves.
TWO WORD POEM
Ahab
rehab
SIGN ON ROUTE 17
Blood
Bagels
New Jersey, 5/26/99
SOLOMON
Because we shaved our head
the mountain laughed and said
it is not God.
EXCHANGE
In the toaster-oven
we laid our necklaces:
“You're kidding!”
POEM
Walking on East 10th Street
I smell my own lo mein.
ADVICE TO B.
Live diagonally!
FUNNY HAT
Stay right there,
funny hat,
on my bench,
till I get back from
the health food store
with a candy bar
for you!
CENTURIES OF PASTE
Centuries of paste
are over
Who
Who craves their TV?
Who rubs their TV?
Who examines their TV?
Who fears their TV?
Who awaits their TV?
Who knows their TV?
§
TO: Sparrow*Ed. note: Not on this Web site! Email might forsake typography for plain text, but we will cling to our italics on these pages.
FR: Mike Topp
RE: Your Essay
I read this.
You need a period after “small urban life.” To be a jerk, I read The Odyssey in 4th grade. As an aside, the Internet will eliminate italics, because there are none.* Everything will have to be in quotes.
Where will you send this? Who reads A.R. Ammons now?
I remember the **** version of Howl. What did that mean? Four pictures of Kurt Vonnegut's asshole?
I sort of liked Lucien Stryk. This is a Nobel essay.
Onward! (The poets plot their Web site & Mike Topp remembers trippin' with Arthur Godfrey. . . .)
