Strange poetry and news on Hal Duncan

I never cared too much for poetry - I kind of got a kick out of discovering the homosexual subtext of Shakespeare's Sonnets, but as soon as I discovered that a few million essays have already been written on exactly that topic, my interest faltered.

But here is some poetry I find thoroughly engaging: It's not just funny and witty, it really made me go with the flow of it ("flow" isn't the right word, I'd rather need a metaphor utilizing "flood" or "explosions") - something that demands to read out really loud. I hope I didn't scare my flatmates ...

Some poetry by Hal Duncan

This is obviously reminiscent of the Jack-Flash sequences of Vellum, which I just finished reading for the second time. Let me just say that you really should read this book (at least) twice (at least if you are the knid of sloppy reader that I am). I experienced much more moments of fun and revelation the second time around, and I really wish I hadn't already written the review. At least, I have my blog to point out some things that escaped me in first reading (Beware of Spoilers - even though it would be very hard to truly spoil Vellum by giving away details of the plot. Anyway, the following thoughts are probably only interesting for those who have already read Vellum anyway):

Jack and the bitmites: Watch them closely. Towards the end, it is implied that Jack will free Seamus/Prometheus. But in fact it seems the the bitmites do the job in the end - how do the bitmites relate to Jack? Jack, at least in his Jack Flash identity, is (if I'm not mistaken) of the same origin as the bitmites - hes a kind of bastard, created from the influences of Metatron/Enoch and Eresh, the son of language and death (Which I would consider the defining principles of human existence). And so are the bitmites. Are the bitmites an incarnation of Jack?

Also note that the Jack-Flash-sequences are written in the most vivid and poetic language of the whole book. They are, in terms of ideology, also the most clear-cut parts of the book: The Cant, or something very similar, looses it's ambivalence and get's "verdinglicht" (as Adorno would say) in form of memes, "maggots of the mind". I do love this sequences, but the combination of poetic, energetic language and a more clear-cut line between the good and the bad guys implies (to me) that the kind of language that speaks most directly to our hearts and minds is also the one we have to distrust the most. While we're in dire nead ot this kind of infernokrusher-poetry, we should never trust it.

And: The perfect conspiracy: "Everyone's part of it, nobody knows about it" is such a perfect definition of capitalism. In fact, it's a definition that is diametrally opposed to all kinds of stupid conspiracy theories!

Finally: At one point, Jack talks of the "subconscious" as a Freudian concept and explains that he prefers the less hierarchical Jungian concept of the "unconscious". I dont know about the English translation, but the German term in the Freudian theory is "das Unbewusste", which translates directy into "Unconscious" in English. Since I'm more of a Freudian, I feel obliged to defend him against the implication that his terminology is more "hierarchical". So much for the nitpicking ...