Christopher Mulrooney’s “rejection slip”
Christopher Mulrooney’s “rejection slip” is one of those poems that starts off with a powerful opening line:
the area of our unconcern is so vast only the marble statuary on our lots can last
The most power lies in the words “the area of our unconcern is so vast”—this is the perfection of yet another “unwanted” commentary about egocentrism in general and why most people totally suck in particular. It is of course too insulting (and too much of a cliché) to write, “ignorance is bliss”—but ignorance prevents “us” from measuring the vastness of “our” unconcern.
This gargantuan unconcern is an indictment of Western culture—which is almost entirely an imperial one. So when Mulrooney connects “marble statuary” with the vastness of unconcern, he immediately makes me see the Greek and Roman imperial ideals set in marble. Then my undisciplined vision jumps right into the present-day Las Vegas marble vice and the vastness of pornography.
So in the circus contest of poetry vs. pornography, pornography will always win. Nevertheless Mulrooney, his words persist and here, in the kinté space, it remains—I’m saving it for a rainy day.