Send New Beasts

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 1998 by Wenderoth, Joe

These beasts will not do.

1 Their bleeding is decidedly inadequate-from a distance they appear not to bleed at all. Considering the likelihood of distance in today's spectator, this is not a small problem.

2 While they are exotic enough in appearance-and I assume this is why they were selected-they have a tendency, and an ability, to hide themselves in plain view. I don't claim to understand this ability-I only know that it is widely felt that, even at close range, they are difficult to get a good look at, and this is especially true when a blow is being struck upon them. It's almost as if they're immune to isolation-as if they are able to always appear, no matter how alone they are, in the noise and confusion of a herd.

3 They are far too obedient and willing to receive blows. Indeed, they seem to sense when a blow is coming and to move intuitively into it. If this movement was desperate-graceful or gracelessit might generate some interest, but it seems to fall, tragically, somewhere in between. That is, they seem able, at every point in their torture, to collapse in a reasonable fashion, as if the collapse was being dictated by their own will. No one enjoys-I don't think I even need to tell you-a reasoned collapse. It is this aspect of the beasts that most deeply defeats us, our simple want of a show.

4 Their attacks-and I hesitate to even call them attacks-are largely indistinguishable from the active reasoning of their own collapse. It is as though they seek above all to expose us to this activity of theirs-to infect us with their will to reason, and in so doing, reduce us to the unvarying rhythm of their irreducible herd. I would like to say that we are immune to this reduction, but I am not sure. In any case, I see no good reason for continuing to subject ourselves to these attacks. It would be better to have no beasts at all-to live altogether outside of shows-than to sink numbly into tolerance of a spectacle which fails to clarify what it is that distinguishes us from beasts.