A Brief Review of the Unreliable Narrator, or the "I" in My Prose Poems and Essays
With a Short Description of the Prose Poem and a Stellar Video
This is a re-post of one of my earliest essays which seems appropriate to repeat, since I have been giving you so many prose poems to read from my new book.
So . . .
After this little introduction, I am going to ask you to read the below three prose poems, and if you don’t know what a prose poem is, let’s keep it simple: a prose poem is a poem written in prose (sentences and paragraphs), using many of the techniques of verse, which most people believe is “real” poetry. What is “real” poetry? That’s the poetry most of you hated reading in high school, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not.
Also, when I say “I” is my poems and essays, I can’t help but laugh, because even I don’t know who this “I” is. He’s Peter Johnson of course, you might say. But what Peter Johnson? This Peter Johnson (me), like you, has many personae. He relies on many faces while stumbling through life’s unpredictable labyrinth. The word “persona” comes from the Greek word meaning “mask.” We all wear many different masks, depending on where we are, whom we are speaking with, and what outcome we are looking for. When you’re at church, speaking with the minister, you aren’t going to tell him about that hot sweaty night in New Orleans when you ended up in a cheap hotel with two pole dancers. You actually shouldn’t even tell your friends about that night.
Sometimes the “I” in my essays and poems is indeed Peter Johnson, and what I talk about is very autobiographical and true to life. Other times, some of what I say is true but exaggerated for a desired effect, and at still other times, the “I” has nothing to do with me. It’s a construct of language that allows me to say things the “real” Peter Johnson wouldn’t say. It often allows me to satirize something in our society or to poke fun of the speaker himself. I’m talking about irony. Here are some examples of three of the Peter Johnsons you’ll encounter in my prose poems and essays.
Neil
On the corner, two guys arguing over a can a beer. I want to break open a box of cartridges but don’t own a gun. I want to complain to my dead friend Neil, who would say, “Smile, it’s a good day to be Peter.” I think of Neil as I awake to the Latino’s La Cucaracha horn at 6 a.m. Or shake off my penis for the fifth time in the middle of the night. Or stand in the rain as if stoned while the dog takes a crap. This is a life he may have glimpsed before being headonned by an ice-covered pine tree. I can still see his wife stumbling down the carpeted aisle, flanked by two Labrador retrievers, a life-size picture of Neil on the altar. Later, the dogs howling outside like two bruised saxophones while the cheese dip got passed around. I knew very few people in that church. How could that be? So here I am, a little hungover, listening to two guys argue over a can of beer. Across the hall, my teenage son stirs safely in his bed, oblivious to the many ways people can die. “It’s a good day to be Lucas,” Neil would’ve told him. “It’s a good day to tell your father you love him.”
Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term
Just as the pharmacist drove the vaccine into my arm, I thought, “So what did you do today, Peter?” I shaved, then looked into the mirror without disappointment, wondering why it took seventy-one years for that to happen? I had an argument with my wife about a Biblical plague of ants that had overrun her underwear drawer. I killed a huge spider clinging to the inside of the shower curtain, then washed it down the drain. It crawled out so I killed it again. At 10 a.m. I had a headache the size of Bangladesh. At 11 a.m. it was gone, and by noon a woodpecker had an unfortunate encounter with my sliding glass door. I went for a coffee. Argued with a pickup trucker with a nose ring, who taunted me for wearing a mask. I spoke with two monks outside the grocery store about the pitfalls of wrestling with the unexpected. I went home. The woodpecker had regained consciousness, then flown away. The spider was back, so I killed it again. I went to the library, spoke of the failure of trickle-down economics with the janitor. I left. I gave a lecture about hopefulness to a bunch of squirrels sharing a bagel under a Japanese Zelkova tree. I stopped at the pond and watched the baby geese make their stunning debut. I called my wife, told her to hang in there, that the sequel would be much better. She laughed, then said there was huge spider clinging to a picture of me on her nightstand, its thorax eclipsing my face. “It’s so big you can see its eyes,” she said. I told her to ignore it, it had earned the right to live.
The Rapture
Cereal aisles confuse me, as do people who say they’ve returned from the dead for “one more try.” That’s what this guy is saying as he leans against a porcelain sink, divining meaning from the mist rising from my urinal. He has two plastic eyes sewn onto a face that glows like a new basketball, and I’m waiting for him to punch me in the back of the head. I’m at the airport, trying to remember where I’m supposed to be. That all-too-common confusion, like when you discover the owner of Billy’s Grill is named Angelo. And now this guy. He’s waiting for a trumpet to sound. Until then, he’s followed me into my favorite restaurant. It’s a place called Angelo’s owned by a guy named Billy. He says, “All the nations on earth are in mourning.” “I can accept that,” I say, feigning interest while licking a last spoonful of clam chowder. Trust me, my friends, I, too, am aware of that encroaching white light this guy says we come from. How, like a hooker, it never stops whispering into my bad ear. I, too, am aware of Mr. Death hovering over my bed at three in the morning, as my old-fashioned mahogany clock cracks its knuckles. There used to be a ringing in my ears. Now a hoarse laughter like post-nuclear waves crashing on shore. Annoyed, I ask him to pass the salt, but he says it’s “out of reach”—no doubt code words for the Great Beyond. Or at least that’s what my Old Guy’s Manual to Life after Death says, though with so many people being resurrected it’s hard to believe anything anymore.
“Neil” is narrated by an “I” who is very close to the real Peter Johnson. It was written after my best friend, Neil, an expert skier, made the mistake of taking an icy trail one frigid Maine morning. He eventually lost control and slid into tree, suffering a fatal skull fracture.
Quite frankly, his death devastated me, and, as a writer, I wanted to capture the pain and confusion of that experience with images. In this sense, this “I” is a pretty reliable narrator. You’re not supposed to look at him ironically. Everything in this prose poem is pretty much “true”: the guys arguing over a can of beer, the La Cucaracha horn, the scene at the church and reception, and the confession that I was hungover after getting severely hammered on Jack Daniel’s the night after Neil’s death. But I also wanted the poem to be a celebration of Neil, so I ended it with a hopeful scene where I imagine Neil offering a way to stare down death. “Keep it simple,” he would have said. “Just tell your dad you love him.”
Like “Neil,” there are many autobiographical details in “Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term.” It’s true that I once killed a spider that I swear later crawled out of the drain; and that a woodpecker once flew into my sliding glass door, then regained consciousness and flew off; and that I once spoke with some monks about religious matters; and that I will happily confront any bully who disrespects me. But I never talked about trickle-down economics with a janitor or gave a lecture to a family of squirrels. In short, the “I” in this poem is a Peter Johnson who starts with reality, then distorts it to make a point about the unpredictability of life (the reincarnated spider being a symbol of that). Often, I’m asking you question this narrator’s reliability and be amused by his hijinks. This Peter Johnson, this “I,” eventually accepts uncertainty. He’s also the persona I rely on for a comic effect. People disparage comedy for not being “serious,” but, to me, comedy often tackles serious topics without angering people. As the poet Nicanor Parra said, “Humor makes contact with the reader easier. Remember, it’s when you lose your sense of humor that you reach for your pistol.”
In the last prose poem, “Rapture,” we find my “wise-guy” persona. Let’s call him a Wise Fool. He’s an oddball, and I use his quirkiness to satirize nitwits who are continually waiting for the Rapture to arrive, then predictably disappointed when it doesn’t. There is very little that’s autobiographical or “true” here, except that I certainly know the terror of waking in the early morning hours, wondering when Mr. Death will punch my ticket. But I never met a Rapture-seeker while standing over a urinal in an airport; there is no restaurant called Angelo’s owned by a guy named Billy; and all of the dialogue is made up. Still, this “I,” this mask, this unreliable narrator, is an important device for me. It allows me to have fun, so much so that I can even satirize the Wise Fool speaker at the end, because, like the Rapture-seeker, he too is seeking an easy solution to complex issues, as he grasps his dog-eared copy of an Old Guy’s Manual to Life after Death, a book which, by the way, doesn’t exist, as much as I wish it did.
So what is a first person-unreliable narrator? It is literary construct a writer uses wherein the reader has to question the veracity of the narrator’s conception of the world, often viewing that narrator ironically. So beware of my many “I”s, and if I include a poem where an “I” finds himself cohabiting with an alien in a prehistoric cave, please don’t write and say, “Man, that must have been cool.”
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories