In Praise of Minimalism
In Literature and Life
One way to approach minimalism is to discuss what it is not. Put simply, minimalism is not maximalism. The enemy of minimalism is excess, whether an excess of words, an excess of portions of food, an excess of material goods, or fill in the blank.
Every night my TV tells me I can purchase two double cheeseburgers, three chicken tenders, a large fries, and large Coke for the price of two containers of Tic-Tacs. Every day, I’m constantly bombarded with odd emails written in broken English trying to convince me I can make my penis bigger, overlooking, to use a construction metaphor, that a carpenter with a very big hammer is worthless if he’s doesn’t know how to use it properly, especially if he’s so focused on his impressive tool that he’s incapable of unselfishly committing to the job at hand, which I still hope is to please a partner.
As you can see, maximalists, in contrast to minimalists, are characterized by narcissism and a crippling lack of humility.
But let’s stick with minimalism in literature because that’s what I know best.
Right now, we are living in a maximalist literary world, which suggests that the bigger the novel, the better the novel; the more flamboyant the language, the better the novel; the more poems you publish, the better poet you are. Over the summer, I was extremely annoyed when I tried to find contemporary novels I didn’t want to toss out the window after ten pages. They were either big fat popular novels whose writing had all the energy of a two-toe sloth who had accidentally ingested a bottle of Xanax left behind by a fidgety zoo attendant, or they were reasonably shorter novels written by recent MFA graduates whose prose was so self-consciously painful and plodding that the authors couldn’t get a character out of a room. In both cases, the story suffered, and, above all, I wanted to read a good “story” with engaging characters. I will always remember what the prose poet Russell Edson told me when attacking contemporary poetry: “Too much language chasing too little of an idea.”
I experienced this prejudice against brevity myself when my first YA novel was published. This novel did relatively well. It won some awards, one rather prestigious, and was placed on a top ten list by Booklist. But what I found interesting was that even the starred reviews used phrases like “slim,” or synonyms for “slim” to describe it, and “slim” was not used in a positive way. To a guy who loves novellas like Heart of Darkness, Ethan Frome, Travesty by John Hawkes, and so on, “slim” being used as a slight was a bit depressing. It was as if the reviewer was saying, “Although this novel is ‘slim,’ I guess it’s still worth reading.”
But for our purposes here, I’d like to focus on the pleasures of reading minimalist poetry and give some examples, which will prove that in the hands of an accomplished poet, the tiny is truly enormous. What all these poems, mostly prose poems, have in common is that they don’t make grand statements on the human condition. They imply them, sometimes quietly, sometimes enigmatically, sometimes with irony or black humor—though always with as fewest words as possible
I will refrain from ruining them with in-depth analyses of each one and allow you to interpret them as you see fit.
Three prose poems by Russell Edson from what I consider to be his best book, The Reason Why the Closet-Man Is Never Sad.
“The Balloon of Memory”
. . . Even the dead must rise should time endure. But what if time grows thin and will not hold the next event, bloated out like a spider’s web in the winds of change, dotted with corpses of the too many dead . . . ?
. . . Out there, a balloon of memory: a summer day; the distant hills, like purple blankets on the knees of seated giants. . . .
“The Lonely Evenings of Doctor Funnyperson”
Doctor Funnyperson likes bathroom furniture. For chairs he has toilets. His home looks like a public bathroom.
Lately the Lonely Doctor Funnyperson is spending the evenings flushing his toilets; even as he studies the problem, why it is he would like to hurt someone. Meanwhile he occupies the lonely evenings flushing his toilets one by one . . .
“The Reason Why the Closet-Man Is Never Sad”
This is the house of the closet-man. There are no rooms, just hallways and closets. Things happen in rooms. He does not like things to happen.
. . .Closets, you take things out of closets, you put things into closets, and nothing happens . . .
Why do you have such a strange house?
I am the closet-man. I am either going or coming, and I am never sad.
But why do you have such a strange gouse?
I am never sad . . .
* * *
Two poems by Gunter Grass from Of All That Ends.
“Property”
My God, your God, our . . .
So many claims of ownership.
And when the round of blather ends
Just empty bottles
And steeples pointing upward.
“Nail and Rope”
chat about artfully tied knots;
the nail laughs itself crooked
at all the slips that occur,
but the rope
is plagued by dreams of being tested.
* * *
Two untitled prose poems by Killarney Clary from By Common Salt.
a. An old woman alone in a white car on Flecther peers into a pink bakery box as she waits at the signal in twilight. I’m anxious to be home, talking. I’m afraid of the smell of damp metal, a chill that rises into my scalp, a thud against the wall at three a.m.; the phone keeps ringing. When you only have one thing, you’re bound to hate it.
b. Where light falls between the door and frame onto the polished floor, where I put my hand at dusk in the grass while the birds tune their orchestra, louder, more players until the air is all sound . . .
If I don’t have time, I feel the shadow swelling and desperation in song. Come to me where I am. I am not enough.
* * *
Two shorties by the French Cubist poet Max Jacob from The Dice Cup.
“Charity”
When I worked in the office, I used to give up my seat near the fire to another employee, out of charity. He confessed to me that he didn’t like fire but accepted out of charity, thinking that I didn’t like fire.
“The Mother”
The baby is sitting on the big paternal bed. It’s morning, the mourning mother looks at him with such love. The child looks at her with his beautiful child’s eyes and now slowly he changes into a monkey.
* * *
Three untitled shorties from the prose poet Gary Young, who is influenced by the Japanese haiku. These are from American Analects.
1. At dusk, the electric whine of cicadas travels in waves through the cedars. One of them, a tiny dragon the size of my thumb, has landed here on a post. Little monster, I know you. I was born to your mad song.
2. She stared at the old woman staggering across the street, and said, don’t ever let me get like that; put a pillow over my face. She turned to her daughter, and said, ohm you’d never do it. Then her eyes lit up, and she said, your husband might. 3. Gene believed there’s virtue in being incidental and embracing the achieved accident of who you are. I’m not so sure. Fruit ripening on the branches of the apricot and plum promise sweetness; it’s easy to forget that withing each tender fruit, there’s a stone at its core.
* * *
Two prose poems from Nin Andrews’s masterpiece, The Book of Orgasms:
“The Cosmic Orgasm”
The orgasm was always saying, I want you. I’m just back from the moon while your strapless dress slides down with sigh. How do you explain it? In the sudden drought even the evergreens dropped their needles around the charred remnants of a star. And you were the shadow clinging to her heels. When you woke from a deep sleep, the invisible world revealed its secret sexuality. In the distance our unborn child swam away like a fish in the air.
“The Stranger’s Orgasm”
Last night when you phoned, my breasts woke up with a start and stood alert, listening. All night the orgasms were little ships advancing slowly through the desolate sea in search of the shore . . . I often wonder who owns these breasts and moans that drift in the darkness. * * *
Let’s end with three pieces from Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End.
1. O the great God of Theory, he’s just a pencil stub, a chewed stub with a worn eraser at the end of a huge scribble.
2. “I Played in the Smallest Theaters"
Bits of infernal gravel
On the window sill
Surrounding a solitary
White bread crumb.
3. The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who’s to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket. * * *
I lied. We’ll end with four real gems of conciseness from Sally Ashton’s Listening to Mars and from the Master of All Language and Forms, Bill Knott.
Ashton
“Horizonless”
When I open the door, the bee flies in again. Elsewhere, the Universe is expanding.
“Milky Way Galaxy, 21st Century”
While Earth kept turning, gravity held us close. It was a very fine planet.
Knott
“Fragment”
Because at least one couple is making love
Somewhere in the world at all times,
Because those two are always pressed tightly together,
Hatred can never slip between them
To come destroy us.
“Goodbye”
If you are still alive when you read this,
close your eyes. I am
under their lids, growing black.
(Man, Knott is just ridiculously amazing).
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
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+
Your response was better than my essay. I have become more enamored of short fiction, actually, but I think A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan is very good, and Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys. Actually, anything by him. He's a bit infuriating to me because he's not only a terrific stylist and storyteller but he's also cool-looking. Going back to the past I cherish Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux. Because I wrote middle grade and YA fiction novels for a while, I think Coraline and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman are superb, as is Skellig by David Almond. But there are many terrific short story collections out there or short-story sequences. Any advice would be appreciated.
The vast novels of the 19th century --Dickens, George Eliot, Dostoevsky -- surely these are maximalist and meaningful. I think your definitions are flimsy. .