Parable vs. Prose Poem: The Work of Lawrence Fixel
With a Nod to Franz Kafka
The following homage is from my book of essays on prose poetry called Truth, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty, which collects the best of my essays on the genre, along with my lengthy interviews with Russell Edson and Robert Bly on prose poetry, and three interviews with me. The book ends with 40 letters (from 350 I have) that Edson sent me over the years, which are, quite frankly, brilliant, and just as much about the creative process as they are about prose poetry. You can find this book, published by MadHat Press, at Truths
Although books of literary essays are not best sellers, I think you will see that it’s a very readable collection for anyone and has some insights about poetry, Po-Biz, poetic method, and especially the blurring of genres. It’s also often very funny, as pointed out to me by Charles Simic, who wrote to say that he often laughed while reading it and finished it in one sitting.
But this post is really about the poet Lawrence Fixel, who was a genius of the parable and prose poem. He was a poet who never really got his due, probably because he didn’t spend his life, like so many poets, screaming “Me, Me, Me” from the rooftops. This essay was originally published in The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel, edited by the amazing prose poet Gerald Fleming. Lawrence Fixel
After the literary dust of the last fifty years settles and some academic has the nerve to write the history of the American prose poem from 1965 onward, when trying to canonize the most important figure of that period, that academic will have a long line of fine poets to choose from. But if that history were also to include the parable, I would argue that there’s only one writer and one collection that stands above the others. That writer is Lawrence Fixel, and that collection is Truth, War, and the Dream-Game: Selected Prose Poems and Parables, 1966-–1990 (Coffee House Press, 1991).
In his “Foreword” to Truth, War, and the Dream-Game (hereafter referred to as TWD) Fixel himself makes a distinction between the prose poem and the parable, saying,
… the parable is required to be about something―something that connects with, even though it conflicts with, our sense of the world. Thus it challenges our assumptions while, paradoxically, it evokes some feeling of universality. The prose poem—tends to be lyrical, subjective, impressionistic. Based more on self-expression than the concept of metaphor offered by the parable, it can provide a counterpoint of possibility to balance the parable’s greater concern with necessity.
What Fixel says about the prose poem is true, but I am mostly interested in his parables, which he further discusses in his “Foreword.”
In contrast to the “ancient” moralistic parable,” which sometimes appears as a “riddle or an enigma,” Fixel posits the “modern parable.” According to him, this parable, exemplified in the works of Kafka and Borges, offers a “devastating illumination of a world split between psyche, spirit, and material concerns.” He adds that in this kind of parable, “paradox is a key element, opposing the identity of opposites to any commonsense, linear, or literal world.”
Another way of describing this modern parable is to call it an “open parable,” a phrase Roy Pascal applies to Kafka’s parables. Making a contrast between fables and Kafka’s short works, Pascal writes:
Although Kafka invites us to read his parables with the same expectation of a simple moral lesson that will illuminate the meaning of the events related, in fact the reader finds his expectations cheated, for there is no formulated moral and the conclusion of the incident is obscure and ambiguous, leaving the reader baffled and depressed. . . . The essence of the fable or parable is precisely of a clear, defined moral influence or injunction; and here, in Kafka’s parables, this essence is absent . . . . The function of fable was to allow us to understand life, to order and label its manifestations, to teach us practical wisdom that will serve to guide our behavior. But Kafka’s fables do not illuminate the mind but terrify and confuse.
I mention the above distinctions because they provide a lens through which we can view and experience Fixel’s parables, and we should keep these distinctions in mind when looking at the first parable in TWD, called “Flight Patterns”—a prose piece that prepares us for all the others that follow.
“Flight Patterns”
“Between the void and the sheer event.…. . .”
—Valery
1.
It is said, of the millions that undertake the journey, that the greatest number are lost somewhere along the way. To prove this, evidence is produced, statistics gathered, witnesses summoned. There are even films of the long, straggling procession, which presumably reveal the fate of the missing. Yet it appears no one-—ourselves included—is deterred by this, for it is equally intolerable to remain where we are.
2.
. . . Word continues to arrive from monitors at the highly equipped tracking stations. They report a whole series of unexplained dots and dashes on the flickering screens. Even the most experienced observers
-—using the most advanced techniques—concede that the habitual flight patterns can no longer be interpreted . . .3.
I have seen some of the incoming messages. They bear such strange notations as “missing in action,” “dead on arrival,” etc. With so many different languages, from such different worlds, the gap between what is transmitted and received continues to widen.
4.
I have resolved not to be upset by any of this. To limit myself to what can be verified by sensory evidence. One thing is clear, whether we travel the direct route of desire, or detours of illusion, we still miss connection. Something is there—ahead or behind us—and we are drawn in that direction. For a time we seem to have arrived. . . . But as the wind changes, the mist descends, we can no longer tell where we are.
5.
Let us suppose, for instance, that you have been where I have been. We meet one afternoon in a neighboring country.…
. . .Joining the crowd in the plaza, we observe the stately walk of the costumed women. Moving on, we notice in contrast the immobility of the vendors: the heavy bodies squatting beside earthen jars.6.
Is the scene familiar? Then let memory take a further step: to that moment when armed men in gray uniforms appear. . . . Suddenly we feel a sharp intersection of competing gestures, of inviting and disturbing fragrances. Someone drops petals in front of the candle-lit altar; someone else throws poisoned meat to the hungry dogs. . . . Speaking of this later, disturbed by our fragmented impressions, the question arises: What name can we give to this land?
7.
We may of course continue the search, each producing letters, photographs, documents. Or simply recognize that, between any two witnesses, we can expect these differences. Each might then retreat into a private retrospect.…
. . .But what if we decide to give up these wanderings, returning to this body, this present time? It may then occur to us that what signifies this world is nothing else but the current of our feeling. And as for the flesh that dissolves. Disappears. Who can say it will not appear again? If not in this form, this familiar image, then perhaps as an intention that moves through silence and the quickening wind.
“Flight Patterns”―What a wonderfully ironic title, juxtaposing both the freedom and uncertainty of taking wing with the certainty of a preconceived pattern, which we may choose to follow so we don’t get lost. It’s an ideal position to be in, but one that, ironically, Fixel’s parables always argue against, since no matter how hard his narrator tries to find a fixed location from which to make sense of his surroundings, uncertainty prevails. It’s appropriate, then, that “Flight Patterns” begins with this Kafkaesque opening: “It is said, of the millions who undertake the journey, that the greatest number are lost somewhere along the way.” Still, the narrator adds, we persist because “it is equally intolerable to remain where we are.”
Any physical journey presumes the presence of signposts, which in literary journeys correspond to symbols. But in Fixel’s parables symbols are often difficult, if not impossible, to read because they appear as “sharp intersection[s] of competing gestures.” Throughout “Flight Patterns,” no course of action is explicitly suggested, and every possible revelation is undercut with qualifiers. Films “presumably [italics mine] reveal the fate of the missing”; there are “unexplained dots and dashes on the flickering screens”; and “the most experience observers—using the most advanced techniques—concede that the habitual flight patterns can no longer be interpreted. . . . Even the narrator’s persistent use of ellipses suggests that just when we are about to ease into a comfortable intellectual or moral position, just when we may have a chance to “give [a name] to this land,” our hopes for success unwind in a series of dots, so that the “gap between what is submitted and received continues to widen.” Ultimately, all traditional symbols, along with other traditional signifiers, remain untranslatable.
Pretty dismal stuff, except that just as we are about to hang our heads in existential despair, section four begins with a surprising and quietly comic assertion: “I have resigned myself not to be upset by any of this.” This is an important moment in “Flight Patterns.” In spite of uncertainty, the narrator claims that the “flight” is still worth it, not just in this poem but in all the prose poems and parables that will follow. He also offers to be our guide, while again reminding us that the journey will not be easy, because “whether we travel the direct route of desire, or detours of illusion, we will still miss connection,” and just “as the wind changes, the mist descends, we can no longer tell where we are.”
I would argue that in Fixel’s parables, being situated in this no man’s land is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s the only thing, and it has its advantages. We should remember Kafka’s description of that moment between sleeping and waking, which he calls the “riskiest moment of the day.” The narrator of “Flight Patterns” seems to suggest that this risk is necessary, and in the last section of the poem he even gives us a manual of sorts. He admits that we can keep “producing” what we mistakenly believe to be definitive texts, like “letters, photographs, documents,” and then “retreat into private retrospect” to endlessly examine them. But maybe there is a better way. “Wonder,” he writes, “if we decide to give up these [speculative] wanderings, returning to this body, this present time? It may then occur to us that what signifies this world is nothing else but the current of our feeling.”
This is where I think Fixel’s parables differ from Kafka’s. Fixel asserts our strength as individuals, even as he accepts the incomprehensibility that Kafka so intricately praises and damns in “On Parables.” Like his fellow WPA poet, David Ignatow, Fixel embraces a guarded optimism. We should take heart because, as he suggests in another prose poem/parable, called “Above It All,” “Even now someone is at work in a garage, a small shed, to find a solution. . . . Some morning soon, a figure will appear on a roof, waiting to lift off. Not an apparition, I assure you, but someone like ourselves. . . .”
Someone, of course, like Lawrence Fixel.
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