The Practice of Poetry

“Failures are unforgettable” declares Philip Schultz in his poem, “Failure.” The poem addresses his father’s failures (as perceived by his extended family, community, rabbi, and others) and honors the intentions underlying his frequent goofs as he tried for greatness. He reflects: 

… not
believing in or belonging to
anything demanded a kind
of faith and buoyancy.

The poem offers redemption; it rescues the memory of the father and allows him to be like what Jack Kerouac described as the “Holy Goof.” There is a holiness in goofing up (and goofing around). Maybe we don’t recognize it often enough. We do have literary heroes that are royal mess-ups: Miguel de Cervante’s classic character, Don Quioxote is an easy one. And clearly, Ignatius Reilly from John Kennedy Toole’s novel, A Confederacy of Dunces embodies the ultimate goof. T.S. Eliot’s persona J. Alfred Prufrock is, perhaps, the anti-goof: he is so afraid to take a step that we continue to feel his extreme discomfort and hesitation along with him.

I wish I saw more literature that addresses failures. I think we need it. In a culture that is burying itself in vast quantities of rapidly accumulating waste, we need to reassess what is valuable and what is useless. The state of California just ruled that all plastics now have a “redemptive value” to encourage people to recycle more. By expanding the economic benefit of recycling, the government hopes to increase environmental returns. In a time of increasingly damaged and unstable environments, economies, communities and psyches, we might need to learn to better love failures, imperfections and damaged goods.

It seems like echoes of the old virgin/whore dichotomy in a slightly different form. Often, we still classify and separate things as pure/worthwhile or impure/damnable. Literature holds the power to change a culture’s collective myths and heroes. I’d like to set aside the hesitant Prufrockian “maybe.” Let’s see more literary heroes say “Yes,” even if, like the father in Schultz’s poem, they don’t quite get it right in the end. 

If you’d like to read and hear Philip Schultz’s poem “Failure,” go to: http://www.slate.com/id/2164575/

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