A Copulation of Cliches

In 1959 Vladimir Nabokov was asked by the book reviewer for The Washington Post if he thought his novel Lolita was, ‘pornographic’.

Nabokov’s answer:

 “My definition of pornography is ‘a copulation of cliches’ in which an author puts the reader on familiar ground and then makes a direct attempt at provoking the most basic responses. This is not the case with Lolita.”

Charles Simic, the recently deceased former poet laureate of the United States, opened what would be his last book of new poems, No Land in Sight, with this poem:

            FATE

            Everyone’s blind date.

It occurred to me the other night while watching the State of the Union address by President Biden that what passes for ‘opposition’ as now constituted by the Republican Party is an extreme form of political immaturity, childishness really, a kind of zombie-like living out of uninformed fantasies, and therefore infantile. And that certain concepts, supposedly held dear— freedom, truth, a government of laws not men—have quite possibly been trashed in favor of an unstable and unforeseeable future created by a small, select group of 3rd graders.

Perhaps this is the new freedom: to be able to behave like a child while in a position of power.

*No Land in Sight, Poems. Charles Simic. Alfred A. Knopf, 2022