{"id":71612,"date":"2014-05-21T22:58:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T02:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=71612"},"modified":"2014-05-21T23:23:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T03:23:50","slug":"robert-creeley-the-dishonest-mailmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/robert-creeley-the-dishonest-mailmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Creeley\u2019s \u201cThe Dishonest Mailmen\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Creeley\"<\/a>

Robert Creeley by Elsa Dorfman, 1972. Photo via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

I first came across \u201cThe Dishonest Mailmen\u201d my sophomore year of college, when, having become so enamored of Robert Creeley\u2019s oft-anthologized poem \u201cI Know a Man,\u201d I decided to buy a new edition of his collected poems\u2014an indulgence, for someone without an income who was supposed to be reading Milton. (For the record, I carry around a lot of guilt about shrugging off Milton.)<\/p>\n

I read \u201cThe Dishonest Mailmen\u201d and identified with it immediately for reasons I didn\u2019t understand, and indeed for reasons that specifically elude understanding. In its fifty-some words, it conjured equal measures of anger, tenderness, and apathy, an intoxicating combination \u2026 \u201cfor a student,\u201d I almost wrote, but what I mean is for anyone. Still, there\u2019s something in that couplet\u2014\u201cI see the flames, etc. \/ But do not care, etc.\u201d\u2014that remains to me the most profound evocation of a heart-heavy nihilism that seems to afflict people exclusively in their late teens. Mainly, let\u2019s be honest, it afflicts white guys studying literature in their late teens, who don\u2019t know what to do with themselves or how to talk to people or how to live unselfishly, and who are able to voice this not-knowing with increasing, brooding eloquence, and who are thus infuriating to themselves and others. <\/p>\n

In Creeley\u2019s poem, the offhandedness of that \u201cetc.,\u201d which appears three times, is a more compact whatever<\/em> than whatever<\/em> itself\u2014more effective than an eye-roll or the lassitude in a plume of cigarette smoke. It summons all the disaffection and paranoia of any undergrad ever to loiter on the steps of some hallowed hall on some hallowed campus in some hallowed college town. \u201cI don\u2019t care, etc.\u201d: exactly. It\u2019s all that punk-rock acedia without the sneering. It\u2019s a fact. It is, just as it says it is, \u201cThe poem supreme, addressed to emptiness.\u201d When you\u2019re nineteen, someone is always taking all your letters and putting them in the fire. But, again, wait, hell, it\u2019s not just when you\u2019re nineteen\u2014we\u2019re all encountering dishonest mailmen every year of our lives. We try to communicate and fail. We see the flames, etc.<\/p>\n

When Creeley\u2014who was, to give this post a belated peg, born today in 1926\u2014reads the poem aloud, you understand better the small wonders he\u2019s able to work with rhythm and enjambment:<\/p>\n