Postcards from the End of America (iii)

from poet Linh Dinh and Seven Stories Press

I dislike that table of contents. Centered. Why? Because no one intended a reader to use it? As there also is no index by place visited in this travelogue?

The index, by the standard contract, is the author’s deliverable. Indexing 33 chapter titles, even twice, by state as well as municipality, would not have cost money or a day’s work. Linh didn’t want to, as he did want to slap those titles on.

I dislike the titles but the poet Linh Dinh wrote them as their first publisher in his blog Postcards from the End of America. The publisher writes the title, one good reason to publish entirely on your own account rather than in partnership.

If a reader doesn’t like a publisher’s title well that is just a failure in advertising that has nonetheless succeeded. I bought and read the book.

When the reader doesn’t like the poet’s titles that is success. You have engaged with the poems. What are these titles like? Attractive. Bright and shiny. They suggest the possibility of something more.

They are titles as for a poem these days, fulsome, glittering, run of the millstream, as this travelogue rather grinds wheat and chaff into flour. A disconnect for me but then I don’t like a title on any poem.

I recall a poem by the first line. I like an index of them, too. Linh didn’t deliver one of them either.

4-11-13 - Of all the words uttered by a person, only a few remain unforgettable.

I like that date. I like every date that begins each of the 33 entries, in chronological order, ending with 6-28-15. They seem to mark the day filed, since many report on at least 2 days with an overnight. So, the date asserts, I wrote on this day after a visit that week.

It’s a method. It implies that what is to come really did happen, at a time known to an understood accuracy. It was unique. It was also one of many. There was one just like it before and another will come up as you turn the pages.

This is sampling. It is a scientific method, a way of knowing the world. Everything general we know about nature and society rests on some log entry that begins with a date.

Of all the words uttered by a person, only a few remain unforgettable. I like that first sentence. It is a sentence, a sententia, a general observation, a sentiment, a thing of sensibility. A travelogue is a sentimental education.

Of all the words uttered by a person, only a few remain unforgettable. That sentence is a poem. It demonstrates dramatic irony. It is recursive. Shall we ever now forget what this poet has uttered about what people utter?

Or shall we forget rather the utterance which the poet attributes there on that first page to the person of the politician who denied society, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure.”

We are going to remember the poet’s first sentence. We are going to ride his bus and read one after another from a social world emptied out by those who don’t ride the bus, filled by those who do.

Viet Nam letters has addressed Postcards from the End of America twice before, first on June 11, 2022, then again on August 6, 2022. The poet Linh Dinh is the subject of 1 more on April 29, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.