This Is the Error That Fascinates
by Jake Levine
Featured art: “Artifact 46 BW” by Shaina Gates
I block my mom
because she keeps sending me links
and because blocking my mom makes me feel guilty
I block myself.
This is the error that fascinates
is a line by Jon Anderson
in his poem “The Secret of Poetry.”
The line is less memorable than the ending of the poem
that says
The secret of poetry is cruelty.
I like
This is the error that fascinates
more than
The secret of poetry is cruelty
because it is less memorable.
I use the line whenever bad things happen
and because dogs are always getting sick
because the sky is filling with cancerous dust
because ice melts
and because the parts of my back that I can’t reach always itch
This is the error that fascinates.
When I messaged my brother to tell him that I blocked my mom
and
this is the error that fascinates
he asked me wtf does that mean?
I responded
the secret of poetry is cruelty.
I have heard many a scholar say
poetry articulates the ineffable.
I have also told students that we need poetic language
to describe feelings, attitudes, and thoughts
that can’t be communicated in regular language, but
I have been using poetic language long enough to know
that almost all of my feelings, attitudes, and thoughts
are better left uncommunicated.
I once had a student tell me they couldn’t write poems
because they have no feelings.
I asked
how does it feel to have no feelings?
They said
like trying to eat a bagel, but when you bite down
the only thing in your mouth is the hole.
When my student finished speaking
I could feel the presence
of a great bagel hole standing between us.
Like a whole human flavored bagel
split into two halves
I looked through the bagel hole at the student and
the student looked through the bagel hole at me.
This the error that fascinates.
Jake Levine is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea. He has authored, co-authored, translated, or co translated over a dozen books and serves as the series editor for the Moon Country Korean Poetry Series at Black Ocean. He was a Fulbright Fellow, Korean Government Scholarship recipient, won both the Hattie Lockett Prize and Johnnie Raye Harper Teaching Award at the University of Arizona and was co-recipient of both the National Translation Award and Lucien Stryk Prize for translating Kim Yideum's Hysteria (Action Books). His first full-length book of poems The Imagined Country will be out with Tolsun Books in the spring.
Shaina Gates grew up next to a wetland conservation area in Massachusetts. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design for her BFA in Painting (2005), the School of Visual Arts NY for an MA (2008), and the University of Pennsylvania for her MFA (2016). Shaina lives and works at her studio in Exeter NH.