Re: letter to Nicola
Erin McLaughlin (erinseyes@hotmail.com)
Mon, 02 Nov 1998 19:56:16 -0800 (PST)
"Dear Nicola," said Scottie B.
as he prepared to sicken me,
"This is no place for a girl like you."
I thought to myself, 'Probably true.'
"You must escape at once," he implored,
"clutching your sanity & thanking God you were warned."
'Is this funny?' I wondered out loud,
but still read on through the fuzzy cloud,
"I wish someone had warned me," said Scott,
'OH! He's trying to be funny but he's really not.
He descirbed himself and his internet trouble:
"Here I am marooned-like a drunk in a brothel-"
Yes, "in the midst of" us "weird Yanks" he sits,
We wank our words, and he tolerates it."
Poor Scottie is subjected to our "endlessly
Projecting...quasi religious fantasies
Onto a modest body of work by one
Of [our] minor 1950s writers," ho-hum.
But now Scottie assures his dear reader that
Her instincts are absolutely sound (one hand clap?).
"Fiction is either to be written or read,
Anything else is simply word-wanking," he said.
"On this basis," Scottie's sure, she should just forget
Cumbersome college English courses she'll soon regret,
like the "just deceased Ted Hughes" who whole lot in
when his teachers caused him some major dissillusionment.
"Remember!" says Scottie, it might happen to you,
You too might have to think and question what's true,
Or you too can study the study called anthropology
& go "on write some of the greatest of all modern English poetry."
GOOD LUCK!
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