Mitch Sisskind, sporting his newest collection of poetry and prose entitled Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight, read for The New School’s MFA Writing program on October 11th 2017, and was joined by David Lehman for a conversation which proved memorable and intriguing from the start.
Those familiar with the work of Mitch Sisskind had an idea of what to expect: a witty, playful, part-time naughty/part-time biblical writer who is not afraid to “go there.” And for those who were unfamiliar, well, I think the title of the book speaks right to that tumultuous core. Reading his work some weeks before the forum, I had contrived a mixed opinion over the work of Mitch Sisskind. Many poems were inviting, such as “To No Place He Is Called…” a poem which captures the never-ending instability of living, and leaving, or the well-known poem “Like a Monkey,” which touches upon religion, beauty, and the arguments among sages. The wife in “The Devotions of Jean Blysema” also had me charmed and intrigued, but often some of the characters in the book were downright unlikeable and had the uptight feminist in me blushing, or worse.
But of course, these notions were the first to be dispelled, once I heard the pieces from the writer’s mouth, coupled with hilarious interludes, some giving background, some talking about writing, some laughing in the middle of a particularly funny or outrageous line, signaling to me that he was not quite a vulgar man, but a guy who liked to have fun. I was won over right away, not only by the author’s authenticity but by his ability to lower the stakes, thus, bringing us into the realm of the familiar rather than the formal.
Among the pieces heard at the forum were “Balzac Speaks of Salvation Through Sexual Intercourse,” the playful/experimental “Then All Hell Breaks Loose: Thirteen Films of Tokyo Lipscomb,” and “Three Sonnets,” at request. The Tokyo Lipscomb poem is a list of films made up of interchangeable characters, each with an iconic epithet which is repeated throughout, and various storylines ending in, “and then all hell breaks loose." The other poems mentioned are sonnets. “And just so you know,” Mr. Sisskind added, “a fourteen-line poem is a sonnet.” This comment opened up a conversation between Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind which wondered at the essential mechanics of a sonnet. If not a strict rhyme scheme or meter, then length and a turn or complication after the eighth line must suffice, and well, said Mr. Sisskind, doesn’t a turn usually come toward the end anyway? I like that Sisskind’s sonnets are sarcastic and casual, unlike so many other sonnets that turn out to be quite stuffy.
We also heard the title poem, “Do Not Be A Gentleman When You Say Goodnight,” which is a villanelle, “Like a Monkey,” and parts of “Twenty Questions,” which is an imagined dialogue between the author and his deceased father. The interludes between these poems gave the audience more on Mr. Sisskind’s background as a boy from Chicago (with a noticeable midwestern accent, I might add) and as a student of a particularly hip rabbi who taught Mr. Sisskind a great many things about how to perceive the stories of the Bible and all the people in it with an open heart, even the ones we think evil. These footnotes gave depth to the poems’ inquiries into Beauty and Heaven and God and the Afterlife, which are lighthearted and approachable, but poignant. I thought back to characters in Sisskind’s work that I had thought of as, if not evil, certainly unpleasant, and I asked myself, did I learn anything about them or about myself through encountering them? If so, it was well worth the read.
In between the poems, we captured glimpses of a wonderful philosophy of writing with roots in the New York School of writing and branches and leaves in the contemporary poetry world. This is a philosophy of writing in which one need not be so gosh darn serious all of the time. One can take liberties. One can be silly or gritty or gruesome as long as the quality or intention of work doesn’t suffer. Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind spoke afterwards about the way humor has been far underrated in modern poetry as a cheap device or an easy way out of doing hard work, a construct that their teacher, the celebrated Kenneth Koch, struggled with and fought, because, as Mr. Koch said, something can turn out to be funny, but it’s not only funny. Mr. Sisskind’s poems proved to me that a poem can well succeed by having fun, by getting a good laugh, and by sharing the gritty along with the sentimental. Along with comedy and poetic forms, Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind talked about the way in which one could write in voices, allowing characters to develop through the lines without his crafting much at first, but following the momentum. This discussion, along with the way Mr. Sisskind read his less likeable characters with a playful grin, reminded me that poetry need not always be a poet's philosophy of Life, or even a representation of truth or reality at all. It can just be a piece that flows and takes the reader somewhere.
Besides the intricacies and joys of literature and writing, I enjoyed learning a few secrets, not only of our guest, Mitch Sisskind, but of our own David Lehman, who could not help but bring up a few lost frogs from their years in the halls of Columbia. It was a drizzly Wednesday in Greenwich Village I will not soon forget, where two poets sat and talked literature, Kenneth Koch, teaching writing, and practical jokes, and everybody had a grand old time.
(Ed note: Find recent poems by Mitch Sisskind, including a series of Milania [Trump] poems, here.)
Virginia Valenzuela is a poet, essayist, and yogi from New York City. She holds BA’s in Creative Writing, Literary Studies, Women’s Studies, and a minor in Film Studies. She is a second-year MFA candidate for Poetry and Creative Nonfiction at the New School. You can find more of her work on her blog, Vinny the Snail.
