Hilariously pretentious Sarah Miller essay
Partial transcript by HECTOR STOOP
Preliminary comment by Jack A. Napes, C.E.O. of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Last week Mr. Morrissey Breen, who has been expelled from this
organisation, posted up a criticism of an exceptionally empty and
pretentious "literary essay", written by one SARAH MILLER, that was
inflicted on National Radio's audience last week. Mr. Breen asked if
there were any transcripts of the horror show available.
As it happened, the team at Daisycutter Sports Inc. was also listening
to this broadcast, in various mixtures of amusement, annoyance and
even horror. Sarah Miller's essay was so all-consumingly bad, so
absurdly pompous yet devoid of any discernible structure or sense,
that nobody here remembered to stick a tape in the audio-cassette
recorder. However, Daisycutter Sports Inc. intern HECTOR STOOP did
scribble down some of the more hilariously egregious moments, and he
has furnished the following partial reconstruction...
Nine to Noon, National Radio, Thursday Sept. 30, 2010 10:45 a.m.
Literary essay by SARA MILLER, "award-winning poet and short story writer".
[Tone of voice throughout: Archly portentous, elevated, sighing, sub-Sam Hunt sing-song]
A drunk student in a bar in Iowa comes up to me and asks whether I've read Albert Wendt and Patricia Grace. "In the southern hemisphere," he says, "they really know how to construct a sentence." I am stunned by this...
We share skies, share the angles of mountains....
In the midwest, sometimes the moon gloats* over the horizon...
[Random quote by Borges.]
I remember New Zealand rivers, beside which walk families sloppily sutured together. ...
When I went to see the candidate Barack Obama speak, he was introduced by Ted Sorrenson, who likened Obama's judgement, in his consistent opposition to the Iraq war, to the judgement of John F. Kennedy. Obama was magnificent. It was a beautifully hopeful moment. ...
Words force thoughts into collusion...
[Randomly quotes Borges again.]
[Randomly quotes Wallace Stevens.]
Our mothers and fathers are starting to die. We rip open our feet to see the steps inside...
In his wonderful poem "Autumn Refrain", Wallace Stevens writes: "And the stillness is in the key, all of it is, / The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound." ...
In his poem “Meditation at Lagunitas”, Robert Hass writes that "desire is full of endless distances". ...
If we were to stop breathing, would we lose our footing? ...
The steps gather together like voices which force us to laugh, to remember, to bleed.
[Cue pretentious music]
END
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* Yes, that's right: she said "gloats", not "floats".
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