assholes and just plain holes

a couple of months ago we played a game during our monthly get-together. see, every month or so a group of writers come together at a local brew pub to drink, bullshit and share our latest texts. i'm lucky to belong to this group as it boasts some damn good poets. at any rate, the game went like this: what poet, dead, would you like to have as a roommate.

you could even go further i suppose and speculate what poet, dead, you'd like to have as a lover. we didn't go that route. i mentioned rimbaud, he'd be endlessly fascinating company but that poet was a dick, a major asshole, and certainly one does not need to be an asshole to be an interesting companion much less a good writer.

but a group of writers wondering aloud about writers, dead, we'd like to hang and live with and not want to kill? a tall order? perhaps not. tho as writers we tend to look into our mirrors as if we were staring into the abyss, right?

as for me i mentioned mina loy. i think she'd be helluva lot of fun to be around. she was blazingly smart, attractive and possessed an earthy humor of the kind i admire. plus she didn't give a shit about fame. sure she was selfish but i recall reading in that biography about her that was published in the late'90s when she and poet-pugilist arthur cravan were flat broke and hadn't eaten in a few days. one afternoon cravan and loy were in bed when cravan was at the end of his tether suggested they consider suicide. loy replied, but we haven't even finished talking.

that is a lust for life i want to be around. she was far from being an asshole. one doesn't need to be an asshole to be interesting or brilliant. you don't need to be an asshole to be dull either. to be sure, you don't need to be an asshole period. she was a deeply complex individual who wrote some of the best poems of the last century. loy made a map of the moon that i'm still unfolding.