Mr. West

  mr. west

  MR. WEST

  sarah blake

  WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

  WESLEYAN POETRY

  Wesleyan University Press

  Middletown CT 06459

  www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

  2015 © Sarah Blake

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

  This is a creative and original work of poetry about the poet’s life and her experience of Kanye West’s work and public persona. Kanye West does not authorize, endorse or approve of any of the material contained in this book.

  Excerpt in “Gaze” on pp. 89–91 from Catie Rosemurgy, “Variorum,” in The Stranger Manual. Copyright © 2010 by Catie Rosemurgy. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

  Excerpts in “The Fallible Face” on pp. 28–30 from Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1995), 86, 92; and Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 75, 178, 199. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Blake, Sarah (Poet)

  [Poems. Selections]

  Mr. West / Sarah Blake.

  pages cm. — (Wesleyan Poetry series)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-8195-7517-3 (cloth: alk. paper) —

  ISBN 978-0-8195-7518-0 (ebook)

  I. Title.

  Ps3602.l3485a6 2015

  811’.6—dc23

  2014035803

  5 4 3 2 1

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Cover image: Relief of the falcon god Horus at the Temple of Edfu in Egypt. Photograph © Olaf Tausch, from Wikimedia Commons.

  FOR kanne AND FOR noah

  CONTENTS

  “Runaway” Premieres in Los Angeles on October 18, 2010

  1

  JESUS WALKS

  Ha Ha Hum

  5

  Heartbreak

  7

  Like the Poems Do

  9

  Con Moto

  11

  Jesus Walks

  13

  The Week Kanye Joined Twitter

  16

  Kanye’s Digestive System

  17

  Seeing Kanye

  20

  THE FALLIBLE FACE

  Mythic

  23

  God Created Night and It Was Night

  24

  Kanye’s Skeletal System

  26

  The Fallible Face

  28

  This Is Not the First Time I’ve Wondered

  31

  In Song

  32

  So Kanye Transformed Himself, Producer to Superstar

  34

  DEAR DONDA

  Adventures

  39

  Kanye’s Circulatory System

  42

  I Want a House to Raise My Son In

  44

  On November 10th, 2007, Donda West Died

  49

  Dear Donda

  51

  Runaway

  53

  AFTERMATH

  Three Months, to the Day, before Taylor Turned Twenty, but Kanye

  57

  Aftermath

  58

  Hate for Kanye

  59

  A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America

  62

  Taylor Doesn’t Speak Out Against Racism

  64

  It’s Hard Not to Be Moved

  65

  Hate Is for Hitler

  67

  Because Kanye Isn’t King Kong or Emmett Till or a N ****

  69

  DEAR KANYE

  My Summer with Kanye

  73

  Watching Weeks

  74

  I Try Not to See Myself as a Mother Figure

  76

  Dear Kanye

  77

  After Donda Died, Kanye Dated Amber

  78

  Suge Knight

  80

  Kanye as a Quantum Particle Yet to Be Observed

  82

  HYBRID

  God’s Face over Gold

  85

  Twilight: Starring Kanye

  86

  Hybrid

  88

  Gaze

  89

  Teeth

  92

  Kanye Raps, “ ” Part 1

  94

  Kanye Is Glamorous

  95

  I No Longer Have to Look Up Dates Like Your Birthday, June 8, 1977

  98

  Kanye Raps, “ ” Part 2

  100

  THE UNENDING WORLD THAT CONNECTS US: NOTES AND FURTHER READING

  103

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  107

  mr. west

  “RUNAWAY” PREMIERES IN LOS ANGELES ON OCTOBER 18, 2010

  MTV.com reported: At the end of his speech, West touched briefly on his mother’s death and how he isn’t scared of anything because he feels as though everything has been taken away from him. “I have no mother, no grandmothers, no girlfriend, no daughter, and I lived with a woman my whole life,” he said.

  Kanye is 33. If he were Jesus, he would die this year,

  and be resurrected.

  I can’t unthink this thought.

  He said he had considered suicide, but found his life to be that of a soldier’s,

  “a soldier for culture.”

  Some men are kept alive by fighting.

  I don’t want this for you, Kanye.

  To the right of the article is a video clip of an interview.

  “… both me and George express ourselves with our truest, our truest vision …”

  Kanye’s bottom teeth distract me.

  If I ever questioned whether the diamonds were there,

  they’re there.

  You’re all kinds of beautiful.

  And if that’s not a word I can use, you’re

  resplendent, numinous, healthy.

  I am two months pregnant.

  Monday this premiere, Tuesday this article, Wednesday

  my first ultrasound, with my child’s boneless arms in motion.

  A memory I didn’t know I could have.

  Thursday I write—If I have a daughter, you can hold her. A son, too.

  The two of you, tied to this week in my life.

  jesus walks

  KANYE WEST, “Jesus Walks,” line 6 of verse 1

  HA HA HUM

  In the chorus of one of my favorite songs are three throat-clearing sounds—

  sometimes depicted as Ha Ha Hum

  on lyrics websites such as azlyrics.com, lyricstime.com, and anysonglyrics.com.

  A sound we make when we talk with the mouths of Jews.

  Channukah, l’chaim, chutzpah.

  Voiceless fricative.

  Russians have a letter for it. In block, an x, in Cyrillic, two c’s back to back.

  In the words, good, chorrosho, and bad, plocho.

  They have other letters I love, for sh, tss, sht, szh, yoo.

  The sound Kanye makes—it’s not unlike the French r.

  How my name falls back into the mouth like it’s collapsing.

  Sa-cha.

  In Russian, the r would roll, as when my great-grandmother said her name,

  as when my great-grandfather called to her.

  My name means princess in Hebrew.


  Kanye’s means the only one in Swahili.

  A language once written in Arabic script, now written with letters like ours.

  Switched in the 1800’s. Trying for sounds like nz and nd, to begin words.

  The mouths we speak with are hidden by our other mouths.

  HEARTBREAK

  The couple, who have dated on and off since 2002, got engaged over a lobster and pasta dinner during a vacation on the island of Capri in August 2006.

  How does People magazine know this?

  I hate to say things look like butterflies, but what should I say—the island

  looks like motion? Like a liver?

  It’s an island.

  You proposed to her and it looks like a butterfly.

  The Italian map, covered in via, via, via. The Italian mountain. Citrus and gulls. I have never been to Italy, let alone to Capri. And I have never been to an island so small.

  When the New York Times reporters write about 808s & Heartbreak, they write how it came after “ ” with the death of his mother in late 2007 and, in early 2008, breaking up with his fiancée.

  They don’t name her. Alexis Phifer.

  If Alexis is the woman in “Heartless,” in the video, thank you

  for covering her dress in stars.

  I have planned my wedding—sent the invitations, tasted all the cakes, bought my dress, named for its sweetheart top, and sparkling. My mother has rsvP’d.

  I got engaged in the courtyard of a museum in Philadelphia—Museum of

  Archaeology and Anthropology.

  Mummies resting

  behind us, and sculptures from China.

  The past pushes us.

  I lament what you have lost even if you do not still love her.

  I think of all the coves of Capri—Cala del Lupinaro, Cala del Rio, Cala di Mezzo, Cala Spravata, Cala Marmolata, Cala di Matermania. And Kapros, meaning wild boar.

  LIKE THE POEMS DO

  I ask,

  “Who’s that?”

  and Noah answers,

  “Mos Def.”

  “Is Kanye rapping like Snoop Dogg there?”

  “No. His jaw is wired shut.”

  Another song,

  “Is that Common?”

  “Yes. They’re friends. They’re both from Chicago.”

  Noah’s been listening

  to rap since middle school. He used to make tapes

  off the radio and listen to them until they broke.

  I grew up saying, I listen to everything but country

  and rap.

  Recently, I spent another evening researching Kanye.

  This time

  about his 2004 debut album, College Dropout.

  “Through the Wire” came out fast, without permission for the sample of Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire.”

  I tell Noah. We’re on our computers,

  across the room.

  He pulls up Khan’s song; I pull up Kanye’s music video.

  The room is a mess of sound.

  I tell Noah how Kanye kisses his hand, places it

  on a larger-than-life poster of Khan.

  Is there a poem of Kanye as a teenager, loving

  the woman who sings, too,

  “I’m Every Woman”?

  A smaller poster in his smaller room.

  Noah with posters of Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill,

  if he were the sort of boy to have posters.

  Noah and I move to the bedroom soon,

  and every night. Noah lets me

  bring Kanye in,

  knows our life has room for all of it.

  CON MOTO

  While swallowing a prenatal vitamin before bed, I’m watching an MTV interview

  with Rick Ross about how

  you taught him to see music in colors.

  He calls you Ye, pronounced yay, dropping Kan.

  Musical terms, held onto from Italian, found on printed music, begin with con

  because they begin with

  with.

  Con espressione, con moto, become, informally,

  espressione, moto, spirito, affetto, dolore, forza, gran, molto, fuoco,

  larghezza, slancio, sordino, anima, brio, amore. Shook free.

  And we should love our own sounds.

  Feeling, movement, spirit, affect, sadness, force, great feeling, much feeling, fire,

  broadness, enthusiasm, muted tone, feeling again, and vigor, and tenderness

  or love.

  Another connection between you and Italy, between you and music. Another

  way to say beautiful things that I have learned tonight.

  If bellies stirred before babies were big enough, mine’d be kicking.

  JESUS WALKS

  This poem could start, “I love you,” instead of ending there.

  It could start, “Music.”

  The key to this poem is connecting this sentence,

  from the lyrics of Kanye’s “Jesus Walks”

  to this sentence,

  Show ’em the wounds

  from a making of video that follows

  the making of the third music video

  for “Jesus Walks.”

  Kanye said, after the first two videos, “I still felt like I didn’t have the hood, and that’s what Jesus walks for, it’s for the hood.”

  I can think, have thought, of great line breaks for that quote. Already had to think of punctuation.

  The man who said, “Show ’em the wounds,” is, I imagine, a friend of Kanye’s. But Kanye’s not around for this:

  “I’m here with my n****, Romeo, looking smooth and shit. You know what I’m saying. Official, n****. How many times you got shot?”

  “Nine,” he’s grinning and lifts up his shirt.

  “Nine times goddamnit, and he ain’t even no rapper, bitch.” Pause. “I’m with my other n****,” the man to his left, “how many times you got shot, n****? Tell ’em.”

  “Five times.”

  “Show ’em the wounds. Show ’em the wounds, show ’em the wounds.” And he adds, “I ain’t never got shot but my n****s did.”

  Stars all across my paper. Stars when I look at something blindingly beautiful. When I fall. When I first learn of stars.

  Someone on the production crew yells out, “Come on in pigeon holders.” Someone says, “I got dirt and blood standing by.”

  Many voices behind Kanye’s repeat, “Jesus walks.”

  An actor—the one lit on fire for the video, the one carrying a cross big enough to carry him—says to the camera, “I hope people take it the right way.”

  My favorite music video of the three has this man in it.

  Maybe for the fire behind Kanye that rises and recedes in that hallway like the breath.

  Maybe because when the police cut open a pack of cocaine in the trunk of a car filled with packs of cocaine, a dove comes out, shaking powder from its head. I count at least fifteen flying from the trunk.

  A woman sings that she wants Jesus with the fullest lips I’ve seen in years, a voice like no woman I know.

  I believe in her, in Kanye.

  But what is it when I believe bullets leave the shapes of stars?

  Kanye, if only I could write a poem for you and not about you.

  THE WEEK KANYE JOINED TWITTER

  We find there are fewer dinosaurs

  when we learn how the skulls age.

  Shifting horns, bones that thin

  and smooth, holes that form like

  some desires do. Changes we

  couldn’t anticipate, knowing mostly

  our simple, fusing domes.

  You begin tweeting.

  I learn about your suits, videos,

  jets, pillows, the new words you

  picked up overseas. You take

  a picture of your diamond

  and gold teeth. You make a joke

  about a crown so lovely I see

  it on nymphs in daydreams.

  Sometimes I see

/>   my curly head of hair outlined in

  the morning dark and think I’m

  the lovechild of actresses and lions.

  But today I see the functionality

  of my face and not whether

  I’m beautiful. I’m so very animal.

  I remember and flare my nostrils.

  KANYE’S DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

  This I taught to a sixth grader—

  mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large

  intestine, rectum, anus

  —but there’s so much more to it than that.

  The bile from the liver.

  The sections of the small intestine—

  duodenum, jejunum, ileum.

  The sections of the large intestine—

  ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon.

  And some go so far as to note the sigmoid colon.

  Wikipedia says,

  of this in particular,

  “normally lies within the pelvis,

  but on account

  of its freedom of movement

  it is liable to be displaced”

  Oh god, the uneasy organs.

  All the sphincter muscles (just like the ones in our eyes).

  All the peristalsis.

  Even a vestigial organ.

  I love the digestive system. The bits about how long the small intestine is.

  The small intestine in an adult human measures on average

  about 5 meters (16 feet), with a normal range of 3–7 meters.

  It can measure around 50% longer at autopsy

  because of the loss of smooth

  muscle tone

  after death.