Matthew Olzmann's "My Invisible Horse and the Speed of Human Decency"

Thoughts on a poetics of uncertainty.

My Invisible Horse and the Speed of Human Decency

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart
before the horse,” which is curious
because I don’t have a horse.
Is this some new advancement in public shaming—
repeatedly drawing one’s attention
to that which one is currently not, and never
has been, in possession of?
If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,
then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position
in relation to the cart, but I can’t
do that because all I have is the cart. 
One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes
precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one
invisible horse, which does not pull,
does not haul, does not in any fashion
budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy
up the hill or down the road.
I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world
with less hatred strutting the streets.
Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence
against civilians.  Wind through the trees.
Water under the bridge. Kindness.
LOL, says the world. These things take time, says
the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot
be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.
Then, together, they say, The cart!
They say, The horse!
They say, Haven’t we told you already?
So my invisible horse remains
standing where it previously stood:
between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,
between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,
between the status quo and The Great Filter,
and I can see that it’s not his fault—being
invisible and not existing—
how he’s the product of both my imagination
and society’s failure of imagination.
Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.
How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.
How I say I want to believe in him,
speaking softly into his missing ear.

from poets.org’s “Poem-a-Day,” (October, 2019)

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It’s funny. Just this week, I was going through some practice problems with one of my classes in preparation for the AP Language and Composition exam. I hate standardized tests. But anyways, one of the problems had the word “aphoristic” in it, and I found myself having to explain aphorisms to my class. My mind immediately went to some tried-and-why-the-fuck-are-these-true ones: a penny saved is a penny earned, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and more, and more. I wish I had thought of Thoreau in that moment. Our life is frittered away by detail. Alas.

I wish, too, that I had thought of this poem by Matthew Olzmann, whose work I love for reasons similar to the work of Paul Guest, or Jamaal May. There is an allowing expansiveness that begins, almost always, in the specific — the many-detailed absurdities of the world. Olzmann’s poems are poems that explode with a generosity of thought. To be among them is to be privy to a mind wandering through a mist, grabbing at branches in order to pull them closer to one another.

As such, I love today’s poem because it re-centers the world, if this is even possible, back into a place of mystery. You notice it most succinctly toward the poem’s end, when Olzmann writes:

he’s the product of both my imagination
and society’s failure of imagination

The “he” of this moment is Olzmann’s invisible horse, which is its own critique of the often-uselessness of gestural cliches and aphorisms, ones like “don’t put the cart before the horse.” But the poem, too, is itself a critique of such gestures. It is a critique of the way in which language is used, so often, to dull our senses, to render us passive and compliant, especially in moments when language is rendered with a kind of certainty that feels absolute. In the face of something we might not understand — or even try to understand — we throw an aphorism, a kind of triteness, rather than our own ability to meet humanness with humanness. Therefore, one might render the above lines in the following way:

[this poem is] the product of both my imagination
and society’s failure of imagination

In such a way, Olzmann’s poem serves as a reminder of one purpose or power of poetry: it shows us, through an electrification of language, that not everything is as resolved as it might seem, and that such irresolution can be a beautiful thing.

I’ve been thinking about some of these ideas — the value of uncertainty and irresolution — this week ever since reading a remarkably astute essay by Jackson Arn in the most recent issue of The Drift. Reviewing and critiquing the recent anthology The Contemporary American Essay, Arn pokes some pretty solid holes in the ongoing pattern of writing-into-uncertainty and coming up with, well, more uncertainty. He writes:

[These essays] consider many options, it’s true, but existence is usually too chaotic for anything further. In lieu of a final, definite decision (which would require perspective, that problematic thing), the essayists leave behind a mess of maybes and perhapses and hot, urgent rhetorical questions that dare you to scream yes! or no! or sure, why not, who cares!

This was one of those critical essays I devoured, especially because I noticed my own writing as a subject of its critique. I love when that happens. Once you get past the painful feeling of having your ego deflated through some pretty potent and memorable work, you learn to enjoy the process of being a part of a critical conversation. I, too, am an avid lover of the maybe, of the perhaps. I am certainly a lover of the mess of uncertainty. And though I don’t come to the same resolution as Arn — I truly enjoy an essay or any work of writing that ends in unknowing — I do wonder, often, about the way in which a politics and poetics of uncertainty is also a politics and poetics of avoidance.

And maybe (there’s that beloved maybe) this is why I felt myself drawn to Olzmann’s poem. It does ask for things trepidatiously, with a little bit of uncertainty:

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world
with less hatred strutting the streets.
Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence
against civilians.  Wind through the trees.
Water under the bridge. Kindness.

But in this asking, Olzmann’s gentleness seems to beg another question. It seems to wonder why such a world — one that is so obviously and gently tender — is not possible at all. In doing so, Olzmann makes the potential argument that maybe uncertainty is not merely some product of a mostly gratuitous style of writing, but rather a product of being even just barely keenly aware in our time. To deal in maybe and perhaps might not be avoidant at all. Instead, it might be the only rational answer to living in a world that is so obviously not what it could be.

The rhetorical question posed at the beginning of today’s poem serves the same purpose:

Is this some new advancement in public shaming—
repeatedly drawing one’s attention
to that which one is currently not, and never
has been, in possession of?

So much of our current rhetoric takes so much for granted. It often, as Olzmann suggests, draws our attention to what we are not in possession of. I think about this in regards to education — how we often give advice to students as if they operate as one monolithic bloc, rather than as unique individuals, each with their own fully formed or not-so-fully-formed goals. I think there is a fine line between assumption and certainty, and that many things that are taken as certainties are really just assumptions made by people who claim to have the power to render the uncertain in certain terms. It is more interesting — to me, at least — to subvert that power by re-centering the uncertain rather than claiming certainty about something else.

Olzmann does this with some astute humor in his poem, “The Department of Doubt.” The opening couplets serve as both poetry and critique: they trace a connection between the consequences of American exceptionalism and the ongoing need for certainty:

It’s lonely for those who work the swing shift
in The Department of Doubt.

At a party, if you tell someone about your employer,
They’ll turn and talk to someone else.

Your achievements will be ignored. Your labors:
met with a roll of the eyes.

No one ever says, “You need to doubt yourself
if you want to succeed.”

It’s believe this, and faith that,
and trust in this, and yes to that.

But one thing I also love about Olzmann’s poetry is the way in which it interrogates — often through humor — how hard it is to remain doubtful, to center a personal politics of bewilderment. In another poem, Olzmann writes:

It’s important that you believe
this is a boundless love, rhapsodic, without timidity
or hesitation, because everyone is deserving
of compassion, absolutely everyone, just
not Harold, but for the rest of you, this affection
is perfect, unconditional and free.

There’s real humor here! It’s funny! How can a love be boundless if it excludes this person named Harold? The answer is: it cannot. And so, Olzmann critiques and pokes at the very possibility of something as romantic and even cliche as boundless love by situating it in the voice of a speaker bound by the limitations of humanness.

I think there are two readings of such a moment. One is that something like boundless love is impossible. The other is that boundless love is possible, but is often run aground by the very real and honest imperfections that come with being a human. Olzmann understands those imperfections — and the things that tempt and increase and affect those imperfections — so well. We are situated between and among so much. It’s there in Olzmann’s poem today, where we are all:

between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,
between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,
between the status quo and The Great Filter

To be a human is to be surrounded by so many certainties that almost always influence our actions and perceptions. What’s interesting — and maybe (there’s another maybe again!) Olzmann would agree — is that love is not a certainty, nor is it something whose object is a certainty.

To love is to be engaged with uncertainty. I’d argue, in fact, that love is a true acknowledgement of uncertainty, and that something like boundless love — as impossible as it might seem — is made all the more seeming-impossible because it must reckon, almost constantly, with inconsistency and uncertainty, with failures of expectation and excesses of expectation, with in-betweenness and out-of-the-margins. Maybe that’s why it is so hard. So much of this world primes us to long for certainty, when really we are, in our hearts, creatures of the opposite.

This is why, as Olzmann writes, in the face of the constant need for change, we are often met with the certainty of easy tropes:

These things take time, says
the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot
be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.

I think of a poem by Paul Guest which ends:

Tell me:
if you know. When you are near.

We might never know. We might never be near. To tell, with certainty, anything at all in the midst of this unknown is its own act of egoism that I think we are each guilty of. But perhaps (there’s that beloved perhaps) it is better to simply be among one another in a language of uncertainty, where few things are known and the whole largeness of all that is not known is faced and dealt with together in a kind of gentleness that acknowledges how difficult it must be for each of us to do or say anything at all.

As Olzmann writes, in the poem “The Skull of an Unidentified Dinosaur”:

Einstein says imagination is more important
than knowledge. Certainly, it’s kinder.

Maybe this is why criticism and cynicism are so often conflated: because criticism is assumed to be unkind. I find this assumption a tragedy. I think the art of criticism — and it is an art (read any essay by Elisa Gabbert, or subscribe to Brandon Taylor’s newsletter) — is vital for any contemporary moment, even, and sometimes especially, when it is biting, sharp, and courageous enough to make a point. Read enough criticism, and you amass a constellation of little bits of knowledge. You can connect the dots, or leave them be, or let one dot grow larger in your mind than others. Whatever you want. It’s okay. But one consequence of knowledge is that it can make you sad, especially when you know enough about the world — or art, or any particular thing — to feel it might be better. And one consequence of sadness is that it can make you cynical. It takes work, I think, to remain patient and generous in the midst of the little that you know. Otherwise, the little that you know grows large, and seems like the whole world. It’s not, is it? It’s just a smattering of stars.

As such, I think it’s okay, sometimes, to write into contradictions and irresolutions, to perhaps your way through oblivion. The truth is, we are so far from living in a world where the act of this is centered. The world is organized into departments of certainty, not doubt. There is no department of bewilderment, or grace, or even joy, sometimes. Or gratitude. This is, I imagine, one job of art. To bewilder us away from certainty, which feels safe and secure but is not always. And never has been.

I finished Middlemarch yesterday, and found it to be one of the most profound and joyful and somewhat-laborious books I’ve ever read. But when I think back on it — as I know I often will — I consider its gentleness, too. Especially Dorothea’s. I consider two things she says, towards the end of the book. The first:

What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

And the second:

You would have to feel with me, else you would never know.

Such lines, when taken together, illustrate one wide breadth of humanness. The first describes a romantic and genuine longing for solidarity. The second describes how hard such solidarity is, especially because, by simple fact, we will never know one another.

The fact that we will never know one another with absolute certainty should push us to reinvestigate our relationship to our lives, and our relationship to certainty itself. I think, as I often do, of asymptotes, and the way in which the curve produced by a formula may never touch the line of an axis, no matter how close it gets. At some point, there is no point where we intersect. In fact, at most points. In fact, at all. But that does not mean we do not try for boundlessness. If we cannot intersect, then we must try to imagine something that holds each of our unique lines and all the places where we do not intersect, so that even if we do not know each other completely, we know we are each among one another. That, maybe, is one failure of our imagination: the refusal to believe that within uncertainty, there is a kindness. Such kindness allows for so much more than the stark blunt point of the certain — where nothing is, just the each of us, but not the all.