“Crew and Passengers Were All Drowned”

Some day an enterprising tech journalist may write a history of spam, from it’s earliest days to the present. Though primarily identified with e-mail, spam is an imperialist substance, and has also colonised message boards, chat rooms, blogs and, more recently, Skype. In the public imagination though, the classic form remains the e-mail. Within the generic grouping of “Spam??? there have been many styles and modes. Back in the day, when I was using hotmail as my only account, my spam consisted largely of offers of pornography (E.g.“Nasty Anal Fruit Salad???. All examples in this post are from genuine spam messages by the way) and penis extension (“Penis enlarge patch will make you dick so large you will be able to park a car on it???). I was grateful for these generous offers, because God knows, it’s never been easy to find porn online. Sometime later, the porn offers fell away, to be replaced by debt consolidation, and credit card pitches (“Refinnace your loan, heart-spoon –“). Again, these were welcome, as I’d run up huge debts on porn. Sometime later, we entered the era of the quintessential spam item: Viagra (“Tired with weak penis? Want to have sex all night long? Girls don’t love you anymore????. It’s like you’re tellin’ my life story, dude.) Having worn myself out on credit-purchased internet smut, these e-mails arrived like the cavalry, just in time to save me from terminal inconcupicense.

These days, Fergal 2.0, the broadband version, is a more prudent, more reflective adult than the dial-up edition of the turn of the century, and the spam he receives is consequently of a more staid nature. Words of sage financial advice abound (“This is a Real Business not a fly by night, Get in Monday, Don’t Regret later!!???), as befits my position as a man of means. Others seek the wisdom of my great life experience (“What Is Your Opinion???? asks [email protected]) or pay homage to me with titles at once hip and professional (“Boogie Envoy??? went the title of a recent note from one [email protected]. Thank you kindly, but I prefer “Groove Ambassador???)

Not only are these industrious spammers aware of my upward social mobility, they seem also aware of my taste for poetry. Here, clearly an experiment in the “cut up??? technique of William Burroughs, is a bravely avant-garde piece which arrived into my inbox only recently:

It or recover
By
Judson Echols

of bauchle;
and if I was you I would have a try at her again.
Dunkirk.
We left our horses at the post, and found a guide to Bazins
She was walking ever the faster, and looking fain in front of her; but trembling of her very hands, besought me to be gentle.
I saw, for the aware of an uneasiness that I could scarce explain.
It seemed there a wame and a wheen words;
though Ill can never deny that he fought had cast it away again was little to he wondered at;
and I was inclined I will be going alone, she said.
It is alone I must be seeing him.
forth.
My mind misgives me, it will be some ill to Alan.
Open it, laying his hand on his bosom, outraged in both characters – and I bid were so misguided as to lose her;
and not afterwards when it is quite although I was well pleased, yet I was a little sad also, and thought
to be in some concern upon his daughters health, which I believe was transaction.
Hes no very bonnie, my dear, but hes leal to them he marvelled to see so much devotion as it used to be changed into the her body seemed in the nature of a cruelty.
There was a corner

Mr. Echols here marries the romantic style with the halting, shuddering nature of modern experimental poetry. This is surely a post-modern trick, cannily using the language of the period romance novel (lots of “fains??? and “bosoms??? and “bonnies???) for aesthetic effect, yet undermining the very convention Echols purports to homage by breaking up the flow of language. In attacking the narrative in such a physical way, Mr. Echols, in a very real sense, destroys the gender roles and political assumptions implicit in the romantic genre.

Even this profound work must pale in the face of the bleak yet elegiac vision of Venice Gardener (I think that’s his name, although it could be a nom de plume, like “Dublin Lawyer???). The fragrant romance of Echols is echewed in favour of an unremitting melancholy, and the light-hearted title is but a cruel mockery of the repeated lament at the poem’s powerful and profound close.

How R U Lately
By
Venice Gardener

is absent template
spent in dressing, driving, dining and dancing;
in skimming novels, and love the poor worm, who tried to be patient, brave, and cheerful, last long.
he got interested in spite of himself, and before he
is absent template
is absent template

“were you afraid of in my prophetic bones that something is wrong,’ said mrs jo, looking
crew and passengers were all drowned.
he inveighed against the injustice
crew and passengers were all drowned.