The Best American Poetry 2013 (19 page)

Sometimes pounding his head on the wall,

He read
Treatise on Universal Algebra
.

“The process of forming a synthesis between

A and B, and then to consider A and B united,

As a third thing, may be symbolized as AB.”

As Joe's familiarity with Whitehead grew,

The significance of this proposition awed him.

How striking that even in the
Treatise
,

His earliest work, Whitehead referred to AB

As symbolic of process rather than product.

Yet the
Treatise
came thirty years before

Whitehead's greatest book,
Process and Reality
.

On and on he read. The vigor with which he

Once devoured Sidney Sheldon's
Rage of Angels

Now energized his attack on Gottlob Frege's

Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik
, which he read

Using Langensheidt's German–English dictionary.

For Joe, October of 1962 was noteworthy

Not for the so-called Cuban missile crisis

But for his completion of Ernest Nagel's

Problems in the Logic of Explanation
.

He found Nagel's easy style very appealing.

No sooner had he finished Nagel

Than a still greater dreadnought hove

Into view.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

By Thomas Samuel Kuhn made Nagel

Look like a Sunday school picnic.

One midnight—or was it noon? for night

And day were now indistinguishable—

Joe in his reading came upon a name

That, like no other, would inspire and

Instruct him for many months to come.

The name was Alonzo Church. Who was

Church? Well-known, but not well-known.

Very well-known in the world of philosophical

Mathematicians and mathematical philosophers

But unknown in most Chicago neighborhoods.

Something about Church captured Joe's fancy.

Perhaps Church's theorem on the undecidability

Of first-order logic (extending Gödel's

Incompleteness proof of 1931) engaged Joe's

Sense of himself as an intellectual outsider.

Church—like Jack Brickhouse celebrating

White Owl Wallops—was an appreciator

Of Gödel, but his appreciation was such that

Church's connoisseurship and Gödel's creation

Actually fused. This was Joe's hope for himself.

He phoned for a pizza pie and took stock

Of his life. Whitehead, Nagel, Kuhn, Church—

His understanding was real even if only he

Knew it. Just like the tree falling in the forest.

Which still falls though no one hears.

His room—austere, ascetic—this was how

Wittgenstein lived. Little furniture but

The air abuzz with energy of intellect.

He would die here. He would die happy.

There was a knock on the door: the pizza.

He opened the door and it was one of those

So-called deer in the headlights moments,

But since that trope would not achieve

Currency for some years Joe thought of it

Differently. He thought he was fit to be tied.

Yes, he was fit to be tied. “Schmolke?”

He inquired, diffidently. And then with

Much greater force: “Karen Schmolke!

Delivering pizza?” He quoted Shakespeare:

“Confusion hath made his masterpiece.”

She was frightened. “You know my name?”

Then, laughter: “Are you psychic or what?

Here's your pie, cheese and pepperoni.

And yeah, I'm doing deliveries, man.

Life takes dough just like pizza.”

The pizza changed hands and Joe stared

Blankly at the box as Karen Schmolke stated,

“Four ninety-five plus tip. Hey, are we old friends?

Wait a minute. I know you. I gave you

A book in the Pegasus coffeehouse.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Joe said and quoted Buddha:

“What you have given will always be yours.”

He reached in his pocket, found a five,

Then found another five and gave her both.

“I'm so grateful to you. Please come in.”

She entered, saw his table piled high

With books and papers, his telephone

For ordering pizza, and in a corner

His mattress. “Nice place,” she quipped,

But sarcasm was wasted on Joe Adamczyk.

Mole-like or like a digging aardvark

He was attacking a seemingly random

Hodgepodge of books that in his own mind

Was superbly organized, and from this

He soon retrieved Whitehead's
Dialogues
.

“Look familiar?” he said, grinning triumphantly.

Karen Schmolke nodded: “You read it?”

The question insulted Joe: “Of course.”

But now her attention was drawn to a paper

On the card table. “Look! Alonzo Church!”

It was Church's June 1940 review of

Are There Extra-Syllogistic Forms of Reasoning?

By S. W. Hartman from the
Journal of Symbolic Logic
,

Joe obtained it from the John Crear Science Library

Where zeal for learning won him borrowing privileges.

“I called him Uncle Alonzo,” Karen Schmolke said.

“When Uncle Alonzo taught at the U of C,

He and my dad would sit at the kitchen table

Working on the
Entscheidungsproblem

And I drew pictures of them with mustaches.”

“You knew Alonzo Church?” Joe urgently

Demanded—and then, as if to answer himself,

He shouted, “You knew Alonzo Church!”

Recovering, he pointed out with reverence,

“Church was the teacher of Alan Turing.”

“Yes, he was,” said Karen Schmolke. “He also taught

Barkley Rosser, Raymond Smullyan, and don't forget

Isaac Malitz. Dad took me to Uncle Alonzo's lectures

But at ten or eleven years old I had no interest in the

Philosophical underpinnings of arithmetic.”

As she began a narrative of her undergraduate

Years at Oberlin College, Joe Adamczyk with an

Impatient wave, as if shooing away a horsefly,

Cut her off and with fierce interest demanded,

“What kind of lecturer was Alonzo Church?”

“Well, he had a very careful, deliberate style,”

Karen Schmolke reminisced. “He would start

Writing on the left side of the blackboard

In a large, clear, cursive hand . . .” She paused.

“Are you all right? Have some pizza.”

“Pizza?” said Joe distractedly, for the word

Meant nothing to him now. With the clarity

Of inner vision he saw Alonzo Church

At the blackboard, he saw Alonzo Church

Pacing around a lectern deep in thought.

And this girl Karen Schmolke! With her own

Ears she heard Alonzo Church lecture on the

Church–Turing Thesis, the Frege–Church

Ontology, the Church–Rosser theorem, and

Many similar matters. With her own ears!

For her part, Karen Schmolke just stared

In quiet puzzlement at this peculiar man

Whose name she had still not learned,

This odd duck who with his head cocked

Seemed to hear some far-off supernal music.

“Please try some pizza,” she offered again,

Now more insistently—for Joe's face seemed

To be changing, his expression deepening.

What did he see? With his obvious interest

In logic, she surmised it was some esoteric proof.

But no, it was Grandma Fogarty! Oh God,

Grandma Fogarty had dropped by unexpectedly!

Joe Adamczyk felt the presence of Grandma Fogarty

And indeed he felt the presence of Grandma Fogarty

More strongly than ever in his life before!

Turning his gaze toward Karen Schmolke,

He wondered whether she might also sense

The arrival of Grandma Fogarty. Gently,

Hesitantly, he reached toward Karen Schmolke.

He caressed her cheek, then took her hand.

Wow, she thought. All men were the same.

On the other hand, never had Karen Schmolke

Felt such . . . desire? Or was it desperate need?

It was flattering, in a way. She smiled benignly.

“It's okay,” she said. “Just don't have a stroke.”

Her acquiescence, her mercy, Joe chose

To see as acceptance, as heartfelt assent

When hand in hand they drew nigh the mattress.

She wore no bra and this fact, to Joe Adamczyk,

Was a powerful expression of youth's sans souci.

But was there not also a sans souci of age?

An insouciance, a devil-may-care perspective,

A what-the-hell attitude, a damn-the-torpedoes

Point of view? Yes, yes, yes, goddamnit!

And Joe embraced that carpe diem sensibility!

He gamahuched Karen Schmolke with startling

Enthusiasm. Cunt, slut and similar words

Eddied and swirled in his brain. Yet a logos,

A telos, was also disclosing itself, cleverly

Interweaving his fucking with philosophy.

Through this most intimate touching

Of a woman who had seen Alonzo Church,

Joe felt himself connected not just to Church

But through Church to the realm of pure forms

Described by Pythagoras, Plato, and others.

Thought and feeling, cunt and consequentialism

Mingled until an aphorism of Whitehead's emerged:

“There are no whole truths. All truths are half-truths,”

The great man explained. That is: truth is never final,

Truth is ever on the way, always halfway there.

Like Achilles' fabled pursuit of the tortoise

Truth is a reality but a reality of process.

Truly Joe had been a bartender. Just as truly

He was one no longer. Who could aver that he

Would not one day be President of Mexico?

Rising to his knees, he poised his swollen member

To enter Karen Schmolke. She arched her back

And her breasts like spring lambs leaped to meet him

Until for at least a moment his ratiocinations quieted

And twice she nutted to one nut of Joe Adamczyk's.

I hope you have enjoyed this story of a man who

Late in life undertook what Alfred North Whitehead

Called
Adventures of Ideas
and then, to his surprise,

Reignited his sexuality, which he called Grandma Fogarty.

And Eve Grabuskawa? Her story will be told, but not today.

from
Harpur Palate

Though you would never admit it, you're still shocked by pubic hair

in Diesel ads on Broadway and Houston, and you wonder what

conversations lead up to a guy posing with his pants unzipped to the

forest. Maybe the stylist does it, but somebody had to think,
let's show

pubic hair
, and was that person nervous about saying,
hey, I have a great

idea: pubic hair
. You think about David Leddick's book
Naked Men

Too
, and the model with the cigarette whose mother photographed

him with his jeans falling off and his pubic hair showing and how that's

weird and you can't even begin to process how someone would let his

own mother photograph him nearly naked and why a mother would

want to. Everyone pretends pubic hair in pictures is artistic, but we all

know it's really about sex, which you quickly remind yourself is okay,

too, because you're liberal, which you sometimes think means you

don't believe in anything because you want people to like you. Then

you think how you hate the phrase
shock of pubic hair
in novels and

spend the next several minutes trying to think of a better phrase,
shrub

of . . . patch of . . . spread of . . . taste of . . . wad of . . .
then you think

how Joyce Carol Oates describes fat men's chests as
melting chicken fat

in her story _____________ and get paranoid because you used to be

fat and can never get your chest as tight as you want no matter how

much you bench-press. You make a mental note to send poems to

Ontario Review
, Joyce Carol Oates is one of the editors and might like

your work. They published Judith Vollmer's poem about the reporter

covering a murder scene, and you love her and her poems (maybe you

should send her an e-mail and see how she's doing). Then you think

about pubic hair again, how embarrassing it can be at Dr. Engel's when

he examines you and stares at it (do you have too much, how much