Corrosive Sublimate

by Gilbert Sorrentino

Los Angeles 1971 Black Sparrow Press. Limited to 1000 copies. 8vo., 67pp., wraps. VG, light soiling, light wear.

Genres: Poetry

67 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 1975

About the author

Gilbert Sorrentino was one of the founders (1956, together with Hubert Selby Jr.) and the editor (1956-1960) of the literary magazine Neon, the editor for Kulchur (1961-1963), and an editor at Grove Press (1965-1970). Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X are among his editorial projects. Later he took up positions at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, the University of Scranton and the New School for Social Research in New York and then was a professor of English at Stanford University (1982-1999). The novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Nicole Krauss were among his students, and his son, Christopher Sorrentino, is the author of the novels Sound on Sound and Trance.

Mulligan Stew is considered Sorrentino's masterpiece.

Obituary from The Guardian

Interview 2006

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corrosive Sublimate is dedicated to Christopher, Gilbert Sorrentino's son. A wistful dedication, contrary to poems such as "Watteau. The Lady's Slipper" with lines such as "What forgotten finger / in the ass / of Mrs. Andrew Jackson" (pg. 56). Indeed, there is a wistfulness in a few of the poems - perhaps a side effect of the poet's 40th birthday ("Life begins at 40") - a wistfulness that finds voice in the poet's reflections on his role as father and husband...

With a sudden shock
it comes to me that I am more
father

than my father was. I who
have lived so consistently
with children. But not

to say I am not my father's only son.
I am my father's only son
you do understand. He is

my father, and was father
for so long so many faithless
and ignorant years

stolid and remote
almost a placidity given,
and held, maintained certainly

in that far that dignified
location.
- Perceive (pg. 19)


Certain figures seem to control
the mind, flame and die
flame again. The past
is minute changes in movement.
Such subtle air.

It is immediately over
but the history.

What that is: precise
taste of lemonade
in the dark field of the fair.

I can no more piece out
my amalgamation
than retrieve the red prize hat.
- A Poem for My Wife (pg. 49)

Sorrentino's involvement in literary experimentation is perhaps best exemplified in his fiction. Indeed, his experiments with metafiction have earned him a rank among the postmodernists. Sorrentino is most experimental, in the context of his poetry, in the use of repetition...

My neck hurts me. The sky close
grey to the earth, this earth or the excuse
thereof, concrete. My head hurts me,
my teeth hurt me, the pains cross
across my eye. Send check to E.

V, I love you, believe me, believe me!
Stasis of emotion, the dam, here where
the eye looks inward, the pain turns
grey. The sky close to the earth, my
neck is stiff and hurts me. Send check to E.

One looks forward to work? Some strange
thing had occurred secretly to make me
grey inside, raining. Send check to E.
My daughter's birthday, a book, coloured
pencils for bright trees, sunlight, the

blue blue sky with a bright cloud
fat floating in the middle, paper, the
blue horizontal sky: Send check to E.
Across my eye the grey rain, the sky, the
pain in my head hurts me: and my grey eye.
- All the Colours in the World (pg. 17)


They will not move toward me.
I have never moved toward them.
Life begins at 40.

Some dark old chorus. Mood
Indigo. It is they
who will not move toward me.

Lie down in front of any
damn parade. But take the money.
Hell, this is America.

Don't you want to star
in a paradoxical film? It is
they who will not move.

Life begins at 40. I am become
a younger poet. Bitter
i the word most often used.

An interesting fact
concerning politics: it
does not know what I am doing.

Politics is telling them
that they are fools.
You take their money to applause.

They love it. Lost in the dance.
The best clothes. They do not know
what I am doing.

Lost in dance. In theatre.
I've been at this a long
time. Bitter is the word employed.

Life begins at 40.
This is America. It does not know
what I am doing.
- Figure for Tenor Saxophone (pg. 53)

Perhaps a better example of literary experimentation in the context Sorrrentino's poetry are the poems "Rum and Coca-Cola", "Prince Rupert's Drop", and "Address to the National Council on the Arts". Sorrentino integrates lines from the first two poems into the third poem, a technique reminiscent of Ted Berrigan's Sonnets ...

Field of flowers
field of flowers set
down in a man's despair.

Babe dying on his
bat bent at
the Stadium.

Please I beg you
don't tell me
about Cuba.

An old man who
in every way was wrong
about everything died.

His cold hand in mine
on a bitter New Year's Eve
and his eyes grey in death.

The specific nobility
of ignoble men
is to be honored.

All abstraction
is sham and shit ideas
are absolute instances.

Bu this I mean there
is a flash
of Sarah Vaugham to love.

In his poem I mean
the poet is mired
in embarrassment.
- Rum and Coca-Cola (pg. 63)


Well, now he's decided to be happy.
A new suit, seen with his wife
(between girls
at all the right spots.

They're both happy. Love sweet love
is their preoccupation. "What a bitter
man"
G is.

They'll show us old bastards
how to write, grrr. R is
a letter of enormous
beauty.

They have no touch with
my secret heart my source
so that in the night I
go there while they dance.

It all devolves on what
one wants and what is happy,
no? This is not
haiku. Fuck the ginkgo.
- Prince Rupert's Drop (pg. 64)


In his poem the poet
is mired in embarrassment, no
propositions, neither
answers.

And no questions.
Whom he soothes
he soothes, redresses
no grievances.

Fuck the ginkgo.
I dislike mountains.
You can look out the window
and write of them proficiently
life long.

"An interesting emotional state"
that writer who can no longer
read. Other "interesting" states
wild and empty. Montana, ah.
Wyoming, Colorado, ah. Who can forget
New Mexico. Well,

Fuck the ginkgo. And do not embarrass
painters by being warmly confused.
Fail, fail, if you must but in terms
you are helpless within.

I do not like mountains. There
is bloody sun or bloody snow, mist or
gold. Then dark. Then tomorrow.

The ginkgo lends itself
to ornamental potting. Artists
I know are broken in their art
to which their bitter faith is given.
- Address to the National Council on the Arts (pg. 65)