Breaking the Anxiety of Influence: Ananda Osel’s Absurd Realism

by Janet Jonnes

Since the ubiquitous rise of post modern free verse poetry in the 1960’s the literary world has become saturated with an unmentionable amount of poetry which is keen to imitate rather than evolve the genre.  In Harold Bloom’s 1973 The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry he declares that contemporary poets develop anxiety due to their inability to create something which hasn’t already been exploited by earlier generations of poets. 

Until fairly recently, Seattle, Washington based writer and artist Ananda Osel might have been subject to Bloom’s anxiety of influence, but, in recent months Osel and his work have become the subject of increasing interest due to his distinctive writing style, a sarcastic low-diction free verse approach dubbed Absurd Realism or Absurd Dirty Realism, in part because of it’s combination of minimalist realism, existential absurdism, and black humor.  Possibly known better for his frank and eccentric commentary than for his poetic ingenuity, Osel at present stands on the threshold of a new literary movement; one that may or may not be durable.

Absurd Realism could rightly be described as twentieth-century philosophy masquerading as twenty-first-century poetry.  The movement’s ideological and thematic centerpiece can be traced back rather easily to the 19th and 20th century philosophies of existentialist thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus.  Obviously the use of existentially absurd themes in creative writing is nothing new.  Kafka’s and Dostoyevsky’s literary works, for example, are insidiously laced with existential and absurd themes.  What’s notable in the case of Osel’s absurd realism is the extent to which he’s extended the philosophy of absurdism.  More specifically, Osel has deliberately incorporated the actual syntax of the poem into the thematically absurd material, almost as if the syntax itself is absurd.  This practice originally came into question after Osel, when talking to a journalist, implied that the exacting nature of poetic language is more or less unimportant, claiming that a reader should “make up their own mind with regard to nouns,” alleging that it’s “a good way to let the poem breath.”  When asked by another interviewer to clarify his position on the matter Osel made the following comment:
 
“Sometimes I’ll write something like “the ugly thing sat next to the other stuff” without giving any other details about the objects. If the narrative is strong you can get away with that. In fact, sometimes that makes the narrative stronger because it doesn’t distract from it. As for the message, I frequently write existentially themed poems and the vagueness of the nouns lends support to the overall idea, which oftentimes is the absurdity of existence. So if I write “the thing is over somewhere” it’s communicating that it doesn’t matter where or what the thing is, it only matters that it exists.”

“The Carnal Hypothesis,” a recently published Osel poem about being confined to an absurd existence, is a fair example of the poet’s overall style.  The following are stanzas six through eight:

“ensnared by the black mosquito
or mile marker 146
or this time
or no time
or anything
or nothing
less than
more than
or nowhere

confined by the lines in the road
by 29 miles to go

limited to the cell
to the prison outside the cell
to the larger cell outside the prison
larger yes,
but a cell anyway”

Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote “one’s ideas must be as broad as nature if they are to interpret nature.”  In the thirteenth stanza Osel takes Doyle’s sentiment to the extreme when his extension of the absurd compels him to substitute a series of what would usually be descriptive nouns for a series of ill-defined adverbs:

“sedated by the rising concrete
and moreover
and therefore
nevertheless, however, furthermore,
and whatever
and your escape from whatever
and whatever’s escape from you”

Margery Snyder, an editor at the New York Times’ About.com, admits that Osel is “seeking a poetry that is simple and direct, deliberately lacking specific details and mostly free of metaphor” while also asking readers “but is it good poetry?”  According to Andrew Wright, a journalist and Osel interviewer, Osel’s work “denotes a radical extension of the poetic form;” one that “is infused with literal symbolism exercised through the expansion or elimination of rarely broken syntactic poetic rules.”  Others have been less enthusiastic. Despite admiring Osel’s ability to draw the reader into a poem, Neil Hirsh criticized Osel’s poetry for being “too ruthless” and “excessively callous” while warning readers to be on the lookout for Osel’s “not so subtle innuendo.”  Others have questioned Osel’s inventiveness.  For instance, one reviewer wondered whether Osel is a new breed of poetic genius or “just a nutcase with a pencil?” 

When I asked Osel for his response he nihilistically (and fittingly) responded this way: 

“Besides productivity, there’s no real line between genius and insanity.  But it doesn’t matter anyhow; genius provides no cure for the condition under which I suffer.  My mere existence perpetuates the state I seek to eradicate.”  Osel continued, adding that “…my artistic autonomy, no matter how callous or transgressive, will not be restricted by popular opinion, custom, or anything else.  I do what I want.  Anything in my game is directed by me, not you, not them.  If you want control or influence you’ll have to fight me for it.”  

Not all of Osel’s poetry fits nicely into the box of absurd realism.  According to Osel, only about thirty-percent of his work is reflective of the self-spawned genre with the remainder displaying considerable range.  However, after reading nearly all of Osel’s published work, which includes about ninety poems, several over-intellectualized essays, and a handful of opinion-editorials, it’s apparent that Osel rarely strays from his thematic and stylistic comfort-zone.  Yet, the majority of his work represents some of the most accessible and well written unrhymed free verse I’ve come across. 

The bulk of Osel’s poetry is written in first person narrative and employs loosely patterned verse that is dramatic and confessional.  Osel will also intermittently switch from first to second person and begin writing directly to the reader, often in parentheses; a technique that the aforementioned reviewer Neil Hirsh calls “Ananda’s attempt to talk himself and us simultaneously.” 

Osel’s work is distinctly interposed by his personal tone, which typically takes on the qualities of nihilism, hopelessness, and sarcasm.  Ironically, while it’s this tone that’s one of the seals of Osel’s poetry, it’s also one of its foremost snags.  Because Osel is so passionate about being dispassionate his work sometimes reeks of arrogance and his narratives start to take on a lecture type quality, not unlike how an irritated parent might talk to a child.  Toward the end of our correspondence I asked Osel if he thought there was any merit to my criticism to which he wrote this one sentence reply: “It’s hard for me to comment on that criticism because, to start with, I barely care what you think.”
 
It remains to be seen how influential a part absurd realism will play in the overall development of contemporary literature.  Perhaps with the completion of Osel’s impending full-length collection, aptly entitled La Poésie de Sisyphos, a clear nod to Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, we might see the movement of Absurd Realism come full circle.  However, producing a viable and impacting collection of poetry is not an easy task for any author, let alone a publisher.

Yet, with the right amount of polish, and in this case author restraint, Ananda Osel’s absurd realism could be the most significant stylistic adaptation of free verse poetry since Charles Bukowski’s prolific dirty realist style infected the literary underground during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  There’s nothing else to do but wait and see.

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