The Secret Adventures of Order

Overview
Excerpt

by Vincent Czyz

What do the aesthetics of poetry have to do with an Ikea store, ancient ruins, a boxer’s style? Is there a hidden order that surfaces in strange ways—the route we take through a city, Jungian synchronicity, seashell patterns? If Lucifer isn’t Satan, then who was he? Citing the likes of JL Borges, DF Wallace, Paul Valery, William Gass, John Ruskin, and RM Rilke, Vincent Czyz explores these and other questions in a far-ranging and lyrically observed collection. His critical commentary is complemented by several deeply personal essays, including a reckoning with his violence-marred childhood; a search for psychological healing that culminates in an all-night ayahuasca ceremony; and a long-distance friendship with an erudite bookie who dwells in a Kansas basement. Carrying as much intellectual heft as emotional freight, Czyz's writing invites readers to indulge their hearts and minds in equal measure.

Vincent Czyz takes on some giants, including plot, Ikea, Ben Lerner, and A.S. Byatt. In the end, however, he’s less a fighter than a shrewd observer—even an enthusiastic and loyal fan. He champions and celebrates John Berger, Guy Davenport, William Gass, Marilynne Robinson, mom-and-pop businesses, and collage. Even his difficult father and Lucifer get treated fairly. He’s a terrific writer, and no matter where he stands, or where you stand, you will want to hear what he has to say.

—James Goodman author of Stories of Scottsboro, a Pulitzer Prize finalist

I love this book. Czyz covers so much terrain; every sentence seems to contain its own universe. So many universes, and they all get along. And the undergirding, the intellectual and emotional depth, the lifetime of learning and experience, make it indestructible. It simply cannot not work. Czyz proves, beginning with his opening essay that poetry and prose not only can co-exist, but that they MUST. The book goes on to prove this in every way. All is exactly as it needs to be in The Secret Adventures of Order—and then some.

—Rob Cook, author of Last Window in the Punk Hotel

Vincent Czyz, an acclaimed fiction writer, utilizes his ample critical toolkit to reveal the secret heart of books and authors he admires (and some with whom he takes issue), while also demonstrating his skills as an essayist and secular theologian. Even when I disagree with him I salute his acumen, his focus, and his deep engagement.

—John Keene, MacArthur fellow and author of Counternarratives

Vincent Czyz is the author of Adrift in a Vanishing City a collection of short fiction that was awarded the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for Best in Small Press; The Christos Mosaic, a novel; and The Three Veils of Ibn Oraybi, a novella. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts, the W. Faulkner-W. Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction, and the Truman Capote Fellowship at Rutgers University. His work has appeared in many publications, including New England Review, Shenandoah, AGNI, The Massachusetts Review, Georgetown Review, Tin House, Tampa Review, Copper Nickel, Skidrow Penthouse, and Boston Review.

by Vincent Czyz

When a friend of mine asked me about the city of Istanbul, where I was living at the time, I wrote back (in part): It’s the once-and-future seat of empires, ruled over, inhabited by Turks, who speak a language not included on any Indy-Euro chart, unmapped linguistic waters, their island lies there, they go sailing about too much they can’t understand or be understood. And so within the Ural-Altaic they remain, drinking their vodka-clear, licorice-sweet raki, which goes cloudy white when poured over ice, and therein see their uncertain and mostly unhappy futures, but as they sober up, they forget what they saw in their glasses, and so they’re back at it the next night in the Istanbul bars, learning the secret of everything to come and forgetting it again. Undeterred, undisturbed, they go on speaking their impenetrable language & drinking their sweetish strong drink and answering the call of Allah five times daily.

I make no claim that this is poetry, but it’s closer to poetry than an entry in a Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia. There’s not all that much of informational value here; rather, it’s a mood, an ambience being conveyed. Indeed, there is misinformation (I’m sure the Turks don’t really see the future in their drinks). The letter dodges empirical quantities and approaches the city from the right side of the brain, offering—instead of population statistics or square miles covered—a foreigner’s impression of the city.

When things fit neatly into their allotted spaces, when they are clearly delineated and criss-crossed with a grid of longitude and latitude (rigidly proud in its perfection of purpose), when they are countable or quantifiable, then we are closer to the prose end of the spectrum. When what we want to convey seeps under closed doors, when it descends as mist, when meaning refuses to take a definite shape or overflows the vessels in which we’ve tried to contain it, then we’re dealing with the pole where poetry has planted its flag.

I’ve mentioned a few general characteristics, the way a wanted poster without a photo or an artist’s sketch might list blond hair, blue eyes, height, weight, etc. Quite a few men or women may fit the description without being the one the authorities are hunting down. I would need much more to pin down precisely what distinguishes prose from poetry. Fortunately, pinning it down precisely is well beyond the scope of this essay. In fact, if T.S. Eliot is right, no one is likely to pull that off. As he said in his introduction to Paul Valery’s The Art of Poetry, “I have never come across a final, comprehensive, and satisfactory account of the difference between poetry and prose.” What I’m hoping to do is simply to point, to suggest the likely direction in which our elusive quarry has fled.