Varró Dániel: Everything is like everything – a free verse on the loose – (Minden olyan mint minden in English)
Minden olyan mint minden (Hungarian)az első szerelem olyan mint pincért látni civilben
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Everything is like everything – a free verse on the loose – (English)the first love is like seeing a waiter in plain clothes crying is like laughter and a series of farts in a diaper is like a prohibition-era mafia showdown everything is like everything the theorems of theoretical economics on a closer inspection are quite like sonnets and the sonnets most closely resemble to flowering bath-sponges everything is like everything finding a definition for everything looking for an exact definition for everything and then finding out that there isn't a precise enough definition is like drawing lines in the water and being surprised that the fish escape wow the fish passed through the H2O molecules the H2O molecules are like the eye of the needle and the fishes well the fishes are just like camels everything is like everything who else has observed this that everything is like everything because I really observed it I have made this one observation in the last thirty-one years and I’m willing to die on this hill but now all of a sudden in the light of this poem this shone by this verse is like as if it was a rhetorical something or poetic exaggeration but that’s really the way it is I strongly believe in it everything is like everything for example I will give another example teapots the teapots are eerily reminiscent of elephants the arc of my wife's raised eyebrows and the paths of my soul-meanderings at dawn are like two eggs and life is like (now i will tell you what life is like) life is like the expectation that this half-sentence raises and which then can never ever be satisfied everything is like everything it feels so good to write a free verse I haven't written a free verse in twenty-one more precisely twenty-one and a half years the good thing about the free verse is that you can be very precise god how much i hate to be precise if I hate something it’s the head and hair-splitting accuracy the precise sentences the precise descriptions yes I’m most annoyed by meticulously precise descriptions precise descriptions force a person to imagine something exactly as someone else sees it to force someone to imagine something exactly as we see it is the greatest impropriety to treat someone with our memories to tell a movie in detail to someone who hasn't seen it to show photos of a trip to someone who hasn't been there and to whom therefore these pictures say nothing to grab the other's attention by the neck and squeeze it long till suffocation to wallow in our own comfortable little reality i.e. to be articulate is the greatest immodesty anyone who want to talk precise can suck my dick which reminds me that my first master said in connection with my last free verse which on a second thought must have been no more than nineteen years ago that the frequent mistake of young poets a common misunderstanding among young poets and those who write in bound forms that a formal requirement of a free verse would be to have someone in it to take a piss indeed someone pissed on someone at in my last free verse but only metaphorically yet my first master got annoyed young poets and those who write in bound forms why do you believe that free verse is free because someone pulls down his fly in it my first master grumbled but my first master can also suck my dick this free verse writing is starting to get to my head writing a free verse seems to be like being drunk it tempts excessive sincerity and uncomfortably honest tearful confession I completely miss this compulsion to communicate which as I have noticed most people honestly everyone besides me ineradicably have everyone has much more to say than others would be willing to listen to I completely miss this compulsion to communicate alcohol alone can loosen my tongue a bit alcohol alone and apparently writing free verse everything is like everything I’ve been drunk only a handful of times in my life I must have surely been drunk once because I went out to vomit during a sentence then I went back and finished the sentence they asked if I was vomiting and I said yes I got a chewing gum for there was this kind and beautiful girl there who smiled at me and gave me a gum I was surprised I didn't know that if a man gets so drunk that he has to vomit during a sentence he gets a smile and a gum from a kind and beautiful girl the reason for me saying she was kind and beautiful because this is something everyone can imagine everyone knows kind and beautiful girls everyone can imagine them the world is full of kind and beautiful girls for that alone god deserves a tip this free verse is starting to get too heady anyway I wouldn’t be able describe that girl maybe she wasn't kind at all or beautiful I have no idea I was drunk now I remember in that free verse I wrote about twenty-one and a half years ago not which upset my first master but the one before that my penultimate there was also an open zipper a typical teen poem the title was I’m bored of the whole thing I was thirteen and a half years old when I wrote it I was growing my hair it has been long ever since my father read it and he really liked it and he said that he wrote similar ones when he was at the same age I wasn't happy about this at all I wanted to be Lajos Kassák[1] without actually having read Lajos Kassák at the time obviously obviously not reading Lajos Kassák at the age of thirteen and a half is the same as reading Lajos Kassák at the age of thirty-something everything is like everything but that's not what i wanted to say what did i want to say I wanted to say is that free verses are like free beaches you can go in anytime you can come out its free and there is enough space to spread the towels in a modest distance from each other however they do not have table-tennis or water slides so free verses are like free beaches and sonnets most closely resemble flowering bath-sponges everything is like everything I have no idea how this poem will ever end I’m caught in the momentum this momentum that has been well-behavedly dormant in me for some thirty years lazily but let's say instead that it was well-behaved being lazy or well-behaved is ultimately the same everything is like everything this for thirty years tactfully dormant momentum in me suddenly woke up and grabbed me from the inside caught my inner grab takes me forward drags me down the slope and there will be no stopping slopes never stop such are the slopes I’m not really downhill I’m just like I’m downhill because everything is like everything and since everything is like everything the examples can be listed indefinitely the albino chimney sweeper is just like a snowman the catharsis of a theatrical experience feels like indoor cycling the rules show obvious kinship with cards magically pulled from behind our ears and love is like a meeting of amateur artists working in healthcare everything is like everything I once read in a poem that if one does not strive to deliberately finish it one can trust that as if by itself the poem will reassuringly end at some point but that poem also ended quite stupidly to complain about the difficulties of writing a poem in a poem is like butchering a pig during dinner poetry is public stripping said my first master not the first master who got annoyed by my free verse but my previous first master my very first master he explicitly welcomed open flies and encouraged me to read Lajos Kassák but I did not read Lajos Kassák and read Árpád Tóth[2] instead reading Lajos Kassák instead of Árpád Tóth is like reading Árpád Tóth instead of Lajos Kassák obviously obviously poetry is public stripping the poet who complains about the difficulties of writing poetry in his poem is like a stripper sniffing at a half-slipped panty disappointing disappointing and annoying everything is like everything everything is so fucking annoying and since everything is so fucking annoying everyone is always annoyed they complain because they are annoyed and they annoy others by complaining being annoyed is the most fundamental state of human existence we come into the world annoyed because it is damn annoying to be born seriously being annoyed is the most fundamental state of human existence everyone who is not annoyed is suspect suspect of being a robot or a UFO who is here to invade Earth or worse they are also upset but they are hiding it they try to look better than us nervous people with their self-imposed obnoxious calm though they are not calm at all they are just seemingly at ease to be unnaturally calm to never lose our cool is as annoying as to always complain about being anxious everything is like everything the most annoying is this poem itself which does not want to end at all and such high hopes I had when starting it that’s always the case that the poems have great promise as long as they are inside as long as the poem is a formless inner mass or a poetic vision if you like although my verse-seedlings are more of poetic hearings I don't see the poem so much as I hear it in the annoyingly platonic moment of inspiration but it doesn't matter in the end the point is that inspiration makes sure that it only arouses you with its un-notable siren song until you smell poetry then it leaves you upset and unsatisfied inspiration is a real sod let's just pretend I didn't say it unfortunately I can't unsay it because I've already said it and because of the momentum I can't go back and the backspace is stuck on the keyboard and I can't delete it but let's just pretend the backspace isn't really stuck it's just like as it was from this fucking momentum because everything is like everything let's just pretend i didn't say sod especially my fainter-hearted conservative readers if there are any should pretend that i didn't say sod or fucking by the way these conservative readers are so fucking annoying these irritating old men and women who come to me at the end of public readings and reprimand me for a swearword for a single swearword in one lonely poem because the role of poetry is to oh fuck it what will become of this fucking world if even poetry has to have a fucking role by the way normally I don’t swear at all it is very unlike me to swear unless I stub my toe if I stub my toe and apparently when I write a free verse everything is like everything the role of poetry apparently is to lead by example and to formulate through beautiful words through the precise use of beautiful words a moral lesson god I hate to formulate precisely not only I hate it but I don't believe in it the most poetic word is whatchamacallit cast a stone my conservative readers who can suck my dick also the high-cultured so-called high-cultured-neomodern post-avantguard-raised self-aggrandizing yet still expecting something from poetry readers who can double suck my dick they can also cast a stone but the most poetic word is whatchamacallit as it is part of that inner mass that has not yet cooled down completely this whatchamacallit is from the lava of our fiery soul this whatchamacallit this offhanded thing falling of the tip of the tongue this whatchamacallit is the volcanic ash of real poetry the rest is just prevarication oh how sloppy is the precision and how precise is the sloppiness but that's not what i wanted to say what was about to say I wanted to say that the inspiration is like the smart girl with the pigeon that annoying smart girl from the King Matthias tale who both brought a present and didn’t free verse is like a tourette syndrome everything is like everything oh God I wish this poem was over already not that I'm going to write it until the day I die I have more important things to do I cannot even start to think about them for example I should go to a hairdresser I should pick up six buns and two blue-cap bottles of milk from the store to the hairdresser my good god I should have gone to the hairdresser ages ago I have been putting off going to the hairdresser for twenty-one and a half years not going to the hairdresser for twenty-one and a half years is like dropping by always dropping by the store for six buns and two blue-cap bottles of milk to say that the color of the rose is rose while a rose is not rose is like calling the panda panda when the panda isn't panda at all so rose is like a panda spring is like these little music boxes and tearing the cellophane off from CD cases is like riding aimlessly on a prairie with a flaunting mustache
everything is like everything [1] Lajos Kassák (1887–1967) was a Hungarian poet novelist painter essayist editor theoretician of the avant-garde and occasional translator He was among the first genuine working-class writers in Hungarian literature Although he cannot be fully identified with any single avant-garde movement he adopted elements of expressionism futurism and dadaism [2] Árpád Tóth (14 April 1886 – 7 November 1928) was a major Hungarian lyric poet and contributed to the Nyugat School His core themes focused on fleeting happiness and resignationHe translated Milton Oscar Wilde Shelley Keats Baudelaire Flaubert Gautier Maupassant and Chekhov
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