beaver, BeavHer, bedder, bedsore, beeba, beemba, been there, beer blare,
beer blur, beer here, begba, beggar, beggere, Bel Air, Bela, bela, belcher,
ben wa, Ben-Hur, bencher, bender, Bernard, Bertha, bestir, beta,
betcha, betta, better, bettre, bever, beware, bezoar, bibber, bicker, bidder,
biddler, bider, bien sûr, bifore, Big Star, Big Sur, bigga, bigger, bim-ba,
bird’s rear, bismer, BiStar, biter, bitter, bittre, blabber, black tears, blah
corps, Blair’s, blare, blanca, blare blur, blaster, blather, blazer, bleahhh,
blear corps, bleeder, bleeper, blender, blinder, blisker, blisper, blister,
blixa, blobber, blonder, bloomer, blooper, blubber,^31Goldsmith’s prose is the most rule-generated of the four, although, like John
Cage, in many ways his mentor, Goldsmith has obviously “collected” his
words and phrases “according to taste.” The amazing 606–page “useless en-
cyclopedic reference book” that results was composed by collecting all the
phrases the poet came across in the given time period of the title (whether
in books, on radio or TV or on the internet or in actual conversation), words
and phrases that end in the common sound of American English linguists
call schwa (e, er). The phrases are organized alphabetically by syllable and
letter count, beginning with one-syllable entries for chapter 1 (“A, a, aar, aas,
aer, agh, ah, air... ”) and ending with the 7,228-syllable “The Rocking Horse
Winner” by D. H. Lawrence, which is never identi¤ed. The page in question
is the opening of chapter 2, where the units are two-syllable. Recitation of
the passage is a great feat, but note that when the page is seen, the words and
phrases create all manner of rhymes and repetitions, as in “be / here, be
square, Beans Dear?, beau-père, beaver, BeavHer, bedder, bedsore, / beeba,
beemba, been there.” The reader’s eye can proceed vertically (“betcha, bicker,
bigga, bittre, blare”) as well as horizontally and even diagonally as we move
from “A door” to “blooper.” Capitalized words stand out (“Anka, Anna, an-
vers, apes ma” or “Big Star, Big Sur, / bigga”) creating fascinating disjunctive
inventories of the language we actually use today in the United States.
The absurdist cataloguing that is the basis of No. 111—for example, “Are
there?, Are uh?, arm bears, armoire, armor, armour, arrear, as far, ashore, as-
per, ass tear, asthore, atcher, atma, au pair, au poivre, auntre, aura, austere,
Auxerre”—and, as the syllables get longer, such units as “How do you spell
‘onomatopoeia’? How long do you plan to be ‘almost there?’ ” (from Chap-
ter X, p. 137)—constitutes a sociopoetic document, a memento mori, as it
were, for the discourses that characterize the 1990s, from those of the Na-
tional Enquirer and the TV talk shows to the argot of daily conversation and
the beautiful prose of D. H. Lawrence. Along the way, Goldsmith gives us
passages in which the faulty transmission of verbal information (usually the
192 Chapter 9