If you were putting together a heist crew, how many poets would you include? If you’re Roberto Bolaño, it’s all poets; no getaway drivers, no safecrackers, no wisecracking tech experts. Just poets.
The writer and poet Alina Stefanescu shared a fun, short piece by Roberto Bolaño yesterday that caught my attention (and sparked the imagination of the Literary Hub Slack). The piece is called “The Best Gang,” from the collection Between Parentheses and translated by Natasha Wimmer:
If I had to hold up the most heavily guarded bank in Europe and I could choose my partners in crime, I’d take a gang of five poets, no question about it. Five real poets, Apollonian or Dionysian, but always real, ready to live and die like poets. No one in the world is as brave as a poet. No one in the world faces disaster with more dignity and understanding. They may seem weak, these readers of Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel, these readers of the deserter Archilochus who picked his way across a field of bones. And they work in the void of the word, like astronauts marooned on dead-end planets, in deserts where there are no readers or publishers, just grammatical constructions or stupid songs sung not by men but by ghosts. In the guild of writers they’re the greatest and least sought-after jewel. When some deluded kid decides at sixteen or seventeen to be a poet, it’s a guaranteed family tragedy. . . . the Siberia of the poet’s exile tends to bring shame on his family too. Readers of Baudelaire don’t have it easy in high school, or with their schoolmates, much less with their teachers. But their fragility is deceptive. So is their humor and the fickleness of their declarations of love. Behind these shadowy fronts are probably the toughest people in the world, and definitely the bravest. Not for nothing are they descended from Orpheus, who set the stroke for the Argonauts and who descended into hell and came up again, less alive than before his feat, but still alive. If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America, I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.
It’s a convincing plan! I can definitely back him up that high school is hard on Baudelaire fans.
Personally, if I were making a play for the rich contents of a vault, I might want a sharp-eyed and opinionated critic in my crew too, and maybe a brash, shoe-leather journalist who’s good at attacking an archive and shaking people down. And hey, if any dapper thieves out there are looking for a blogger to add to their ranks, message me on my personal email—I don’t want to get in trouble for planning cinematic and high-stakes robberies on company time, again.
