Before my two sonnet collections Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Infinity Standing Up (2019); before I was anthologized in the Guts Publishing anthologies Cyber Smut (2020) and Stories About Penises (2019), I developed a poetic obsession with the late German filmmaker and queer iconoclast Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
By this I mean, that my poetry practice really took off after I saw his deliciously wicked movie The Marriage of Maria Braun at a Film Forum retrospective over a decade ago in NYC. That screening led me to write a poem. And then to go to another movie. And then to write another poem. And then to go to another movie. And so on.
Shortly thereafter, fellow poet Resa Alboher invited me to read with her at NYC’s now-gone Cornelia Street Cafe in the middle of a blizzard. Two of the poems I shared that night went on to be published in the St. Petersburg Review which made me feel like Fassbinder’s filmography could indeed serve as a muse. Eventually, it dawned on me: I was writing an extended fan letter in verse to Fassbinder’s ghost. So then I decided to write an actual fan letter in verse, the villanelle “Dear Rainer” which opens my new collection, aptly titled: Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems, published by Anxiety Press and slated for release on RWF’s birthday, May 31st. And here it is:
Dear Rainer
I’ve never written a fan letter to anyone.
How strange to write one now, even to try.
Everyone knows you’re dead. Everyone.
And yet if I were to write to someone,
why not you? I’m not crazy. That’s why
I’ve never written a fan letter to anyone.
And writing to you isn’t writing to no one.
You’re still who are you even when you die.
Everyone knows you’re dead. Everyone.
But dying doesn’t mean you’re done.
Not really. What a lie. Here’s another lie:
I’ve never written a fan letter to anyone.
Because in truth I’m writing this one
to you, this bit of scribbling on the fly.
Everyone knows you’re dead. Everyone.
What’s the point then? There is none.
We’ll never meet and say hello, good-bye.
I’ve never written a fan letter to anyone.
Everyone knows you’re dead. Everyone.
* * *
Drew Pisarra’s new poetry collection Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems (2024) is available via Amazon.com and Bookshop.org. This poem was originally published in Door Is A Jar magazine. Sok Song’s photo captures Drew’s best impersonation of Fassbinder (while holding a rolled-up napkin instead of a cigarette).
Drew is doing a reading tonight, 3 June 2024, from his new book at Cinema Arts Center.
Here he is on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mistermysterio/
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