This seems like one of Brock-Broido’s basal themes for “The American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act.”

Scattered throughout the poem are questions that don’t quite fit if the speaker of the poem is an actual interrogation officer — instead it’s a blend of questions that, on one hand, probe native-born Americans and our attitudes and prejudices; and on the other, are the kind of thing one imagines real immigrants are being asked today.

So “what does ‘paranoia’ mean?” Have “the terrorists won” if our current nation-state is truly as paranoid about foreign immigrants as both the actual SAFE act and Brock-Broido’s poem imply? If we go by what was said in the immediate aftermath of September 11th 2001 — then yes, yes they have.

Does the knowledge or lack there-of about The Sound and the Fury — a William Faulkner novel that borrows and modifies a Shakespeare line to get its title — actually indicate anything about one’s likelihood to engage in terrorist activity?

Or does it just further alienate immigrants attempting to come to a nation that advertises itself as “built from immigrants?”

So, really, we have a double exploration, explicated by this buried-in-the-middle on-the-nose question: the poem works to replicate the feeling of interrogation — a feeling of being untrusted and unlistened to — do the answers to the questions really matter when the questions aren’t questions but statements? Do you really get to answer the questions at all? Is anybody listening or just moving down the list like a formality?

The other exploration is American culture — a lot about a culture is revealed by the kinds of questions they would deem useful for identifying foreign enemies. Tattoos are controversial in the US — there are many jobs you cannot have with visible tattoos. Huckleberry Finn is a cultural icon — who many of us don’t actually know anything about anymore. What drives our pop culture — The Hunger Games? “Moon River?” Isn’t American Healthcare—all its costs aside—the best in the world? If not what are we paying so much for? Isn’t it actually so good that, perhaps, doctors from other countries are only qualified to be vegetable salesmen when compared to the American standards?

I can say the last is definitely not true. America does have some of the best hospitals in the world—M.D. Anderson is cloning antibodies to fight cancer and researching how to manipulate the immune system to shrink tumors on its own volition—and that’s just one example; but foreign doctors are extremely common and every doctor practicing in America must be board certified before they can practice ensuring that everyone is up to par. Foreign-trained doctors are doing research and operations at the highest levels in American hospitals — not that American doctors aren’t doing just fine as well. There are a lot of other pressures that prevent highly educated immigrants from working at equivalent levels in foreign countries — most notably literacy — but it’s a huge and common mistake that Americans all to frequently make when they assume that someone who speaks poor English must not be talented in their field.

I love this word-portrait of Heizer; it’s not entirely kind—"ravaged,“ "needy,” “suspicious,” “sly"— but it does give a clear image of a person I’d be interested to meet—a "fierce,” “witty,” “pure” person. It also highlights the appropriateness—mentioned later in this same paragraph—of Andy Warhol’s choice of Heizer for this famous photo:

We can’t, alas, know if the article’s selection of Heizer quotes was tailored to make the image they (the quotes) paint match the description given here or if, more impressively, the quotes informed the description; but either way, the raw spicy words of Heizer himself are great and fitting:

On what New York was doing to him:

“Chemical castration—doesn’t happen all at once. It’s slow. You just wake up one day and you’re dickless.”

On why he won’t reveal “City” before its finished:

“My work, if it’s good, it’s gotta be about risk. If it isn’t, it’s got no flavor. No salt in it.”

On that same note, Dana Goodyear writes:

“For Heizer, urgency, suffering, drama, and hazard are requisite conditions for making art.”

On his audience:

“It takes a very specific audience to like this stupid primordial shit I do. I like runic, Celtic, Druidic, cave painting, ancient, preliterate, from a time back when you were speaking to the lightning god, the ice god, and the cold-rainwater god. That’s what we do when we ranch in Nevada. We take a lot of goddam straight-on weather.”

Count me a fan of stupid primordial shit.

“His” seems like a deliberate and important choice to describe the spider. Spiders, in legend and literature, are almost always female; Charlotte’s Web is a good common example, but there are plenty of other stories with female spiders — possibly because of the famously strange mating rituals of spiders — such as the Black Widow, which consumes the male of its species after copulation.

Additionally, in the vernacular one would probably describe a spider with “it.”

Since Charles Simic is a male, and he is writing love letters to a male spider, while his “wife took off with the mailman"— perhaps the poem is addressing the tension and discrimination faced by homosexuals, particularly in rural areas.

To paraphrase James Merrill’s comments on being openly gay — “I didn’t come out of the closet, it burned down around me.” There are many males in the older generations who are still uncomfortable with being openly gay — evidenced by the recent coming-out of Lord Ivar Mountbatten, a 53 year old member of the British Royal family (specifically, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II), who said: “It was the generation into which I was born [… ] When I was growing up, it was known as ‘the love that dare not speak its name,’ but what’s amazing now is how far we have all come in terms of acceptance” — as reported by E.