George J. Searles

Philately

In 2010 the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp
honoring the beloved singer, Kate Smith.
Her greatest hits were “God Bless America”
and “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain.”

One night many years ago I met an old drunk
who claimed he’d had sex with her.
In a Chicago park, he said, against a tree.
“She liked it standing up,” he explained.

At first, I thought he was full of shit,
but then decided he might be on the level.
If he’d been lying, I figured, he would’ve said
Mae West or Marilyn Monroe—somebody like that,

not dear, motherly Kate Smith, who was large,
as you can see from her portrait on the stamp.
There she is (vertical, yes) in a big blue dress
with the stars & stripes unfurled behind her.

But there’s no park, no tree, and no old drunk,
or even a young one. Too bad. Just imagine
how totally prized the stamp would have been
among collectors had there been a bit more detail.

Husserl’s Phenomenology
(Stanford UP, 2003)

On pg. 58 of this brief introductory study,
Dan Zahavi informs us that “One of the crucial
and much debated problems has been to specify

the relation between the object-as-it-is-intended
and the object-that-is-intended,” and asks,
“Are we dealing with two quite different

ontological entities, or rather with two different
perspectives on one and the same?” A bit later
he ups the ante, inquiring “does the epoché imply

that we parenthesize the transcendent
spatio-temporal world in order to account
for internal mental representations,

or does the epoché rather imply
that we continue to explore and describe
the transcendent spatio-temporal world,

but now in a new and different manner?
Is the noema, the object-as-it-is-intended,
to be identified with an internal mental

representation—with an abstract and ideal
sense—or rather with the givenness
of the intended object itself?”

Dunno. Beats the shit out of me.

 

George J. Searles teaches English and Latin at Mohawk Valley Community College. He has published 100+ poems in various literary magazines (California Quarterly, Rattle, Southampton Review, et al.) A former Carnegie Foundation “Professor of the Year,” he is the editor of Glimpse, a poetry annual.