Introduction: Ungelded Texts

  Not all texts are geld-worthy: some by lack, some by luck, some by loom.

Some texts are trivial, tawdry, trash, terribly written or telling of naught.  Some are deemed worthless by luck, never finding their way to the eyes that would worth them.  Some are too much, too towering, too terrifying, too sharp, too looming over timid worthers and gelders.

Geld is not the only worth, of course; these texts are—in my eyes—not unworthy, but simply ungelded, most often via luck, not lack or loom.  Being ungelded, they are offered ungelded: “freely ye have received, freely do ye give.”  

Few are the artists who do not strive for some geld, either the typical geld—be it crypto or fiat—or the geld of kudos, of fame.  Even W.H. Davies, the “hobo poet,” forewent fiat geld for the hope of fame geld, living as a tramp for the chance to publish a book.  I am no different: if I could, I would love to receive geld—of any sort—for these translations, adaptations, poems, and scribbles.  If texts show up here, it means I have given up on fiat geld, and I hope merely for fame geld.  And a little fame is enough: Seferis says Michaux told him that three readers makes a writer.1  May I hope for three at least.

There is a benefit, too, to being ungelded: the text can thus be ungelded.  For geld gelds.

The editor dangling the coin-purse over the writer’s head can force his hand, trim his poem, sand its sharpness, smooth its roughness, even cut off its balls, if the geld is good enough.  Editors can do their good—what would The Waste Land be without Pound’s pruning?—but they are often over-zealous gelders.

Whatever texts I publish here are ungelded in both senses.  Whether there’s anything that would have even be sharp enough to have been gelded, let the three readers decide—or even the lonely one, the Kierkegaardian hiin Enkelte.

Being still a geld-thirster, I will not refrain from heralding my few gelded writings (though hopefully only gelded in the one sense).  But the writings included here—even if they gain some geld a bit later—will ever remain geldless to all.

May these ungelded texts be fruitful.  And if any see too paltry to make such a fuss about, so tiny that no one would bother to geld them, I plead you, shame them not, but simply laugh to yourself and walk on.  The geld-worthless have troubles enow.


1 See Edmund Keeley, “Postscript: A Conversation with Seferis,” in Edmund Keeley, Modern Greek Poetry: Voice and Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 189.↩


Text ©2024 B. P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.

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