Last night, The New York Times published a scarce new interview with Kanye West in which Jon Caramanica leads his subject towards some kind of rhetorical apotheosis—that is, a combination of perceptive social critique, fashion-house utopianism and empyrean megalomania. One week before the arrival of his new album, Yeezus, Kanye invokes numerous current influences or imagined peers, including Raf Simons, Steve Jobs and a modernist Corbusier lamp, but reading his mercurial pronouns and surreal pronouncements made me think of an unannounced one: John Ashbery, elusive eminence of the New York School poets. I decided to do some interpolation, reassembling Kanye’s answers into experimental verse.
I was able to slip past everything with a pink polo,
That was from a place of love.
I knew I was going to make it this far;
I knew that this was going to happen.
If you walk into an old man’s house, they’re not giving nothing.
Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière,
Anna Wintour, David Stern. Beauty, truth,
This isn’t America’s baby.
Awesomeness. That’s all it is. I would rather sit in a factory
Than sit in a Maybach,
Trap and drill and house. Do you want me
To go onstage for you? I have, as a human being,
Fallen to peer pressure. And when you say justice,
What’s vanity about wearing a kilt?
All I want is positive! All I want is dopeness!
There’s no opera sounds, sonic acrobatics,
No minor chords. A piece of me
Being the opinionated individual that I am,
I uninvited myself. Why would you want to control
That? I didn’t realize I was new wave until
This one Corbusier lamp
That liked nice things also.
I’m the type of soul that likes to be in love,
Forever the 5-year-old of something.
The world wins, fresh kids win,
I don’t know if this is statistically right.
If you don’t make Christmas presents
The biggest glass panes that ever been done,
Visceral, tribal,
I think you got to make your case. Self,
That’s all I have to say. Kill self.
