When Billy Corgan announced his intention to publish a book of personal poetry, I was unsurprised-the singer is notorious for his artistic egotism-but optimistic nonetheless. After all, it wasn’t live performances, indie-cred or sex appeal that made the defunct Smashing Pumpkins (alongside Nirvana and Pearl Jam) arguably one of the best rock bands of the ’90s. It was Corgan’s poetic ability to weave the dark crevices of emotion into epic, tragic beauty.
The Pumpkins’ breakout anthem “Today” brings many of us back to hot summer days, rocking out in cars with the top down, with its ecstatic wall-to-wall guitars and sweet, dreamy vocals. But the song is actually an amped-up suicide note: “Can’t wait for tomorrow/I might not have that long/I’ll tear my heart out before I get out.”
Things get even more turbulent and glimmering on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double album composed entirely of odes to human sadness in every incarnation, from angry nihilism (“Bullet with Butterfly Wings”) to dewy-eyed longing (“By Starlight”). Obviously, Corgan wasn’t kidding when he sang that “I’m in love with my sadness,” but his prolific talent made it intriguing rather than annoying.
I love the Pumpkins as much as I did as a skinny, sad teenager in a Zero t-shirt. But sadly, Corgan’s book, Blinking with Fists, reads like a compilation of B-side lyrics-or something the mysterious, Plath-loving girl from your high school wrote: melodramatic, pretentious, glib.
The book starts with the ‘poetry of my heart’: “the poetry of my sorrow is written in these words.” At his lyrical best, Corgan’s writing is vividly fantastical and otherworldly, making up for its solipsism. In the book, Corgan is as confessional and internally wrought as ever: he bemoans his loneliness, mourns his mother, and professes unrequited love, but sinks into clichés and frankly uninspired rhyming schemes (“Apologies if I tripped that wire/The one attached to desire”). Some of this stuff might fly if propped up by rock music, but attempting to stand alone it fails.
In “Artificial Love Poem,” Corgan takes another jab at his ex-bandmates (on his blog, he referred to bassist D’Arcy Wretsky as ‘a mean spirited drug addict’): “How greed fills my cup/ With betrayal of all that is dust/ And all that ever was.”
Dyed-in-the-wool Corgan fans will no doubt relish the book’s self-effacing, lugubrious content, and may even find rare moments of beautiful and elegiac insight. In “Painting Shade”: “Your ancestors, when hollowed out by their hungers/Climbed over oceans to get here/They figured you might need to know someday/That nothing changes but the rules of man against God’s law.”
But ultimately, Corgan’s writing is too abstruse to embody the voice of his generation or even his fanbase, and too sophomoric to classify as a worthwhile literary contribution. We hope Corgan will focus on imbuing his musical gift with his enlightened intelligence rather than attempting to fashion himself as a writer.
