by Paul Theroux
'Dylan Thomas was always late,' said Fuller. He detected that Bean disapproved of Parsons' remark about Gold's divorce. Bean made a point of counseling unhappy couples and, discouraging gossip, trying to patch things up.
'Stanley Gold is not Dylan Thomas,' said Parsons. 'I met Dylan at Williams College back in - was it fifty-two? You could excuse that man for anything, anything at all.' Parsons blew a jet of steamy breath into the night air and said, 'I've had it. Gentlemen, shall we lead on?'
'I don't see,' said Bean, 'how you can be so hard on Stanley. He strikes me as a very sincere person. And I've read his poems. They're darned good.'
'Well, I haven't read as many of his poems as you have, I'm sure. He's never sent any to The Hub,' said Parsons, aggrieved. 'But I'll tell you something. I stand here waiting for him and I say to myself: This isn't how poems get written. With poetry it's fish or cut bait. It takes discipline, application, plain old work. Gold would probably call me an old fogy for saying this: it takes a lot of things that young man doesn't have.'
'I don't think Stanley would call you an old fogy,' said Bean.
Parsons continued. 'That's why Stevens will always be a greater poet for me than, say, Hart Crane. One basic reason is that Stevens knew about discipline, and there was no nonsense about it. He ordered his life. He invested wisely. He ordered his poems. There's something very, very American about that. Hart Crane was a sot. Granted, his death was tragic. I'm not saying it wasn't. But Wallace Stevens knew how a poem is made, the way real poets do.'
'I haven't written a poem for three years,' said Bean. He said it with a certain pride.
'Marilyn Monroe was always late,' said Fuller. Tm thinking of writing a poem about her. She was America. 1
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR FOUR AMERICAN POETS
4 She had a lot of talent,' said Parsons. 'But hasn't someone already done a poem about her? Was it Thorn Gunn?'
'He did Elvis Presley,' said Fuller, piqued.
'They say Marilyn Monroe had a very unhappy childhood,' said Bean.
'The worst,' said Fuller. 'Boy, could I tell you some stories. They'd stand your hair on end.'
Bean had been watching the distant sidewalk. He saw a figure loping along. He said, 'I think that's Gold, isn't it? He's headed in this direction.'
Parsons squinted. 'Could be.' He turned to Bean. 'I tell you what. I'm going to ask him where he's been. Watch him squirm. A fellow like that never gets asked why he's late. It'll be a good experience for him.'
'You might call this a threat,' said Bean in a steady voice, facing the much taller Parsons, 'but if you ask him that I will go straight back to the hotel in protest. You have no right to ask that man for an explanation. None whatsoever.'
Parsons turned away. When Gold came near and Fuller led the way down the icy sidewalk, Parsons paired up with Fuller and Gold fell in with Bean. The four poets shuffled, so as not to fall.
'You see a lot of stars around here,' said Gold.
Bean obligingly indicated several constellations.
Up front Parsons talked about Nassau. They walked two hundred yards, then Fuller said to stop right where they were and to look across the street. There was a high wall of shrubbery - evergreens - some bare trees, and just visible the large-windowed top floor of a very old house. Gold and Bean caught up. They all stared at the house.
'What I want you to look at,' said Fuller, 'is that upper right-hand window over there.' He pointed to the window with a gloved hand. The window gleamed black. 'A great poet lived there her whole life. Barely stirred from her room. Great poems were written right up there behind that window.' Fuller paused, saying with some emotion, 'The poems of Emily Dickinson.'
'When I was reading my poems in England,' said Parsons, 'an Englishman came up to me and said, "I know you have Edna Ferber, but we have Emily Bronte." I looked him straight in the eye and said, "We have Emily Dickinson, and they don't come any better than that." He shut up, of course.'
SINNING WITH ANNIE
But Bean had started reciting 'Much Madness is divinest Sense' and Parsons' story went unnoticed. Fuller followed with 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes/ and Parsons, with a glance at Gold, recited 'A narrow fellow in the grass.' And then they went for their pizza.
The seminar ('Poetry: Meaning and Being') was held in the overheated chapel. The poets spoke in turn. With a rustic twinkle in his eye, Fuller talked about his own poems ('Who knows where a poem comes from?') and his ardent cultivation of cabbages ('And that's a kind of creating, too!'). Parsons was candid about the rat race and said there was no money in poetry, but writing poems was 'a lot cheaper than paying five grand to a headshrinker'; he told about his secretary and how he often composed poems right in Wall Street itself ('Who needs a vernal wood?'); and he read some of his Russian translations. Bean spoke movingly of Vietnam: 'At this moment a young poet in Bienhoa is trying to unstick fiery napalm from his fingers,' and he finished with a sequence of verses written not by himself (he confessed his three-year barrenness) but by Ho Chi Minh, Dag Hammarskjold, Mao Tse-tung, the wife of Harold Wilson, Leopold Senghor and John Kennedy. The Kennedy was prose, but he read it as verse. Gold shouted love lyrics scattered with references to elimination; he refused to comment on or explain any of them. At the end of the seminar the questions, mumbled by admiring students, hairy and in greasy jackets, were all directed at Gold. The chairman, closing the seminar, said confidently, 'I think we've all learned something this evening,' and he led the four poets to a party at Professor Bloodworth's.
The party continued for nearly three hours, climaxing in a magical but unfortunate sudden hush in the din during which the young wife of a graduate student was heard in an insistent voice to say, 'I wouldn't mind if Mailer buggered me!' Guests winced. One associate professor said, 'Well, I guess that about wraps it up.' There was laughter; the room emptied.
At the front door, Mrs Dorothy Margoulies, M.A. candidate ('Ferlinghetti and the Coney Island Ethos') and wife of the witty associate professor, said good night to Parsons and Fuller. She was moved to a violent nervous shuddering. She caught her breath and said, 'I haven't felt this way since William Golding read here. I don't know what to say -'
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR FOUR AMERICAN POETS
She prattled. In the living room someone clinked ashtrays, emptying them; in the kitchen, someone else was stacking dishes in the plastic-basket innards of an automatic dishwasher; in the study, Sumner Bean thumbed a book he had been wait-listed for at the Webster Library for months; Stanley Gold, slumped in a wing chair, tried to tune in on the conversation at the door.
'- So enjoyed your talks and readings, and I can't tell you how much -' There was a false pause as her voice fell, the low pitch making a purring silence. Gold heard his name, and laughter.
Then Parsons. '- Must get back to New York tomorrow-' A pause. '- No, ha-ha, not exactly. You see, Stevens worked in Connecticut. I guess that's your only major difference.'
'My farm's at Ripton,' said Fuller. 'I'm going to shoot right up there as fast as I can.'
In a cheerful frame of mind, Parsons and Fuller entered the living room. Stanley Gold stared at Parsons, then asked, 'Kak viy pozhivaeteV
'I beg your pardon,' said Parsons, still wearing the warm grin with which he had sent off the grateful Mrs Margoulies.
'It's Russian,' said Gold.
'If you say so,' said Parsons. He looked at his watch.
'It's a question.'
'I thought I detected an interrogatory note there somewhere,' said Parsons. He checked his watch again.
'So what's your reply?'
'My reply' - and here Parsons glanced at Professor Bloodworth and Fuller - 'is I don't know what the hell you're up to, but I'm going back to the hotel and get some sleep or I won't be able to do a lick of work tomorrow.'
'Why?' Gold's eyes were big behind thick lenses. 'Are you thinking of doing a few translations tomorrow?'
'See here,' Parsons began.
But Gold had already started speaking: 'I'
d like to know where the hell you get the right to pretend you do translations from a language you don't know! Just tell me that and I'll be satisfied.'
'Auden translated Markings and he doesn't know a word of Swedish. He said so.' Bean called from the study.
'Shakespeare didn't speak Latin or Greek,' said Fuller. 'And he -'
'A little Latin and less Greek,' said Bloodworth in humorous reproof. He gave the quotation its source.
**5
SINNING WITH ANNIE
'Settle down, young fellow,' said Parsons. 'Oh, I know you're thinking I'm a faker. But, hell, Kunitz doesn't speak Russian.'
'I'm not talking about Kunitz. I'm talking about you, Daddy Warbucks.'
'If you can't talk in a civil manner I'm not going on with this. You have no right to ask me for an explanation for anything. I stand by my poems and my magazine. If you think you can do a better translation of Brodsky you're welcome to try.' Parsons calmed himself and added, 'And while you're at it, you can send your poems to The Hub. We'd be mighty pleased to get them. You've never sent us any, you know.'
'And I don't intend to,' said Gold.
'Come on, son,' said Fuller, as if to a juvenile delinquent. 'Parsons is trying to help you.'
'Your magazine is financed by you, isn't it?' said Gold to Parsons; he did not wait for a reply. 'And your money comes from your insurance company, right? A company that for the past five years has owned controlling interest in a chemical plant that produces defoliant for the Defense Department! Who are you trying to kid!'
'Hold on a minute,' said Parsons.
Bean appeared at the study door. 'Say, Wilbur, that's a very serious charge. You never told me anything about that.'
'Let me say this,' said Parsons. 'We're Americans. Each of us, in his own way, directly or indirectly, whether we want to or not, has something to do with war. I'll give you a small example. Do you know where your tax money goes?'
'I don't pay taxes,' said Gold. 'I don't earn enough.'
'I haven't paid taxes for ten years,' said Bean. 'It's downright immoral, contributing to a corrupt government. I'm prepared to go to jail if necessary.'
'You're off your head,' said Parsons to Bean, it's your business, I know that. But if you ask me-'
'It's been a long day,' said Fuller sheepishly to Bloodworth.
'- I've endowed a lot of magazines,' Parsons was saying, w a hell of a lot of them. That doesn't mean I agree with their editorial policies, no indeed! I have nothing but respect for Dr Spock's views, don't think I haven't-'
'What about vour chemical plant?' asked Bean.
i didn't come here to talk shop,' said Parsons, i came here as a poet. We're all poets. I don't know whv we're behaving like this
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOR FOUR AMERICAN POETS
it we're poets/ He stopped momentarily and looked at Bean's face, Gold's face, Fuller's face; he saw something witless and fatigued on each one. He guessed that the same thing showed on his own face. He spoke again, his tongue feeling very large in his mouth. 'Come to my office. I can explain everything.' He turned to Gold. 'And as for you, I can tell you that I've been getting together a little anthology, and I was sort of counting on using your poem "Moshe Dayan's Other Eye"-'
'I wouldn't let you print that poem if you gave me ten grand,' Gold said fiercely.
'The fee was fifty dollars,' said Parsons. He strode to the kitchen; before Mrs Bloodworth could dry her hands on her apron Parsons took them both and shook them, thanking her for a delightful evening. He bade good night to Professor Bloodworth, and, still urging Bean to come and see him, left with a shaken Fuller.
Sumner Bean and Stanley Gold left the house together. It was four in the morning; they walked in the middle of the street. They did not speak; at one point, and without warning, Bean crooked his arm through Gold's the way a stiff old-time lover might. This was the way they walked to the hotel, silently, arm in arm, feeling frail, as poetry was. And when they went to their separate rooms they did not say good night, but bowed slightly, trying to smile. In his bed, Gold continued the poem he had put aside the previous evening at 6:30. At his undersized hotel desk, Bean fiddled with headed note-paper; he did not begin writing immediately, but a poem was arranging itself in his head. Bean's and Gold's were only two of the poems Bloodworth later claimed as the seminar's own. There were two more: 'A Night Call on Miss Dickinson' and 'Pizza - A Sonnet.'
Hayseed
Ira Hubbel was talking to his two attentive boys at the single pump of his Jenney station on the main street of Stockton Springs. They heard a car slowing down, but seeing it was Warren Root's new Chevy convertible, the two boys walked over to a stack of tires which, for a time, they kicked, glancing back at their father and Root. And then they sauntered closer to the car and stood gaping in their beaked baseball caps and greasy overalls like two birds, trying to hear.
'Just up from Bangor this minute,' Root was saying.
Ira looked into Root's reckless face from under the long visor of a faded green fisherman's cap on which a license was pinned. Ira's face was tanned, creased rather than wrinkled, and gave the impression of having been smoked and cured like a tobacco leaf. His alert eyes were a luminous blue and watched Root with the close curiosity of pity.
'Better check the water,' said Ira. He motioned to one of the boys, who heard. The boy got a large watering can and carried it to the front of the car. He hoisted the hood.
'Same old damn town,' said Root, looking across the main street. He shifted away from the steering wheel and made a right angle of his arms, one extended across the top of the front seat, the other along the door. He hooked his thumbs and began drumming emphatically with his fingers.
'Ain't Bangor.' Ira was squirting water in droplets from a Windex bottle onto the mud-speckled windshield.
'1 eavc that be, Ira. I'm going to wash the car soon's I get home.'
'Never mind, Chub/ Ira rubbed the windshield with a handful of squeaking chamois.
'Ain't Bangor is right,' said Root, shaking his head. 'Why they got a ritzy new hotel opened up there, with two or three bars and a big ballroom and what all. People come all the way down from Portland to have a gander at it.'
HAYSEED
Ira was silent, busy with the windshield. Then he said, 'That so.'
Ticked me up some chicken wire at the feed store,' said Root.
'Trunk wired down good?'
'Not too good. But it didn't flap open.'
'That's a blessing,' said Ira. He looked at the pump. 'You wanted it full up?'
'I guess.'
'It's full up now,' said Ira. 'That's five sixty.'
Root gave Ira a ten-dollar bill.
'Expected you yesterday,' said Ira, taking the bill.
'Gave myself an extra day,' said Root. In reflection, he pulled on his nose.
'Myron says you wasn't at the boarding house,' Ira said politely.
'Now how does Myron know that?'
'Tried to call you up last night. They said you wasn't there.'
'Moved to the new one on Thursday,' said Root. 'The hotel I was telling you about. The boys that carry your bags got these funny little suits and say yes sir. I got sick of that Jesus boarding house.'
'Myron didn't know.'
'No, Myron didn't know,' said Root. 'And I'll tell you something else. Lavinia didn't know neither.' Root grinned.
Ira looked at the ground, then said softly, 'I'll get your change.'
'Stoved-in front,' said Hubbel's boy, slamming down the hood.
'Skunk,' said Root. He measured with his hands. "Bout yay big. I stove himV
Root was outside the car, stretching, examining the dent on the grill, when Ira came back with the change. Ira counted it into Root's hand, pressing the coins, flattening the bills, saying, 'Five sixty. And forty is six, and one is seven, and two is nine-'
'But I'll tell you something,' said Root, closing his hand on the money, 'they still haven't learned to shoot pool in Bangor, and that's the God's truth.
How about a quick game?' Root rubbed his palms and nodded at the drugstore, where there was a pool table.
'Maybe later,' said Ira.
'I'm all stiff with the driving,' said Root. 'Come on, Ira.'
'Got to watch the station,' said Ira.
'You got your two boys to watch your Christly gas station, Ira. Now get over and shoot a game with me.'
SINNING WITH ANNIE
Ira hitched up his pants and followed Root across the street.
A game was in progress, but the two players looked up and backed away from the table when Root and Ira entered the store. A man in an apron behind the soda fountain greeted Root solemnly.
'Hi, Wayne,' said Root to the man in the apron. To the players he said, 'You boys should be in school.'
The boys put down their cues.
'That's okay,' said Root. 'I don't care if you play hooky. Used to do quite a bit of that myself, didn't I, Ira?'
'They're giving us the table,' said Ira.
'Finish your Jesus game,' said Root.
'You go ahead, Mr Root,' said one of the boys.
'I don't like to horn in,' said Root.
Ira took a cue and began chalking it. Root did the same.
The boys obligingly racked the balls and dusted chalk marks off the rails.
'Didn't know you two worked here,' said Root, and laughed. He spotted the cue ball and lined up his shot, then gently sent the cue ball into the triangular formation. It nicked a corner and came to rest an inch from the barely troubled formation.
'Don't leave me with much,' said Ira. But instead of nudging the cue ball, he blasted, breaking the formation and spreading the balls all over the table.
'You want me to win,' said Root.
Ira coughed.
'I'd like a drink,' said Root, sinking a ball.
'It ain't three yet,' said Ira.
'I'd like a drink. Here,' Root said to one of the boys, 'go get us half a pint of vodka next door. Tell them who it's for.'
The game proceeded quickly, Ira fumbling his shots, Root scoring often. The boy returned with the vodka.
