Allen had been urged by his therapist to break away from traditional verse forms and by Rexroth to break away from stilted language and to use his own raw voice. So in “Howl,” Allen employed line forms and breath pacing that others among the Beats would later adopt. In 1956, US Customs confiscated City Lights’s edition of Howl and Other Poems and arrested Larry Ferlinghetti for obscenity. The 1957 trial, which Ferlinghetti won, became an important First Amendment decision.
Dad loved the Beats. Particularly he loved them for their artistic energy and for the hot enthusiasm of their imaginations. He told the Easterners about this in crisp New York Times prose; that was his assignment. On the other hand, Dad was leery of the Beat lifestyle. Nor was Dad as hungry for popular media notice as, particularly, was Ginsberg.
Ginsberg was a master at attracting publicity. For example, during the Vietnam War he made himself media candy with his bongo, cymbal, and chanting appearances in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as he protested the war. It was amusing for me to see Allen on TV making himself a symbol for the hippies. I knew him well enough by then to see that it was really just Allen himself after all, there on the TV. The real Allen was a middle-aged, homosexual, Jewish Beat poet, born in Newark, NJ, who was stylishly Buddhist in the 1960s (and perhaps deeply and theologically Buddhist as well—how can one tell about another man’s heart?), and he didn’t wear shoes.
I had always liked Ginsberg. He could be funny, and in any event he looked funny during that time in the late 1960s, dressed as he was in his white, flowing robes as though he were some Eastern mystic—although at the same time he wore a thick, black, Amish-preacher beard. There were times, though, when Allen’s sense of humor got buried by his urgency to make a scene. Such was the case on one of Allen’s visits to us in Hanover, New Hampshire, when Dad was poet in residence and professor of English at Dartmouth.
The day Allen arrived in Hanover, he and Peter Orlovsky, who was his partner, and several Hanoverians who loved the idea of having Allen—Allen!—among them descended upon the very conventional Hanover Inn to register. The fact that Allen was not wearing shoes put up the backs of the innkeepers, and Allen was refused a room. This infuriated Allen, and he fumed all the way to our house. He continued to fulminate against all small-minded, stiff-necked, straitlaced, hidebound Victorian innkeepers until Mom, ever the practical one, tired of it and said, “But, Allen, why not just put on a pair of shoes to register and then take them off afterward?”
No! That would never do. Allen needed to make a scene. But by that time—and with Mom’s twinkle to assist—he had begun to see the humor in the situation after all, and then we had supper.
The next morning we were sitting around the kitchen, talking wars, then and now. War was Allen’s vocation of the moment. He had always been opposed to what he took to be his nation’s militarism, as well as opposed to its sexual repression, its capitalist economics, and now especially its prejudice against those who do not wear shoes.
Earlier I mentioned that Allen felt, categorically, that Dad’s “Fury of Aerial Bombardment” was the greatest poem to come out of World War II. He was right: the poem is great. But I was also aware that his use of Dad’s poem was self-serving. Allen was reading the poem not to celebrate its literary greatness but rather to support his own antiwar stance. Dad had not written the poem to support that perspective. Dad was simply the machine-gun officer who reveled in the rain of hot brass yet who cried upon God to explain it all, even so.
This example of the use by critics of art for their own purpose, and not for the author’s intended purpose, underscores a message my father often gave to me. This message was central to his wisdom. “No, Dikkon,” he would say to me. “I can’t control what they say, the critics. They say what they say for their reasons, not for mine.” Then he would puff a philosophical puff or two and conclude, “Dikkon, the truth is, once you publish a poem, it doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
There were many times when I was young that I wished Dad would apply that very apt wisdom to the “publishing” and then to the raising of his own son.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I was in second grade, we lived in Storrs, Connecticut. Dad had his usual post at the University of Connecticut as poet in residence, a one-year stint. Gretchen was two; I was seven. We lived in a two-story building comprising two faculty apartments, one of four such buildings in a quadrangle. It was winter. Gretchen’s and my bedrooms were on our second floor.
As happened regularly, one night I was awakened by Gretchen crying from her bedroom. I knew the routine: she’d cry for a little while, and then Dad or Mom—usually Mom—would come upstairs. I’d hear murmuring, and in a minute or two Gretchen would be quiet. Usually Mom would look in on me afterward, and I’d get a kiss. All very comfy. This time, though, Gretchen kept crying, and no one came up.
I remember waiting, drifting in and out of sleep, but growing increasingly puzzled that no one came up. What was wrong? Eventually I was sufficiently wide awake to feel annoyed. Gretchen was keeping me awake. She needed to be changed. Where was Mom? I got out of bed. I went into Gretchen’s room to see if perhaps Mom might already be there. But no Mom. I decided to go and get Mom myself.
Why Mom hadn’t heard Gretchen crying was a mystery. Ours was not a big apartment, and the sound of her crying ought to have carried everywhere. When I descended our stairs, I emerged into the living room and dining room. The apartment had an open-concept design. Everywhere in the downstairs, kitchen included, was visible from the base of the stairs. I remember standing there, puzzled. No Mom. No Dad. I wasn’t alarmed yet, but this was odd.
First of all, something needed to be done—right now—to make Gretchen stop. God must have designed the crying of a baby for that very purpose.
I knew all about changing diapers. One of the conversations I had had with my parents when we discussed my about-to-arrive sibling had to do with how I could help with what they told me was going to be a very happy but busy time. My idea was that I could be in charge of the rubber pants.
In later years, my mother would recall this choice of mine and wonder how that idea had sprung so fully formed into my head. (Sometimes she recalled this publicly, with embarrassing effect when I was, say, twelve.) But rubber pants were indeed my job, and I took them seriously. I hung them up to dry when they had been washed, I folded them when they were dry, and I stored them in their proper spot on the bassinet. And I was in charge of getting them onto Gretchen’s legs after the actual diaper business was complete.
I went back upstairs. I got Gretchen out of bed and onto the bassinet. I took off her pajamas, removed the old diaper, put on a new one (as far as I know, without sticking her with a pin), and then realized that I couldn’t just put her back into pajamas. We were in the middle of an emergency. It was a quiet emergency to be sure—the house wasn’t burning down—but there were no grown-ups. They had simply vanished. I wasn’t quite certain what to do, but I knew that whatever I did, it would be better if Gretchen were dressed. So I dressed her.
I didn’t dress myself. It must have been at this point that I began to have an idea of what to do. I would take Gretchen next door, and our friends, the grown-ups in the next apartment, would look after her while I tried to figure out what had become of our parents.
So Gretchen and I walked downstairs to the front door. I remember getting her into all the covering she might need outside—boots, scarf, coat, mittens, and hat. For my sister, this was an interesting adventure in the middle of the night, and she was having fun. I was not having fun. I was trying to think out the necessary steps, in their proper order, to save my sister, but I was frightened as well. What if the grown-ups had vanished from next door, too? Then what was I to do? What if there were no grown-ups anywhere anymore? As a second grader, I had no concept of the Rapture, but I was as disoriented as though the Rapture had occurred, and Gretchen and I had been left behind.
However, first things first: throw my jacket over my pajamas to keep
the snow off. Gretchen must be protected from all dangers; I just needed to stay dry.
It was snowing that night.
I opened our door and pushed outside into the cold and the snow. Holding Gretchen’s hand, I led her down our pathway to the curb of the street, turned left, walked to the next shoveled pathway, and walked up to the next apartment’s front door. We climbed a few steps and stood on the stoop. I rang the bell. I remember hoping fervently that there might be grown-ups in this apartment.
There were grown-ups!
“May we come in? We have no mother.”
Ever afterward, the description of us two little kids in the middle of the night, standing on the stoop in the snow, made a famous tale. Oh, the cuteness of it!
And, oh, the chagrin of my parents. They were in another of the apartments, probably no more than one hundred yards away, playing bridge.
How I was praised—for my maturity in a crisis, and for my wisdom, and for how carefully I had dressed my sister! How often I heard the funny story of how Mom or Dad had frequently returned from the bridge game—whoever was dummy—and had checked on us throughout the evening.
But not that one time! Wouldn’t you just know!
Looking back on this event as an adult, I can understand the cute side of it, and I remember being pleased that I was thought to have been mature. But I also remember being confused about how easily the event—which had frightened me—was turned into a tale to amuse dinner guests and others. I received additional compliments from those guests—again, how mature. But this was an early experience of what was a theme in my family’s life: the overshadowing of the reality by the created story.
Those who have lived in an artistic family may have experienced the same thing. In fact, those who have lived in a family dominated by any force larger than itself probably have experienced the same thing. As a child, I loved the fact that our family was different—Grandmother’s five names, Mom’s “dance” with Hitler, the admiration from Dad’s fans who would stop him on the street and speak passionately about his, or their, verses. For me as an impressionable child, though, there was another side of it.
As a seven- or eight-year-old, I experienced fright. But I was not allowed to keep it for my discharge of it. I learned that the correct thing to do with my emotion was to give it up to my parents, to be used for their charm. At my young age, I adored my parents, and I knew the story was funny . . . since it had come out all right. But what if it had not? What would we be saying then?
I love stories—I write them, I act them, I sell them. For many, many years I assumed I could live them. In fact, I did live them—or tried to.
It took this son of the poet way too long to begin to understand what facts are. We’re callow, we Eberhart artist types. We truly believe we can make the world adjust to our story, and not the other way around.
Here’s another iteration. Once, Gretchen almost drowned. I saved her. Again, my feeling afterward was confusion.
Here is the scene.
We were at our family’s summer cottage in Maine. Rocky beach. Evening. Low tide. Gretchen was about five. I was about ten. Gretchen could not swim. Everyone—dozens of friends and relatives—was up at the top of the beach where one of the famous clambakes was steaming. Cocktails on the rocks. (Get it: on the rocks, ha-ha.)
General jollity.
Gretchen and I were playing in the ocean. Not big waves; about average. We’d found a big drift log, and it was our toy. It was big enough so we could sit astride it, and it would still float. Gretchen wanted to try. I was out of the water by then, walking up the beach. Mom had been by the water a moment before. As I walked, I saw Gretchen from the corner of my eye sitting on the log. The next time I glanced, she was off the log. I couldn’t see her head. She must be on the other side of the log from my view.
In another second, I’ll see her. I stopped and watched.
I didn’t see her.
I remember streaking down the beach and into the water. Gretchen was tangled up underneath the log. She was thrashing wildly, already partly full of water, mouth open, eyes wide, frantic. I remember pulling at her and trying to shove the stupid log out of the way. It was very awkward, and everything was going very slowly. Finally I got her yanked out of the water, face up, and I remember her terrified look. I hauled her ashore, too frightened myself to shout. I rolled her onto her stomach and tried to empty her out.
A moment later, there were people running. Now everything would be all right, and it was. Probably the entire incident took less than a minute. But in another minute or three, Gretchen might have been dead. And I had only just happened to look. A parent’s worst nightmare had swept across the beach, only to be diverted in its wild career by the happenstance of my turning my head.
Again, I was praised. Again, I didn’t want the praise. What I wanted was for scary things not to happen to Gretchen and me, whose grandmother had five names, and whose mother danced with Hitler, and whose father was admired by people we didn’t even know.
Years later, Dad took me to meet E. E. Cummings at Cummings’s farm in New Hampshire. I was in prep school, and I thought “in Just-” and “Buffalo Bill’s” were wonderful and “she being Brand” was the sexiest thing I had ever read (far sexier, really, than the carefully underlined sections of Peyton Place my pal Steve lent me for late-night reading).
As we were driving over, I learned from Dad that when Cummings was young, he saved his sister from drowning. What happened was this. Cummings and his sister and their dog were in a canoe that capsized. The dog panicked and tried to climb on top of the sister. In order to save his sister, Cummings had been forced to drown his dog.
When Dad told me about this incident, I remember how mythic it seemed to him and with what a trembling voice he told of it: it was a tale of such elementals as almost to have sprung among the demigods, or so Dad’s demeanor indicated.
Here was Dad, singing rhapsodically about another member of his club, and I had done the very same thing! Why was he not at that moment rhapsodizing about me?
But I knew Dad, and here is how I understood the difference between the two incidents. Gretchen and I were just Gretchen and I. We were part of the weft and warp of his life, and the saving of Gretchen by me was merely an incident among a thousand other incidents; no poetry there. But that other incident—now, that was something fine. Boy Loves Dog (that’s elemental). Boy Drowns Dog to Save Sister, whom he also Loves (another elemental). Heroic Boy and Sister Survive (better and better). Boy Left to Muse on Death and Life (bingo: a poem!).
CHAPTER NINE
Dad left the Butcher Polish Company when he was invited to spend a year at the University of Washington as its visiting poet in residence. Dad’s pal Robert Frost had invented the job of “barding around the country”—moving from one post or appointment to the next—and Dad wanted in. So from 1952 onward, we followed Dad as he “barded around” to various universities. What was important to me was that each summer, our family returned to Undercliff, our Maine cottage at the eastern end of a long, rocky beach at the head of a wide cove (and the scene of Gretchen’s near drowning).
Ah, Undercliff!
Heaven on earth.
The cottage looks south, through a scrim of islands and out to sea. Our view is of East Penobscot Bay, noted by many yachtsmen as one of the finest cruising archipelagos in the world. There are five cottages backing that beach or in the woods behind the beach, and there is a larger dwelling farther inland, a farm. Collectively, the beach, the cottages, the farm, and the land around them are named Undercliff.
This is because Undercliff’s eastern boundary is a very steep rise of land—to about one hundred feet—with sheer granite faces. Since our cottage is the easternmost cottage, ours is close under the actual cliff. The height of the cliff blocks the early sun from coming in, so our cottage is not good for you if you depend on sunrises to glorify your day. However, if you are a person who likes to linger over talk and drinks into the evening—as a sunset
builds, crests, and dissolves to your west like a painting by Frederic Edwin Church—then our cottage is a very fine place indeed.
Our Undercliff cottage was the only one among the five cottages that was privately owned; the other cottages were summer rentals owned by the family that, in those early days, occupied the farm. Ours was a red, two-story, uninsulated Cape Cod, built for summer use on a foundation of loose stone and brick rubble, with a central chimney, three bedrooms, and for many years—but no longer—a back ell, which was used as an extra visitors’ bunkroom.
We needed that extra visitors’ bunkroom because when I say that Undercliff was the summer cottage for our family, I do not mean just for Dad, Mom, Gretchen, and me.
Each summer, our cottage was flooded with uncles and aunts, cousins and friends, many of the friends being of such intimacy as, really, to be family themselves. Indeed, there was scarcely room left over for our other family—that is, for the poets and for their associated spouses, children, lovers, dogs, and manuscripts. Our parents were fervent in their perpetual invitations to all: “This summer, you must come see us in Maine!”
They came, indeed. They came, and they came, and they came. When Gretchen and I were old enough to be reflective about this poetic inundation, our eyes would roll at one another. Should we run such a summer circus, if we were in charge? Not hardly.
“You must come see us in Maine!”
What an invitation! Who would decline such a plea? Who would skip the gathering of poets—salted with plain, regular folks—brought together by ebullient Dick and Betty Eberhart, anytime between June and September, on our conglomerate shore, often with lobsters thrown in?
In summer, back then as well as now, the population of Maine explodes with visitors seeking what our family had already. Sometimes the visitors are successful in their search, sometimes unsuccessful. They might be waylaid by shopping centers or by ersatz “real-Maine” entertainments, or they might be funneled straight to Bar Harbor, where they take a spin and then return from whence they came. What they want to find, instead, is a little nook by the ocean, plain and simple, where their world might slow down for a bit or where they might find enchantment.
The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told Page 6
