Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  Weave a circle round her thrice, I said softly as I joined them, but regretted it and went silent for a while without explaining further.

  *

  Mrs Gantry peered at the thirty-two fluorescent plastic highlighters I clattered onto the counter of her village stores. Garish green, manic magenta, obvious orange and bilious blue. Eight sets.

  ‘Are these for your students, professor?’

  Were going to do some colouring.

  ‘We’ve a lot more action figures, you know, we’ve got a pirate in.’ Just the pens today, Mrs Gantry, I have a class to teach.

  *

  Heath Iona

  Peter Caroline

  Samira Barry

  Niall Ollie

  moi

  Take it away, moi:

  The Frost performs its secret ministry,

  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

  Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

  The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

  Have left me to that solitude, which suits

  Abstruser musings: save that at my side

  My cradled infant who the crap is Peter!

  ‘Here, sir.’

  The man who wore the anorak that afternoon in the meadow is wearing a shirt and tie and pale blue jersey and sitting between we know where he’s sitting, why is he, why are you there?

  ‘Well it’s an elective. I’ve, elected to take it.’

  (I look around my elective class and somehow expect them all to be as riled as me but they’re not which is itself annoying) Why didn’t you take it before?

  ‘I didn’t know about it.’

  You saw us in the south meadow. That was Gerard Manley Hopkins there.

  ‘I didn’t know it was elective then. Last week you didn’t hold a class.’

  Yes because your Academy pals made it clash with something, so we went for a walk in the woods instead. She sent you, didn’t she. She sent you. Who’s visiting today? Which poet.

  ‘It’s, well, oh, Mr. S. T. Coleridge.’

  You looked. What does S. T. stand for.

  ‘Samuel. . . Turner.’

  Taylor, what school of poetry is he part of.

  ‘Oh he’s a Romantic, sir.’

  Oh is he. What stopped him from finishing ‘Kubla Khan’.

  What prevented Coleridge from finishing ‘Kubla Khan’.

  Peter looks at me, then out to the window with its brief view of the weed-clad wall of the electric shed, then down at the table. Moves his blue pencil-sharpener. (Who brings a pencil-sharpener to a writing class? He’s also got a ruler, a protractor for crying out loud) ‘I don’t know that,’ he concedes, ‘sir, I don’t know all that much about him. That’s why I’ve come to your class.’

  Right. Okay. We’ll sort this out later. Take one and hand them round. . .

  ‘The gentleman from Porlock,’ Ollie informs the newcomer, ‘disturbed him on his opium trip,’ and Peter asks: ‘Would you spell that for me, friend?’

  Hush.

  My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

  ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

  And vexes meditation with its strange

  And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 10

  This populous village!

  This is ‘Frost at Midnight’ by Samuel Trevor Coleridge, it goes on for fifty sixty more lines, you can find it in the trees. Read it, it’s one of the most beautiful things there ever was. Listen to thoughts dawning on him. He hasn’t planned it out. He’s not reaching high like Keats, he’s receiving. He plants ‘Sea, hill, and wood’ then he harvests them, ‘Sea, and hi11, andwooá...’ whatever they may yield, then he writes an empty line – ‘With all the numberless goings-on of life’ – who since Shakespeare had tried an empty line?

  Sea, hill, and wood, 10

  This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

  With all the numberless goings-on of life,

  Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

  Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not. . .

  Read it yet? Good (out comes my clobbering regiment, the Thirty-two Brave Highlighters) Peter you’ll have to share the pens with Heath that’s Heath right there. Take one of each colour and pass them on.

  ‘Mi casa es su casa,’ Heath mutters, reading the handout.

  ‘I could have got you hundreds o’ these fellers from the bulk store,’ mentions Barry Wilby.

  ‘No one has to share,’ Caroline points out: ‘Lillian is absent.’

  ‘No shit,’ says Heath.

  ‘Fairy down!’ I say brightly but Caroline isn’t smiling.

  ‘She’s unwell with a cold,’ Samira announces, ‘which she’s asked me to say.’

  ‘Really?’ Heath looks at Samira, ‘shame.’

  Highlight in GREEN every syllable with the long EE. So line 1 has the sound tree from ministry, then me in line 5. Highlight in PINK every syllable with the long OW. So owlet on line 2, loud twice on line 3 and so on. The ORANGE pen is for long AY – Came on line 3, mates from inmates on line 4. And the BLUE pen is for its own sound long OO in blue and you find that in solitude and suits in line 5, Abstruser musings scores two in line 6.

  EE, OW, AY, OO. Do the whole poem.

  ‘That is going to be colourful,’ from Caroline, and Ollie, hopefully: ‘When do we do that, now?’

  ‘Way ahead of you, campers,’ says Heath, snatching a green one from him.

  *

  Who or what is Peter.

  (Kerri Bedward doesn’t stop typing for me these days) ‘Peter Grain, did he find you?’ (clack clack)

  Yes yes he found me, he’s in there now! Doing my colouring game!

  ‘Your – colouring game.’

  It’s my class, there’s eight of them, not nine, there should be eight!

  ‘Would you like another chair’ (clack clack)

  No! There are chairs! There are many many chairs!

  ‘Would you like more students then for your – colouring game.’

  No! Less! Fewer! One fewer. One Peter fewer.

  ‘He has very good manners,’ (she says, reaching over to the photocopier and tapping commands on it with android rapidity) ‘he’s nicer than Heath Bannen.’

  I don’t care, I don’t care, he’s something to do with the Academy, he’s been told to spy on me, it’s her, it’s her — look I know that sounds paranoid.

  ‘I’m glad you know.’

  Eight is the limit. I only teach eight. It was in the stuff I sent you.

  ‘I thought this was all a dream of yours, it’s hard to keep up really.’

  It was in the stuff. You must have lost it, what are you photocopying?

  The Academy Proudly Presents

  JACOB POLAR-JONES

  (aka “The Chocalux Man”) reading

  RYHMES OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

  by Mr. S. T. Colridge

  (to be performed in the presence of the original author)

  TONITE!!!

  in THE VILLAGE HALL

  8pm, October 24th Refreshments

  This isn’t happening.

  ‘Yes at eight look it’s confirmed.’

  This is – Coleridge agreed to this.

  ‘The agent says it’s fine.’

  The agent says it’s fine. Anyway well done Kerri, you spelt Chocalux right.

  ‘I know! I double-checked it. But it was too late to order any!’

  You think Samuel Coleridge wants to sit there and hear a kid who’s famous for being in a chocolate-drink commercial performing his most famous poem?

  ‘Apparently he’s tired of reading that one, he’d rather read some new work. It was all Tina Yeager’s idea.’

  You don’t say.

  ‘The old and the new, sort of thing, past meets future. Look it’s sold out! That’s a hundred and twenty tickets Glyn and a waiting list! How many did you get for your other readings? come on, ten?’

  We are not measuring friggin poetry by sales of friggin tickets.

>   ‘I thought you’d be more pleased. Jake’s such a brilliant actor he comes in here he’s sweet, he’s so shy! he’ll bring the poem to life. Sometimes poets aren’t the greatest readers apparently. But an actor can really put in all the hidden emotions.’

  Uh. . . uh. . .

  ‘Glyn don’t do that to your head. Oh dear, are we people in your dream again? Are all these visiting poets actually ghosts and only you know this? There-there, long day. . . Oh but would you hand out these eight amber flyers to your class? Actually nine flyers! I forgot about Peter!’

  *

  Put the flyers away. Burn the amber flyers. Look at the poem.

  There are four points to make, one for each colour, one for each vowel. Let’s start with the green. Long ee is a very common vowel and it’s dotted throughout, but where does it cluster?

  No one? Follow the green. . . How about lines 7-14? peacefully, extreme, sea, sea, dreams. A long vowel is gifting you time, you dwell on it: sea and dreams and peace are all in their way vast, right? Both sleep and dreams come back a lot – remember Coleridge is alone sitting by moonlight, beside his baby son in a cradle – also breathings is coming later, not breath, he chooses breathings. . . Samira what.

  ‘Are you saying that when he writes an ee-word he always means sleep or dreams?’ which two words set her off on a yawn she barely stifles.

  No. Watch where the sounds cluster. It’s not that any one vowel tends to mean any one thing – it’s that if you cluster them around a meaning, then you’ve chosen that colour, which means you have it to work with later. Think painter, think palette. Something in the poet’s brain, and by extension ours as listeners, now associates ee with a sense of peacefulness and carefulness that emanates from the sleeping infant.

  So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

  Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! 35

  And so I brooded all the following morn,

  Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

  Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

  Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

  A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, 40

  For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face. . .

  What matters here is not that sleep and dreams happen to share a long ee, it’s that having deployed them on line 35, Coleridge doesn’t touch long ee for the next five lines. And what are the next five lines? Where are the next five lines set Ollie.

  ‘They’re set in a school.’

  Unwillingly, right and when does ee come back? Anyone, Niall?

  ‘Leaped and see. Oh and hasty – hasty, leaped, see.’

  Well done, a cluster of meaning about the schoolboy’s dreamy joy at the thought of someone from his childhood magically intervening in the misery of the classroom. Like most of us right now, ho-ho. ‘What about study on 38?’ asks Samira, ‘stud-ee.’

  Oh yeah. Well. It’s not stressed, is it.

  ‘Always an answer,’ says Caroline.

  It’s what you pay for. Last word on the green ee-vowel: the last ten lines of the poem. These ten lines contain, say, a hundred syllables. How much pink ow have you marked? None. Right. Orange long ay? Not one. Amazing. In a hundred syllables. How much blue 00? One. Just one. The very last word of the poem:

  Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 65

  Whether the summer clothe the general earth

  With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

  Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

  Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

  Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall 70

  Heard only in the trances of the blast,

  Or if the secret ministry of frost

  Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

  Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

  And how many green ee’s? Eleven: seasons, sweet, thee, greenness, mossy, tree, eave, only, secret, ministry, quietly. They weave a circle round him, he ends the poem nestled in whatever sense of peace he’s drawing from the sleeping child. Whatever ow, ay and oo mean here – in this poem specifically – he steers almost completely clear of them for the last ten lines. He mixes a colour and paints in it. It, and not those. Or these, and not that.

  ‘Are you saying its planned that way?’ Samira frowns.

  ‘Not convinced,’ says Caroline.

  I’m not saying it’s planned at all. I’m saying his early choices inform his later choices, it doesn’t mean he’s consciously making them. He’s a poet, hard work, dumb luck, read forty books, God, DNA, who knows, Sam can make a human sound (where sound is a noun) and Sam can make a human sound (where sound is a verb.) That was said about me too and it’s true if you bother to look. Or bother to read aloud. OW, the pink. What you got?

  The Frost performs its secret ministry,

  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

  Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

  ‘Here at the start!’ Ollie finds them: ‘owlet, loud, loud,!’

  Good. Simple: ow is the owlet’s cry, ow is a vowel that doesn’t half move your throat and lips if you do it justice. There’s effort in it. How many lines go by until the next pink ow vowel? Shall I tell you? It’s twenty-three. Which is roughly two hundred and thirty possible syllables, not one of which is OW. It next appears as how, twice, in a completely fresh turn of thought: ‘But O! how oft,/How oft, at school. . .’

  I’m not saying ow is always the owl, but because it is at the start, Coleridge now associates – subconsciously – that vowel with the distracting cry he heard. This isn’t onomatopoeia, right – if he was playing that game he’d do which vowel? – ‘oo,’ ‘oo!’ – yes! – ‘tuwit tuwoof – thanks for that Barry – but the ow is an association that, having been made, lamplights certain neurons dot dot dot. . .

  The AY – orange – again, you can find clusters if you look: in lines 43-48 you have play-mate, Babe, cradled, vacancies, babe. . . all associated with either happy memories or the presence of the child – even vacancies seem bountiful in this company:

  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

  My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

  Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

  Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 45

  Fill up the interspersed vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought!

  My babe so beautiful!

  Vowels well from the deep, vowels hail from regions of the brain, they will cluster in the Piccadilly of your cerebrum, they’ll look out for each other on the tube. Consonants are what they wear to work.

  See with the blue OO its the clearest of all: a whole brood of ’em on lines 5-6: solitude, suits, abstruser, musings... the oo-sound clusters when he’s lost in thought. Then they’re thin on the ground, save the odd blue or who, and when do they cluster next? Lines 2021, when again he’s lost in though: ‘Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit/By its own moods interprets. . .’

  What else? You can trace the theme through whose, music, soothing, brooded, beautiful, who, universal... then the field is ceded completely to serene blissful ee for all the last ten lines, until that little blue adieu: ‘Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.’

  There was indeed quiet then, they’d caught fatigue from me somehow, though the work had cheered me up. But then Caroline asked: ‘Are you going to look at the underlying themes at all?’ and I threw them the fuck out.

  *

  It wasn’t her fault or theirs. It was giving out the stupid flyers and everything they stood for, it was Samira yawning and Peter existing. I said I was done for the day, if they had any questions about Samuel Coleridge they could ask Jake Polar-Jones.

  They shuffled out in all their versions of disappointed. On his way past me Peter Grain asked if there were any assignments to catch up on and I said no.

  So he kept moving and I told him:

  Look. I’m afraid you can’t come back. I�
�m afraid this course is full, it’s a mistake they made in the office, I insist on just eight students, I’m sorry. If I’m still dead in the spring I’ll come back and teach, I dunno, drama. Paradigms of Drama.

  ‘I shall be sure to sign up,’ Peter told me glumly at the doorway.

  Yeah I’ll pencil you in.

  Ollie was the last out, his hand on the door-handle, quite a long look. Then:

  ‘You all right there, man?’ he said.

  I’m good, mate. I’m good. It’s the poem.

  ‘I know. I thought so.’

  The words.

  ‘I know, home thoughts kind of thing.’

  Yep. Good man. Go on. I’m fine.

  *

  My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

  With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

  And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

  And in far other scenes. . .

  There was something I’d wanted to tell them, something Coleridge said. I learned it at school. It was the most profound thing I’d ever read about writing. I sat in the sixth-form study room at lunchtime. The sense that I’d received this from him at the telescope-end of two centuries was dizzying.

  I’m not going to tell them now. I’m going to read it to myself. It’s this fragment from the famous distinction Coleridge made between Imagination and Fancy. It’s in Biographia Literaria.

  This division is no less grounded in nature than that of delirium from mania, or Otway’s Lutes, lobsters, seas of milk, and ships of amber from Shakespeare’s What! have his daughters brought him to this pass?

  I don’t even know if I have this right, it’s more about where it led me.

  The Otway example makes a pig fly or says there are aliens. Fantasy, the magical, sci-fi, the surreal. The thing is so because I say. I move the pieces. Fancy: a ‘mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, modified by the will.’

  The Shakespeare example takes something already in motion (King Lear is mad and blames his daughters) and rides it somewhere else (Poor Tom looks mad so the mad Lear thinks he must have daughters too!) Nature moves the pieces, I just make my moves across them. Imagination.