Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  Pity for Samira Maxwell exercise 3rd Oct

  Never seen a face that works

  So hard to disapprove.

  D’you know your lips make tiny jerks

  When your eyes move?

  *

  Heath didn’t come and wasn’t going to. Niall stalked quietly over from his den in the booth: ‘Heath said for me to bring this.’

  From a large manila packet came ten pages of verse: THE HOLLOW PERSONS (EXTRACT) by HEATH BANNEN. I absorbed the contents page while Niall stood there being unsettling.

  From the Mindset Man to the Chimp Erect. 3

  From the Prince of Pose to the Fuck-You Fairy. 5

  From the Queen of Self to the Name With Nothing. 8

  From J. J. Bones to the King of Somewhere. 9

  From the Midnight Hag to the Child of Old. 10

  Sit the. Sit down, Niall.

  ‘He’s, Heath is, not coming in today.’

  Why, cos he’s writing these?

  ‘That’s what he said to say, but I think it’s more – more her.’

  Her. You mean Lillian.

  ‘Yes, because she’s got, involved with, you know. . .’

  I don’t need to,

  ‘I know, it’s Sami Sharma, you don’t need to know.’

  So why do you want to tell me?

  ‘I – don’t know. I want to – bless them. The two of them. The three of them, him too. By saying names.’

  Fine. Consider them blessed. What do you have for me, man?

  He passed me a sheet of paper, the blank sheet I’d seen him with. I didn’t think anything of it, I leafed through my folder and jested:

  Lily didn’t bring anything, Heath didn’t show at all, you gonna make me strike out here, man, nought-for-three?

  ‘This is the rewrite.’

  (I still didn’t get it) I liked this short one from last time, it’s mysterious –

  ‘That’s from before.’

  Doesn’t mean I can’t like it (I said childishly, choosing pages) oh this one?

  ‘That’s old too, you’re looking at the new one.’

  This, this blank sheet is the new one.

  You’ve cut everything.

  ‘I didn’t cut it, it cut itself.’

  (I looked at his blank sheet like something might appear on it, who by fire, who by lemon-juice) Let me dwell on this a while.

  When I was ready to speak, he spoke.

  ‘I’m okay with it.’

  Okay with there being nothing?

  ‘It was a process. It was – . I didn’t mean it to happen.’

  Niall, you know what I said about white space, it’s like,

  ‘Can you, I know this is rude, say nothing for a short time, professor?’

  I – yes. It’s not rude, man. . . And I can. Long as you like. Within reason.

  ‘You – did say about white space, the things it could be, the things it could do. Say. But to me it’s just been, started being, one thing. But – this isn’t like, d’you know, lie down, tell me your dreams, times up, thank you doctor – this is like please, please, listen to me.’

  ‘It would start on a line. Not always the first line. Just – lap at it somehow. Like the last word I’d put was no stronger than – than it. And once that word was gone the next began to be the same. Like it heard what happened, like the fever caught it. The word felt weighty, sort of – bloated, plagued, all wrong and with a laptop you can just – well. Then it started in on the fronts of lines. Why that word, why make that move, why take that breath, then both sides, same time, it didn’t mean me harm. It – didn’t mean me harm, it sought – is that a word – it sought to, save me from, sought-to-save-me-from, harm. Gently took sharp – edges – from me. And I’d be saying in my mind: so you want me to be true, and the truth says very little, so I’ll leave very little but I felt it, it, very kind, very kindly, kindlily? go – hush, let me – let you – let it – go. And I was left, here, with this. Which to you looks like it resembles a sheet of paper maybe a blank – expanse of paper but to me looks old, and scribbled, and exhausted, and denied, and I need you to take it from me, Glyn if I may call you, because it needs cutting as it is, I just, it, it, needs cutting as it is.’

  Niall –

  ‘I’m making all my old mistakes – ’

  Niall, man –

  *

  There is a two-fold Silence – sea and shore –

  Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,

  Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,

  Some human memories and tearful lore,

  Render him terrorless: his name’s ‘No More’. . .

  As I walked to class – having walked him back to Benson Hall, me floundering for answers to a question unprepared-for in this life, he giggly and cheerful now he’d cried out loud his struggles – there suddenly blazed-up the appalling thought that they had set him on me – Scare Me – Mimi had set him on me to be strange, does he even know Mimi? I could see how that might play out, though, that this was part of Fright Night and things weren’t what they were. . .

  And this blasphemous yet ultimately soothing notion was reinforced twenty minutes later by, well, seeing this in Village Hall B:

  Samira (princess) Barry (scarecrow)

  Iona (cat) Ollie (zombie)

  Peter (horns) Heath

  Caroline (witch) Niall???

  Lily (Lily)

  How did you get here so fast?

  ‘I changed my mind. I ran.’

  But I walked straight here.

  ‘You didn’t,’ went Samira, looking elsewhere combing limitless black hair, we saw you in Mrs Gantry’s.’

  Only cos Lily said she had slime but she’d sold out.

  ‘I’ve got some spare,’ said Niall, weighing green gunk in his hand as if nothing had ever happened.

  I see that. Where do I sit, where does Moi sit?

  ‘On your broomstick?’ suggested Iona.

  ‘Nowhere!’ Lily cried, ‘I’ve taken your place! You’re the King of Fools!’

  Who said that (I began lamely) I don’t see anyone in my seat, reckon I’ll just sit there (I pretended Lily was no one, began sitting on her, displaced her with her squealing and they scared me up an extra chair) seeing as I have my Magic Hat, now move up and shut up. Edgar Allan Poe.

  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore -

  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

  As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

  ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door – Only this and nothing more.’

  First stanza of ‘The Raven’. ‘The Raven’ made him famous pretty much overnight. Like most of Poe’s verse it’s highly formal, kind of stagey, overwrought, gothic in a good way, romantic in a bad way. Poe was manically productive, compulsive, alcoholic, constantly broke, devoted to his wife, and his reputation’s still recovering from the vengeful slanders of a horrid obituarist. I don’t think Poe’s a great poet. Great storyteller yes. ‘The Raven’ seems popular with folks who don’t do poetry. And you’re right Lily, they did it in The Simpsons.

  ‘Why we doing him then,’ says Heath, who’s made no obvious concession to the witching season.

  Why? Because it’s Halloween and I’m the King of Fools.

  Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

  Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow

  From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore –

  For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore – Nameless here for evermore.

  ‘That line’s from a Dylan song,’ said Orlando, not looking up at all.

  Exactly, ripped from Bob, like everything.

  ‘I must say I’m enjoying this poem!’ bursts out the
Scarecrow Barry, whose every jolly gesture scatters straw over the table.

  Good! ‘The Raven’ has eighteen stanzas just like those. The form is intricate, flamboyant, in-yer-bewhiskered-face. He swiped it from Elizabeth Barrett, whom we’ll meet in a few weeks. She enjoyed his poem and graciously wrote him so from England. It’s a mad hypnotic form. If you don’t ride it when you read it you’re in limelight babbling nonsense, oh! talking of which, anyone hear the Manner last week?

  ‘I’t was tremendous,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Very modern,’ Peter Grain agreed.

  Good (said the King of Fools) but someone said about Poe reciting ‘The Raven that his listeners were afraid to breathe in case they broke the spell. Your move, Polar-Jones.

  The stanzas end with the following words: nothing more, evermore, nothing more, nothing more, nothing more, nothing more!, nothing more, ‘Nevermore’, ‘Nevermore’ ‘Nevermore’, ‘nevermore’ ‘Nevermore’, ah nevermore, ‘Nevermore’, ‘Nevermore’, ‘Nevermore’, ‘Nevermore’ nevermore!

  The meaning of each one is ever-so-slightly different. Ten are spoken by the narrator, eight by a large black member of the genus Corvus.

  A raven!’ Barry shares with us all, ‘Bingo! Nevermore!’

  Now you try doing that.

  I said Now you try doing that. Find a word or phrase you can end nine stanzas with. Not eighteen, nine, I am half your friend. I don’t care what shape or length your stanzas are, but they have to be formally the same, they have to be nine in number, and they have to end with your word or phrase. And your word or phrase has to mean something slightly different every time.

  ‘Can it have like ghosts and shit?’ questions Lily, writing this down.

  It can, it’s the season, take out your black highlighters, but it doesn’t have to be gothic. Or funny, or silly, though I won’t stop you going there. You know the word we have for silly was once the word we had for blessed. You do now. The point is it could be real. As in realistic, as in realism. You feel one way about something -and whatever you think or do or say in the daylight, your heart and soul – insert the words you use for these – slams back to that one way you feel, like gravity pulls it, magnets haul it, the freakin’ moon is roping it in. Natural pull. Whatever you say in the stanzas does not prevent it coming again. Well this could be loving someone, refrains have plucked that lute forever. Missing someone, praising someone, hating someone. Or: timor mortis conturbat me – the fear of death disturbs me — William Dunbar, ‘Lament for the Makars’, find him in the wood, every fourth line, ghost from a dead language, timor mortis conturbat me, timor mortis conturbat me, timor mortis conturbat me, timor mortis conturbat me, timor mortis conturbat me, ad not quite infinitum. Pattern as dry realism. Rhyme as bone. Not AAA but A forever, not shadowed or repeated but the same damn thing oh, I dunno, you find it. By which I mean yes, Lily, ghosts and shit. But turn it, turn it, turn the meaning one degree, like your one and only power.

  I’m going to walk out in the fog now, I may be six minutes.

  *

  I do do that. Leave the students stuff to do and need to leave the room. I always return with something, so it looks like I had a reason. But the reason I leave the room is I can’t cope with the scuffling, sighing hush. Can’t bear to have made silence. V Frankenstein would get it.

  Anyhow not this time. This time I leave it to go and stand on the frozen lane, look six ways into the fog, come on scare me, where the hell, I’m here!

  And I remember one of Poe’s stories. It’s about a man who is expecting something terrible to happen. But I can’t recall what does.

  *

  So, to answer the excellent question of Mr Bannen; Why we doing him. Why we doing who we’re doing. Search me. The office says I set it up but I can’t remember why we doing anything.

  Keats because it’s autumn and we’re here because we’re here. Emily to wonder why. Hopkins just – to wonder. The Brontes to – remind us things begin. Sam TC for the soul, the voyage, this order enough for you? Time’s not played fair with me, so I won’t – or Time’s played fair with me, so I will – either way we play all day in the sun, me and my shadow. It and its shadow. Poe because the sun sets?

  The tales of E. A. Poe, my friends, have a considerable claim to have originated or pioneered or suggested detective fiction, the modern ghost story, the thriller, shlock horror, the whodunit, the gore-fest, film noir and freakin’ sci-fi. He’s why Hitchcock wanted you to wet yourself. He’s why we’re lumbered with Sherlock Holmes. But if you’re any shakes as a storyteller you light candles for Mrs Christie as well as Dostoevsky. Where Poe sits on that spectrum is up to you, but he’s got his own colour, he’s a part of the rainbow. So respect the one who did that, buy his poems, help the poor soul scrape a living.

  And something else. If you do as I just did and say, on technical grounds, this is not a great poet, first off you’re not alone: Yeats called ‘The Raven’ ‘insincere and vulgar’, Aldous Huxley scoffed the poems wore a diamond ring on every finger’, Emerson said oh you mean the jingle-man?’ and so on. But to take any position is to make yourself a dot in the clouds: I see from here, I say from here. You can possess the finest critical mind, your dot may be one pure state-of-the-art Cyclopean platinum eyeball, but why place yourself at a point, where everyone sees around you? Oh she says this because she thinks that! He would say that because he hails from there. . .

  Once you place yourself you’re stuck with that. You can be read now, guessed-at, extrapolated. The lover of books is older than that, breathes deeper than that, shouldn’t plant his flag, shouldn’t get herself so comfy the cobwebs form. The lover of books keeps turning the page, it’s all you can see us doing! Well I contradict myself (someone’s going to tell you soon) we must dance, stomach opposites, we must puzzle and perplex, must be gone when they arrive. Be gone when I arrive! Where are you?

  Alone in Café Maureen, waiting for his train, reliving my babble in my class that afternoon.

  Make yourself at least a line, a line to travel, add that whole dimension. So you can swim up close and stare and bob your gaping fish-head at the incompetent or tasteless – but also, also, swim away, fly away to far away, from which vantage Edgar Poe is a glow, a phenomenon, flash!a St Elmo’s Fire. Or, on the incandescent plane to which our language has ascended, he’s a thing! Edgar Allan Poe is a thing! And. he’s striding out of a pea-souper fog on the platform where I stand. You with me?

  *

  ‘Why don’t they pay with a good grace – and promptly? A young author, struggling with despair, in ghastly poverty, is politely requested to compose an article for which he’ll be handsomely paid. . . ’

  (If you know me you’ll know I’m trotting through the mist alongside Edgar Allan Poe, nodding in accord and saying yeah, I know’ by way of affirmation)

  ‘He neglects the sole employment which affords him the chance of a livelihood,’

  Yeah, I know,

  ‘– and having starved through the month completes the article!’ Is this you you mean, Mr Poe?

  ‘A month – starving still – and no reply,’

  I know, yeah,

  Another month, still none,’

  Jesus still none? blimey

  ‘Two months more, still none. At the expiration of six additional months, personal application at the editor’s office,’

  It’s down here, Mr Poe, the Inn’s not far now,

  ‘Call again! Poor devil goes out, does not fail to call again. Three or four months more,’

  Tssh, oh I know,

  ‘The article is demanded. No he can’t have it, call in six months after the issue and your money’s ready for you,’

  At last!

  ‘And he would have waited if he could – but Death would not. He dies! by starvation. The fat editor is fatted henceforward and forever, to the amount of five and twenty dollars very cleverly saved – to be spent generously on champagne.’

  Did I hear you say champagne?

  He che
cked in, changed from light black to dark black, and we sauntered through the whitechapel mist to the cream-and-crimson Coach House, where, in a guilty response to my caveats above, I got us a bottle of Moet and beamed goodwill till my cheeks ached.

  I studied in Boston, Mr Poe sir, studied poetry on Bay State Road!

  ‘We like Boston. We were born there.’

  Er, I know, that’s why I said —

  ‘The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their pumpkin-pies are delicious. Their Common is no common thing. . . Their poetry’s not so good.’

  Cheers! Did you tell them that?

  (His glass rose up and he drank, and our eyes met for the first time) ‘We shall never call a woman a pretty little witch again, as long as we live.’

  Ha, witch, cheers, like it. So: there should be a crowd tonight, the fiction classes are all coming too, there’s a nice Halloween vibe, are you going to read –

  ‘Frogpondians. . .’

  Yup

  ‘We delivered them a “juvenile” poem, they received it with applause!’ Mm-hm

  ‘Next thing was to abuse it in the papers. The poem, they say, is bad. We admit it, we insisted on the fact in our prefatory remarks, over and over.’

  Yeah so what’s their problem?

  ‘The Frogpondian faction hire a thing they call the Washington Reformer – something of that kind – to insinuate we must have been “intoxicated” to “deliver” such a poem.’

  Oh-ho! And were ya, man?

  ‘Why can’t these miserable hypocrites say drunk at once and be done with it?’

  Yay! here’s to that my friend,

  ‘We shall get drunk when we please. The old Goths of Germany would have understood it. Used to debate matters of state twice, once drunk, once sober,’

  Claude can I get the check —

  ‘Sober that they mightn’t be deficient in formality drunk lest they should be destitute of vigour!’

  Oh we’re not destitute of vigour here, man -‘As for the editor of the Jefferson Teetotaller, or whatever it is, we advise her to get drunk too, as soon as possible, for when sober she’s a disgrace to the sex, on account of being so awfully stupid.’