“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Poe goes in circles in my life, or in cycles, or orbits, coming around and around again with his own spooky timing. I wasn't expecting to like the PBS documentary I saw a few weeks ago, but I did, and wanted more. Even the actor they chose to portray Poe became more convincingly Poe-like as the show went on. They interviewed the usual suspects, scholars who basically spend all their working life trying to understand him. But they also kept interviewing an author named Lynn Cullen, who had written an intriguing-sounding book called Mrs. Poe.

At that point, I didn't know if it was biography or fiction. Turns out, not only is it fiction, it isn't even about Mrs. Poe! It's about the "lady friend" who almost took Poe away from his fragile wife (the fabled 13-year-old first cousin he married to save her from penury, or worse). So I ordered it from Amazon, with my first question being, "Will she 'get' Poe? Will she be able to 'do' Poe? Will he be at all convincing?" I haven't even finished it yet, and so far it has me in its thrall.

I see Poe differently from the usual perception of a half-mad, emotionally-frail alcoholic who barely made it in the literary world. Hah! Barely made it? The man was a literary rock star.  He didn't "barely make" anything, from his youth as a tough, wiry athlete to his adulthood as a tough, wiry poet who bore all the slings and arrows of his trade (and handed out more than a few in his blistering book reviews).

We're all affected a little too much by that famous photo (which see), where he really DOES look half out of his mind, with unfocused and even unmatched eyes staring into the unknown. Maybe he just disliked having his picture taken, in keeping with his bristly personality. I think if you saw Poe in a room with other poets of his time, you'd be hard-pressed to pick him out. I see him as a serious-looking man, thin and intense, with a big head and untidy hair, and though I have no way of knowing this, I keep thinking he had an educated Southern accent (having been raised in Virginia). He had enough of the thespian in him to give great drawing-room performances of his work.  The Lynn Cullen book is delicious in its imagining of an incredible literary salon where "Walter Whitman" basically makes an ass of himself, Horace Greeley pontificates, Louisa May Alcott shows up for tea, and everyone sucks up to Poe because he just published The Raven and is now terribly, terribly famous.

I've walked around and around inside this epic poem before, of course, but I just now read the whole thing out loud (with no one listening - I didn't even record it, but wanted those cadences inside my mouth and throat and lungs). Stuff sprang out at me, and for the first time I kept bursting out laughing, for this is a really funny poem. At least, it's funny in spots, when it's not absolutely gut-twisting in its loneliness and horror.  Poe was one of these people who had a huge hole in him where the wind blew,  a chill wind that never stopped. 

I realize that for the most part, my longer posts never get read or even opened, like gifts that just stay under the Christmas tree. But it's my blog, and I will do verse-by-verse literary analysis if I want to! 

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. 

"'T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door; 

Only this and nothing more." 

The first thing you notice is the clean, impeccable meter, the highly complex, perfectly balanced syllables glittering like gems in the dark. This is what makes it so challenging to read aloud, but if you work at it a bit, it's perfect.  As Poe usually does, he immediately sets the scene, plunks the narrator into our lap, and lets us know that this is a man who likes to sit in a dark room alone and read weird books which are completely forgotten (kind of like my three novels). This implies that he's feeling pretty darned forgotten himself, perhaps on the romantic scrap-heap. The rhyme scheme kicks in very soon, and he plays it to death, along with the famous Poe repetition: napping, tapping, rapping, rapping again, then taking one neat step backward to tapping. Well, if you and I did this verbal cha-cha, it would be a bad poem. The "only this and nothing more" already clues us in on his mood - both dismissive and wary, already reassuring himself, whistling in the dark. 

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. 

Oh really? "Nameless here forevermore"? All he DOES for the rest of the poem is blather on and on about Lenore, who is likely some pure and virginal, consumptively lovely maiden (and as a matter of fact, that sounds an awful lot like his wife). Calling her rare and radiant, well, I've seen a few people who were radiant, but only for moments. Soon that candle will be snuffed out. He sets this thing in December, of course, the dying of the year, and don't forget he has Christmas and all its disappointments in mind. I won't get into "and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor", as it makes me want to howl and/or burst into tears because I should just stop writing forever. 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating 

"'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, 

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: 

This it is and nothing more." 

Those first two lines, among the best-known in English literature, are so incredibly sensuous that you can only read them out loud to fully appreciate them.  There isn't a syllable that's wrong - we're in geniusland here. Silken, sad, uncertain. Such words for a mere curtain, not just any curtain but a purple one - no, "each" purple curtain, so how many of them ARE there? I like how he juxtaposes "thrilled me, filled me" with "fantastic terrors" - don't most of us love having the bejeezus scared out of us, even paying for the privilege? And now, repeating and entreating have replaced rapping and tapping. He is the sceptred king of internal rhyme. 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door:— 

Darkness there and nothing more. 

Oops. There's nobody there. I'll bet HE felt the fool. Here he is talking on and on to someone who doesn't exist, or at least not in fleshly form! And I really love that "Sir", said I, "or Madam" - is he hoping it might be the lost Lenore showing up, as if to deliver a pepperoni pizza from another dimension? But it's funny, too, reminding me of those awful old "Dear Sir or Madam" form letters (rejection letters? For Poe got a lot of those, too. "Ravens, Mr. Poe?" - perhaps from the same editor who said, "Whales, Mr. Melville?").

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; 

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, 

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore:" 

Merely this and nothing more. 

Well OK, then, he misses his girl friend! But we really know nothing about her, except that she's a "rare and radiant maiden" - and not there. For some reason a Bob Dylan line leapt into my head: "But she makes it all too concise and too clear that Johanna's not here."

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, 

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. 

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; 

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore; 

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore: 

'T is the wind and nothing more." 

I love this verse. There is so much to love in it! When I saw that he had rhymed "that is" with "window lattice", I laughed out loud, but it was nothing to what I did when I got to "let me see, then what thereat is". This is a sly joke, no mistake, a little clever turn of phrase meant to relieve the bleakness just enough to keep his audience on the hook. For Poe was seductive, along with everything else he was. 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, 

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. 

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; 

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, 

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door: 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

We knew it was coming, the grand entrance. But how it comes is rather strange. The word "flirt" is not used casually, and fluttering eyelids are almost always seen as flirtatious. But suddenly, "in there stepped a stately Raven" - the thing WALKS in to his gloomy old chamber, looking positively royal. If you've ever studied a raven, though, they're exactly like this; they give no quarter. They really do just sit there, in a hunch. Unlike crows, they don't twitch or dart. They stare at you. It's unnerving.

And in case you're curious:

PALLAS was the Titan god of battle and warcraft. He was the father of Nike (Victory), Zelos (Rivalry), Kratos (Cratus, Strength) and Bia (Power) by Styx (Hatred), children who sided with Zeus during the Titan-War. Pallas' name was derived from the Greek word pallô meaning "to brandish (a spear)". He was vanquished by the goddess Athena who crafted her aigis (a goat-hide arm-guard) from his skin.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,— 

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, 

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: 

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

This is just another sly joke, a clever turn of phrase. It's "Who's on first, What's on second" all over again. No, quoth the Raven, I WON'T tell you my name, so there! So Poe assumes his name is "Nevermore", a nice play on the "nothing more" which he has already used SIX TIMES (!! I counted). 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door, 

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 

With such name as "Nevermore." 

He's sure he's the only one. Ever. In all of human history. No ego here! And maybe he's right. I never encountered such long raven poems from any other author. "Ever yet was blessed" must be sarcasm, for a moment ago he was cursing the damn thing. I like how quickly he switches from words like stately, lordly, grave, stern, etc., to "ungainly fowl" (homonym time!), as if it's just a big black chicken.

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only 

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. 

Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered, 

Till I scarcely more than muttered,—"Other friends have flown before; 

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." 

Then the bird said, "Nevermore." 

Oh, you'll just leave me like everybody does. Oh, no I won't. But I wish you would. And it's funny how HIS hopes are capitalized. I wonder how he does that?

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, 

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore: 

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore 

Of 'Never—nevermore.'

So! So now he's so desperate for an explanation for that gloomy triplet that he's telling us this bird's owner had a vocabulary of ONE WORD.

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling, 

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore, 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking "Nevermore." 

This is one of my favorite passages. It completely deflates all the horror he has been building up: the guy wheels up a soft, cushy chair - I didn't know chairs had casters then - and lounges on the lavish velvet, tipping it back, yawning and stretching, linking fancy unto fancy - maybe even lighting a cigar or swigging a little laudanum - can't you see it? 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er 

She shall press, ah, nevermore! 

Ah yes, now we get to it, the repressed sex. It had to come some time. Once more he's nodding off into some sort of erotic reverie, using a bloated word like "gloated" not once but TWICE, a word so pregnant and ready to burst that it reminds me  of the seethingly fertile abdomen of a termite queen - and then, all of a sudden, here she is, back again for a return engagement - LENORE! Or at least, we can assume it's Lenore who was pressing that velvet violet lining, or having her velvet violet lining ("with the lamp-light gloating o'er") pressed. Never have I seen sex so subtly expressed.

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer 

Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee 

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!" 

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore." 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

He likes words which were probably antiquated even then. Quaff I get, nepenthe - well - not so much. So here's what it means:

Nepenthe: a potion used by the ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow 

Something capable of causing oblivion of grief or suffering

I assume it was a sort of laudanum used by the gods in ancient times. Some sources say it didn't really exist. Laudanum did, as did alcohol, and it's my belief that Poe mixed them freely.

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil! 

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, 

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted— 

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore: 

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

I have always loved this line, and think it's one of the finest ever written: "Is there - is there balm in Gilead?" It brings to mind the old hymn, "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole/There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."  The original Biblical line read, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" Poe's version clings to a shred of hope, but the repeating "is there - is there - " is completely heartbreaking. Strangely, almost all versions I've heard treat this as a kind of sarcasm, but I think it's a cri du coeur from a man who has almost given up.

But then again. . . it could also be a test. 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil! 

By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore, 

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore: 

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!" 

Quoth the Raven,  "Nevermore."

OK, I'm going to stop looking things up, so you can take a guess at who or what Aidenn is. These classicists bug me to death. The important thing is Lenore. Lenore, Lenore, Lenore! By now she's not just radiant but "sainted". Did Poe ever have sex, I wonder? I think he worshipped women and even held some of them in high regard as writers, but there is a sense - well, maybe it was marrying that thirteen-year-old cousin. It would render you a little cautious. 

"That God we both adore" is a nice touch. Come on, we're both on the same side, aren't we? And I don't think anyone who rants and rages this much is particularly religious. It's yet another attempt to seduce. Devious man.

As for the Raven's response, I'm beginning to think Poe was right the first time: he was taught just one word, and that's all he's going to say.

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting: 

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! 

Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door! 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

I like this guy, I really do. I can see him stamping around and jumping up and down, and probably quaffing as Poe was wont to do. "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Which prompts the inevitable response: Polly want a cracker. And the black plume! Isn't that a nice touch - the horses wore them for funeral processions. "Leave my loneliness unbroken" is a plea, which tells us a lot about how he really feels about being alone.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor: 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe

So we all know this is a Poem About Death. But it's also a poem about Poe. It's about the things that were important to him. Privacy. Quiet. Introversion. Womblike chambers of refuge. A sort of carefully cultivated loneliness. Shock and fright as delicious physical sensations that were perhaps a substitute for sex. Radiant, unbesmirched, angelic women, the kind that don't exist. Scholarship, the classics, escape into literature. Thwarted romance. Abandonment, rejection. Being angry and upset with something external, which is really a problem he has generated himself. Ranting and railing at God, the Fates, demons, annoying symbols of mortality roosting on his doorframe, and all those things over which he has absolutely no control.

So let's look at Nevermore. What does it really mean? "No"? "Never"? I always thought it meant "not any more". The things that were, are no more, and love has bloomed and died and been swept away. So the bird just keeps on saying it, in case Poe didn't get it the first time. It's a grim thing to teach it to say, but for a raven it seems more or less appropriate. Ravens don't budge, it's true. Lately I have seen seven at a time on my back fence, and it gave me a thrill, let me tell you. They just stay, is what they do. They stand their ground. Sometimes they make a gritchy sort of grinding sound, or a hollow rattle. Personally, I love them - I think they're magnificent, and creepy. What other bird could have stood its ground through a whole long poem such as this?

Know Your Poe: The Happiest Day

The Happiest Day

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;
But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day–the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? DIDN'T you? - that I would ever run a series about Edgar Allan Poe? No, I was deadly serious, as serious (and deadly) as I could be about such a topic.

I don't know all of his poetry, and to dip into it is difficult, for it's melancholy and dense and written in that Victorian way, full of morbid verbal bric-a-brac and swirling emotional effluvia. So I cast around for something a bit lighter. Ah! This must be it, The Happiest Day! Even a morose bugger like Poe must have had a little fun, even though it's said he never had sex with his wife, and perhaps not with anyone. Maybe he liked to play canasta or enjoyed chilled melon balls or something, I don't know. But when I found this poem and realized it was relatively short, I thought, aha, here's one I can analyze line-by-line without busting my brain or bursting into tears.

Wrong. This guy just never lightens up.

Analyzing poetry is an awful thing, really, because it should mean exactly what it means to the reader. If it's really good, the poem reads you. It pulls uncomfortable stuff out of you, the stuff we shove aside in order to get through the day and deal with its noise and tussle. Whilst all this slimy stuff lurks beneath.

So I will let this poem read me. It seems to be saying - and here I am reminded of Oscar Levant's statement, "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember" - that what we call happiness is so evanescent that it melts and evaporates even as we experience it. The poet, who was maybe 22 when he wrote this, feels his life has already peaked and it's all a downward slide from here on in (though little did he know he'd only make it to forty).

It's a short poem, after all, certainly short for for Poe - but he packs a lot into it, or rather sneaks it in. Two weighty words repeat almost as alarmingly as those infernal "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells": "pride" and "power":

The happiest day–the happiest hour
My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power,
I feel hath flown.

Is the poet in some sort of disgrace here? Or has he missed out on something? "The highest hope of pride and power" - this isn't about happiness at all, but about position, worldly position! Loftiness, almost. And because he fell off his high horse, he's whimpering about it: "sear'd and blighted" seems to imply some sort of assault from the outside, a burn, a rotting on the vine, which is a vastly different thing from internally-generated grief.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been–
But let them pass.

Here we get a clue. We get a clue what this guy is really all about, what turns his crank. What he dreamed about as a youth. What he hoped for. Longed for. And it ain't a pretty picture. He argues with himself for a moment, as if somewhat incredulous: Power? Are you sure that's what did it for me? Then (after using the almost supernatural term "vanished" to describe the loss) he dismisses the whole thing, though there are several more stanzas to come.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me
Be still, my spirit!

Now here's a mysterious couple of lines: "Another brow may even inherit/The venom thou hast pour'd on me". Who is this "other", and is "inherit" to be taken literally? And how can pride - whom I assume he is addressing rhetorically - pour venom on someone? Or perhaps it's the loss of pride?  Again, it's the external assault, the snakebite from the bluff. "Be still, my spirit!" may not have been quite as histrionic then as now, but it's still an obvious play for sympathy.

The happiest day–the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see–have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel–have been:

"The brightest glance of pride and power" - but now we begin to see the vanity at the core. Bright glances, ah, those too must come from the outside - glances of approval, we must assume. Or is the "glance of pride and power" really his own? I can't figure this man out! Whichever it is, it's revealing that this is the thing that made him happiest - a happiness he is certain will never come again.

Or does he not deserve to be happy?

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt–that brightest hour
I would not live again:

Now is he really telling us here that, given the chance to relive it,  he would turn away the brightest moment of his life? Is this sour grapes - who needs this shit, anyway? - or is he so far into his own self-pity that he actively chooses pain over pleasure?  I'd murder the guy, if he weren't already dead.

But he's not saying that at all.  He is saying "the HOPE of pride and power" - and a hope isn't the same thing at all, it's just a desire, unfulfilled. Something that was never real to begin with. A fantasy. 

And then he tells us - if I'm digging anything real out of this at all - he tells us he wouldn't want to experience that hope again because he KNOWS it would be followed by some awful, shot-sparrow, plummeting despair. This is some sort of definition of soul-destroying melancholia.

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And, as it flutter'd–fell
An essence–powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

I can't help but feel, as this densely-written, enigmatic thing comes to a screeching close, that it's really about the old Biblical warning, "Pride goeth before a fall". Certainly the image of the falling bird (or bat? Ewwwww!) seems to imply that all his lusting and yearning for power and approval will eventually bring about his downfall. I don't quite get the "alloy", which is a sort of metallic reference that does not fit with shot sparrows or ravens or whatever-it-is (though it is a dandy rhyme with "destroy"). Alloy seems to indicate two elements fusing together. Pride and power? Poe and status, perhaps literary status? Is this alloy the "essence" which is so powerful (oops, that's ironic - power IS the problem) to destroy? It's unclear if the alloy is an external element this time, or something inextricably bound up with his own heart. Which would mean that the poet has, in contemporary terms, sold out. 

But the kicker is that last line. "A soul that knew it well" - knew what, the shallowness of power trips and pride, of drawing-room debate over which poet has scored the most literary Brownie points (or pale waxen virgins gently expiring on velvet divans)? Has he been playing worldly games all along, and being utterly seduced by them? Is he afraid to re-enter the Eden of his youth, because he knows damned well he'll just be thrown out of there again?

Oh, not another original sin poem! Anything but that!

POST-BLOG NOTE. I was amazed but not surprised, in trying to find tasty images of Poe, that I kept coming up with pictures of John Astin, the actor who portrayed Gomez Addams in The Addams Family. It seems he has played Poe on the Broadway stage, and my goodness, they wouldn't need to put much makeup on him! He's a dead ringer for the man (except too jolly by half).  I think Astin must be, oh, God in heaven, 80 years old by now if he's still around, and Poe croaked (so to speak) at 40, so it must have been a long time ago.  I will do more research on this fascinating topic once I've had some sleep.
Sleeeeeeeeeeep. . . . . . . .)

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In the burrows of the nightmare: or why I liked English class

I have a horrible confession to make. I liked English class. I liked it so much I had to hide it. I never said anything, never contributed a single comment to any discussion, though my mind was teeming with ideas about everything we studied.


It was decades later, when I was an adult and went back to school, that I found the courage to say the things I felt and saw. By this time my perceptions had shifted, of course. Even the most familiar poem wasn't the same; someone had gone in there and changed it, in every textbook in all the world.

I guess Auden's As I Walked Out One Evening is my favorite poem because it makes me want to scream that I ever dared to write poetry and try to get it published. I DID get a dozen or so of my poems published in small literary mags, but maybe seven people bothered to read them, mostly the contributors. Sometimes I wondered if the editor had bothered to read them at all.


Example. I wrote a poem called Lightning - God must've been punishing me for writing a poem called Lightning, because in the final printed version it came out Lightening.

"Well, it's only one letter different," squawked the 19-year-old assistant editor who had neatly inserted an error where there was none before. She must have thought I had made a spelling mistake.

So now my poem, which HAD been about childhood sexual abuse and doing hard time in a mental institution, was suddenly about a much more powerful subject: Coffee Mate "lightener", guaranteed to replace cream with a metallic-tasting petroleum-based powder which would never go sour.

So much for MY adventures. In my last post I decided to illustrate that favorite poem from high school (written by that dry, craggy desert of a man, W. H. Auden), and in doing so, some of that English class stuff came back to me.

My teacher in high school, Mr. Griffin  (probably dead by now, I realize with a shock) read this one out loud one day, and I was riveted. Maybe it was the way he read it.
The class called this teacher Griffy Baby (though not to his face), and he was given to telling tales out of school, recommending we watch a literary-based movie called Carry On Up the Jungle. Sometimes when he was tired of teaching he told funny stories about his kids, one of whom resembled a baby Dylan Thomas. Then there was the day he showed us a home movie of a tawdry drama he had filmed with his drunken friends.

Griffy Baby was partial to giving me As, but was curious as to why I never said anything in class. My soul was so crushed with social isolation and constant, relentless bullying that I didn't dare open my mouth. But I was grateful for that magnificent poem, and I never forgot it.


So to make up for my silence in class, I want to do a blow-by-blow analysis here and now, which is maybe appropriate given Auden's legendary sexual orientation. (He also wrote an infamous poem called The Platonic Blow which I don't think I will post here, but I do encourage you, even urge you to look it up. It'll make your literary hair stand on end, or something else if you're gay. Short of out-and-out porn, it's the most sexually-explicit writing I have ever seen.)

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.


When the poem opens, the scene is just so. . . normal. The poet is out for a nice little stroll. Just walking down the street. Then he sees crowds upon the pavement. . . not other people strolling along, but crowds. Assembled for what? And these crowds, which sound about as friendly as the spectators at a Roman coliseum, are fields of harvest wheat. I mean, they don't look like wheat or sound like wheat or smell like wheat or taste like wheat. This is no synonym, folks, it is that deadliest of things: a metaphor! And speaking of deadly, isn't it just a little obvious that these wheaten folk seem all ready for the scythe of the Grim Reaper? "Harvest" wheat, indeed.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.


Arch of the railway. This is why I included in my last post's illustrations quite a few images from a superb movie called Notes on a Scandal, with Cate Blanchett playing a 40-year-old teacher having an affair with a 15-year-old student. Having to meet in such a drippy place smells of the illicit, or at least of the damned uncomfortable. And that brimming river: hey, that's assonance, folks! He does it three times, too, which makes it magical. The river could be Lethe, the river of oblivion, which would surely match the dire tone of the rest of this thing. And brimming, like tears, like a cup about to run over. But that nasty cup appears later on.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,


'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

Here he seems to be introducing silly mythical images which would be highly inappropriate if it weren't for the sing-songy, nursery-rhyme-esque form of the poem, with its strict rhyme and meter. Personally I wonder why he spends so much time on these innocent-sounding pronouncements, when I always thought the dank, furtive image of the arch of the railway implied meeting up with a prostitute, male or female.

Idealism, maybe? Or is this guy or girl, or guys or girls, just incredibly stupid, given to ludicrous hyperbole? In any case, all these blatherings seem sum-up-able in one word: "Forever." I will love you, dear, I'll love you. . . for all eternity.


'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

The years run like rabbits, as if to say, my, how time flies when you're having fun! Or is it something else? They may be running away, but it has nothing to do with us chasing after them. Some day, such as NOW, we may fervently wish those rabbits would slow down.  Rabbits also imply a sort of dumb, embarrassing fertility, not to mention the rabbit being pulled out of a hat ("Nothing up my sleeve!") and Alice's white rabbit, who is somehow always running "late". (And note the double meaning of late!)

And just what does "rabbiting on" mean? That you talk too much?

And that "first love of the world" cannot be anyone but Eve, the first woman. Hmmm, I wonder what she charges?

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.


I like this. I love this. I love the "device" of Time speaking to us, of all the clocks in the city starting to protest the bullshit of the lovers writhing under the arch. The audacity, too, of allowing Time to address us, as if God Himself decided to step up to the plate (which He does, all the time, in the Old Testament).

And already we have our warning: my teacher read this in a slightly smug tone. "You cannot conquer time."

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.


This is one of those ravishing verses of poetry that you don't want to touch because it's just so fucking magnificent. I wanted to write that on my term paper - "fucking magnificent" - but I didn't, and still got an A.

But he's doing the same thing here, capitolizing and I suppose personifying the Nightmare, Justice, etc. Justice being not blind, but naked. Pull down the blinds, please. And how about that little cough, ahem. Excuse me. Do you know who's in charge here?

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.


Nobody wants to read this because it makes them groan inwardly, especially those first two lines. It's so bloody true, even in the most goal-directed, achievement-stuffed life. And Time, that wonderful personified Wizard of eternity, will have his "fancy", much as a rich man might pick out a particularly tasty prostitute from the lineup. Fancy is a silly, ephemeral, frou-frou sort of thing, the opposite of plain: fancy this, fancy that. And it also means fantasy. The "tomorrow or today" is sort of like setting up a delivery time for a parcel: "oh, I'll be here tomorrow, I think, you can bring it round then. Or, wait a minute, I'll be home today."

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.


I had a little trouble with this until I stole an interpretation from someone else. Green valleys are very British, of course - how green is my valley, and all that -  but why is the snow (grey hair, old age) so "appalling"? It casts a pall over the valley, even obscures it completely so that the green life beneath it does not show. It might as well not be there at all. The next two lines are all shivery and liquidescent. I don't know what a threaded dance is, but I think the diver is Cupid. Once more, eroticism is shattered by that dirty old man, Mortality.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

This is among Auden's most famous lines, for some reason almost always misquoted (like Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle) as "stare, stare in the mirror". The mirror does come, but a few verses later, and in a much more disturbing manner. This one is effective, I think, because of understatement. Or: is the subject just washing his hands of the whole thing? (Didn't Pilate do the same thing? And Lady Macbeth? Oh, I'm going overboard here.)

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.


Probably my favorite verse, because it makes me want to scream and never write again. Glacier, desert, crack in the tea-cup, land of the dead, where we all end up, unless you believe in Heaven, which Auden obviously does not. The safe comfort of the everyday and the brutal fact of mortality are so closely juxtaposed that we no longer take any notice. It's as close as the skin on your face.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.


This is a weird one, and I suppose it echoes the nursery-rhyme quality of some of these verses. The Giant must be a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk, but what does it mean that he's "enchanting to"? I hope not what I think. Most Americans won't know this, but the Lily-white Boy (also a strange image) is a character in an English folk song called Green Grow the Rushes-o. Jill goes down on her back, well. . . innocence begins to prostitute itself. This is the Land of the Dead, which is beginning to resemble Hieronymus Bosch's vision of hell.

'O look, look in the mirror
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

Yes. THIS is the verse with the mirror in it, and it has that "o look, look -", that sense of shock, almost of horror at the inevitable, strenuously-denied passage of time. I don't want to look, but I must look! And those ironic lines - life remains a blessing, but we're about to die so why is a blessing even relevant? And the stinging self-contempt of "YOU cannot bless", as if you have somehow, and mysteriously, lost all your power.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'


There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile. . . and the whole human condition is drawn in slanted lines.

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.


And thus, the soft, gentle benediction, as we lie howling and writhing in the face of eternal Hell.

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