Dr. Metablog

Plastic Flowers

Our property adjoins the old West Bradford cemetery.  The two- or three-acre plot of ground is the most visible remnant of the village of dairy, sheep and apple community of  West Bradford, which was hacked out of the steep slopes above the Connecticut river in the first part of the nineteenth century, peaked before the Civil War, and then went into decline more that a century and a half ago. West Bradford lost its post office address in the 1920s and its schoolhouse (if word-of-mouth can be trusted) before WWII.  We still have a few sheep and horses and some beef cattle but also an ever-increasing number of commuters who head down I-91 to jobs in Lebanon or Hanover. 

The history of West Bradford can be read in the cemetery's gravestones,  There must two hundred of them.  The oldest are of local slate and are only a foot or eighteen inches in height; these date from the 1820s. One or two of them feature lugubrious, stunted iconic weeping willows which rain and wind have rendered barely decipherable. The markers that date from the end of the nineteenth century are larger, made of marble that was quarried thirty miles to the west of us, and reflect the area's growing prosperity.  They're laconic  -- just name and dates -- and entirely bereft of adornment or decoration.  They celebrate the Baldwins and Cunninghams and Lows and Tebbetses who cleared these hilly fields with horse and pung and who left behind all those massive and beautiful stone walls that snake and twist their way through lands that are once again deeply forested.  There are women buried here who have been denied even the brief immortality that a grave marker affords: a man's name and dates and the notation "his wife" or sometimes even "his wives."

Quarter-size headstones, numerous and unincised, attest to unnamed infants.

There's a new part of the cemetery, still in use, but which to my eyes is less sturdy and more frivolous -- an emblem of a culture in decline.  Just because it's possible to laser a prancing reindeer onto a granite headstone doesn't mean that it's a good idea to do so.  How would all those long-bearded and puritanical Emersons and Pipers have railed against such trifling?

A few years ago, one of our local Thurstons erected a pink granite stone with a plastic cross epoxyed to its surface.  The cross, it was said, was to be a perpetual light -- lit until the end of time by some sort of device that gathered energy during the day and discharged it at night.  "Oh no," I thought the first few times that I came home late at night and was greeted by a ruby and unwinking polysterene crucifix, "how ugly, how tacky, how out-of-keeping." Fortunately, the perpetual light only lasted a year or so before extinguishing itself for good. 

I rather like it that the cemetery is nearby.  "Quiet neighbors," as they say here.  Our house lies halfway between the cemetery and the pond.  It's important to have the crucial symbols of life and death in place.  My only quarrel is that occasionally a visitor to the cemetery, a descendant of one of the pioneers, perhaps, will pitch an old vase or some sun-faded plastic flowers onto our land. I don't so much mind picking up a few pieces of trash as I object to my property being used as someone's rubbish heap.  It's disrespectful.  But any person who would think to commemorate his mother with polycarbonate or acrylic geraniums will generally not be the most mannerly or ecologically sensitive of souls.  

To honor both the visitors and the inhabitants of the West Bradford cemetery, I've composed a country-and-western quatrain. 

Remember me in marble and in granite;

     Remember me with rose and lily brave;

Remember me in sunshine and in shadow

    But don't put plastic flowers on my grave.

One day, many years ago, I was sitting on the cemetery's split-rail fence with D., a local farmer.  We were chatting about the weather and such.  He suddenly swung around and pointed to one of the headstones.  "That's the boy that died of eating the crayons."

 A truly Dickensian moment. 

The Love Song of Gov. Mark Sanford (in his own 'eamailed' [sic] words).

                                                                           -I-

 

You were basking

in what seems a great spot.

 

I am most jealous

of  your salad

under the palm trees.

 

I do not want to raise expectations

about feelings

and things.

 

You are special

and unique

and fabulous

in a whole host of ways.

 

I will write you a longer note

with a few more profound thoughts

tomorrow

or

Wednesday.

 

It won't be worthy of bedside placement.

 

                                                           -II-

 

I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up.

There is something wonderful

about listening to country music playing in the cab,

the air conditioner running,

the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background

the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness

of trees and marsh,

the day breaking

and vibrant pink becoming alive in the morning clouds.

And getting to build something with each scoop

of dirt.

 

It is admittedly weird.

 

                                                                    -III-

 

Do you really comprehend

how beautiful your smile is?

Have you been told lately

how warm your eyes, and how they softly glow

with the special nature of your soul?

 

The rarest of all commodities in this world is love.

You already had

a full tank of love

in the emotional bank account.

 

Since our first meeting there in  the wind-swept

somewhat open air

dance spot in Punta del Este,

I felt that you had that same rare attribute.

 

You have a level of sophistication that is so

fitting

with your beauty.

 

You have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses.

I love the curves of your hips.

I love your tan lines.

 

You have a particular grace and calm that I adore.

In the faded glow of night's light

that we spoke of

at the steakhouse.

 

                                             -IV-

This soul-mate feel

I alluded to

is real.

 

How this lightning strike snuck up on us

I am still not sure.

 

My heart wants to get on a plane tonight to be in your loving arms.

My head says how do we put the genius back in the bottle

 

The bottom line is two fold.

----------------------------------------------------

(Words by Mark Sanford with the assistance of Maria Belen Chapur;   poetastical typography by Vivian de St. Vrain.) 

Nick and the Candlestick

Sylvia Plath's "Nick and the Candlestick," a scalpel of a poem, is exasperating in details but crystal clear in "plot" and feeling.  Here it is in its entirety.  Read it through;  don't be alarmed if it seems impenetrable or opaque;  it's not.  Or not entirely so.

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

The story in simple outline: the candlestick-bearing poet enters a dark bedroom in which she finds rugs on the wall, an aquarium, and her sleeping infant -- the "Nick" of  the title.  The poem's import: simply that the world may be dangerous and hostile, but is redeemed by the child.  It's a simple tale in a traditional form ("dramatic monologue") but its language and imagery are startling, intense, even revolutionary.  The poem's governing idea is not unusual, but it is conveyed with magnificent, electric imagery and emotion.    

Some lines are clear, others entirely mysterious. A line-by-line commentary follows.

"I am a miner."  For the purposes of the fiction, the poet bluntly transforms herself into a miner and explorer.  The space into which she enters is a bedroom, which in terms of the metaphor, is cast both as a mine and a cave. What minerals will the miner extractr?  Both the rich and rare (a ruby) and the poisonous (mercury).  

"The light burns blue."  The candle that she carries is nearly extinguished (or, alternatively, there is a gas heater in the room).

"Waxy stalactites drip and thicken."  Candle drippings, in the poet's imagination, become stalactites;  we are in a cave. But she holds a candle as it would be employed in worship.  It is through the agency of the candle that religion (specifically Roman Catholicism) enters the poem. 

"Tears/ The earthen womb/ Exudes from its dead boredom." The room, the mine, the cave, is now figured as a womb.  Tears/womb extends and transforms candle/cave.  The series of terms  ("room" (implied)  "mine," "cave," "womb")  is the metaphorical center of the poem -- the "spaces" that will be evoked in the poem's next to last sentence.  The womb is the previous home of "Nick," who is also the babe of larger meaning in the climax of the poem.  

The phrase "from its dead boredom" is not clear, at least to me.  It's tempting to say that the poet transfers her own emotion onto the wax/stalactite/tear -- so that "the womb is crying just as I am" -- but nevertheless the phrase "dead boredom" is too personal and vague to communicate perspicuously.  The room/cave/womb, at this point in the poem, seems to be infertile ("dead") and unengaging.  But that will change.  .     

"Black bat airs/ Wrap me, raggy shawls,/ Cold homicides."  I understand why the poet encounters bats in her cave, and it makes sense that she defines her own clothes  as a tattered shawl.  It is also clear that the room into which she has entered is dangerous and inhospitable.  The syntax of the sentence is less than clear. Does the phrase "cold homicides" stand in apposition to "airs?"  Who are these "cold homicides?"  A "homicide" can be a murderer or a victim of murder or even an abstraction.  In what sense can a poet be "wrapped" in "cold homicides?" 

"They weld to me like plums."  The least explicable line in the poem.  "They" seems to refer to "black bat airs" but how airs can "weld like plums" is beyond me. In the same way way that plums weld to me?  What way is that?

"Old cave of calcium/ Icicles, old echoer."  Calcium icicles are clearly the stalactites and a cave is certainly a place of echoes.  But "old?  Once again, tired, unproductive, never fertile, but possibly also "old" in the sense of familiar, as in "old friend."

"Even the newts are white,/ Those holy Joes."  The stalactite-dominated cave with its calcium icicles is drained of color.  So too are the newts, or salamanders, which ought to be red. Newts are traditionally associated with fire, but not here. In Christian symbolism, they stand for faith, because, in the legends, they survive the fiery passions of disbelief.  Why are they "holy Joes?"  The only meaning of "holy Joe" with which I am familiar is "military chaplain," which isn't pertinent. But "Joe" is significant, because Joe or Joseph is the absent father of the baby in the barn. But why is there a salamander in the room, unless it lives in some sort of aquarium or terrarium.

"And the fish, the fish---/Christ! They are panes of ice,/ A vice of knives,/A piranha religion, drinking/ Its first communion out of my live toes."  Not just a newt in this room/cave/womb, but fish as well.  Fish, of course, the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity -- the Greek word ixthos, fish, signifying Jesus Christ theos ouk soter (god and saviour).  But these fish, like the salamander, are anything but redemptive.  On the contrary, they stand for a "piranha religion" and a sacrament not of communion but consumption -- with the poet herself, or perhaps only her toes, the sacrifice.

These lines bring to conclusion the first part of the poem, which does not offer any good news.  But then begins the second movement of the poem, which is of a different character.

"The candle/ Gulps and recovers its small altitude,/ Its yellows hearten."  Well, that's encouraging.  The candle was almost extinguished, and with its return comes a bit of color, at last. And perhaps some cheer. 

"O love, how did you get here?/  O embryo/ Remembering, even in sleep,/Your crossed position."  How, my child, did you find yourself in such a cold and inhospitable universe.  The baby is newly arrived, his legs still crossed as they were in the womb -- "crossed," being, of course, an obvious reference to "the cross."

"The blood blooms clean/ In you, ruby."  No original sin in this jewel of a child.

"The pain/ You wake to is not yours."  It is the world's pain to which the innocent child must gradually accommodate -- but not yet, and not in this poem..

"Love, love,/ I have hung our cave with roses./ With soft rugs----/ The last of Victoriana."  The room is  momentarily figured as a better world -- a pre-modern world.  It's comfortable, blooming;  a room in strong contrast to the colorless, cold cave of the first movement of the poem.

"Let the stars/ Plummet to their dark address,/ Let the mercuric/ Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,"  "Let" has the force of "even if."  Even if the the world ends, even if the earth is polluted and poisoned, the poet exclaims,  

"You are the one/ Solid the spaces lean on, envious." You, Nick, my infant child who makes the world whole, are the "one solid," the only palpable reality, which the spaces (vacuities, caves, rooms, emptinesses of all sort) lean upon.  And finally, at last,

."You are the baby in the barn."  You, my own newborn infant, are the baby in the barn.  Which is to say, you, not Him.  You, not Jesus, are my saviour.  As we've seen, the poem is not traditionally reverent. The baby in the barn is stripped of religious mystery. The poet has already made clear her feeling about Christianity -- it's a "piranha religion."  But the "baby in the barn" -- Jesus in the manger -- that's another thing.  This barn-born baby (barn, not cave) is a universal, trans-religious symbol of rebirth, of hope.  "You are the baby in the barn" invests meaning in Everyinfant.  It repudiates the claim to special importance of any particular child, even the god/man of theology.  The poet rejects Christianity in favor of a universal human and natural relationship (parent-child) that underlies and precedes all religion.   

It's a poem that travels a great distance in a handful of lines.  Brilliant, isn't it?    

More on Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" condenses centuries of tangled racial strife into a brief lyric.  The song begins in rural, impoverished, perhaps southern, America:  "I was born by the river, in a little tent."  Then, with a glance at the old man river who just keeps rolling, it alludes to African-Americans as on-the-lam outsiders: "Just like the river, I've been running ever since."  The third stanza, now shifted to an urban location, refers specifically to the insult of segregation (shortly before writing the song, Cooke had been barred from a Shreveport hotel):  "I go to the movies and I go downtown;/ Somebody keep telling me, don't hang around."  The second stanza is surprisingly confessional for a man who had started his career in gospel and had sung lead for the Soul Stirrers;  it's about loss of faith.  "I don't know what's up there, beyond the sky."  Nevertheless, despite all the reasons for losing heart, including the lack of support from brothers of different political factions, Sam retains an uncompromised optimism:  he will "carry on, yes I will."  The song is a miniature allegory of a triumph over separation and persecution.  It celebrates endurance, perseverance, fortitude in the face of long odds. No wonder that Barack Obama adapted Cooke's affirmative "Yes I will" into "Yes we can."

Sam Cooke himself didn't get to the promised land;  he was shot, under "mysterious circumstances" in December of 1964.  "A Change is Gonna Come" was released posthumously.

It's Been a Long Time Coming

I'm enchanted that our new president chose to cite -- or "sample" as they say in the world of pop music -- one of my favorite, and one of the most important of the songs of the 1960s.  Here's the borrowed sentiment, delivered in Chicago on November 4, just after Obama cleared the electoral hurdle:  "It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America."  The big O's citation is to the refrain of Sam Cooke's great anthem,  "A Change is Gonna Come":  "It's been a long time coming/ But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will." 

Those who know their Sam Cooke will appreciate Obama's sentence. To the Cooke-innocent, the "change" is a new administration and new policies.  To the Cooke-knowledgeable, the "change" to which Obama refers is a tectonic shift in American racial politics.   

So I'm reproducing Sam Cooke's lyric right here.  If you're one of my coevals, you probably know the song by heart.  If you don't know it, you should.  If you're curious, you can see and hear Sam and Otis Redding and a host of others sing the song on You Tube.  Here's the lyric.  It's one great, inspiring song. 

"I was born by the river in a little tent

And just like the river I've been running ever since.

It's been a long time coming.

But I know a change is gonna come.

It's been too hard living, and I'm afraid to die.

I don't know what's up there, beyond the sky.

(refrain)

I go to the movie and I go downtown

Somebody keep telling me, don't hang around.

(refrain)

I go to my brother, I say help me please,

But he winds up knocking me down on my bended knees.

(refrain)

There's been times that I thought I couldn't last long,

But now I think I'm able to carry on.

It's been a long time coming,

But I know a change is gonna come, o yes it will."

Talk about the ability to say a lot in a little.  O yeah!

Duke, Duke, Duke

Ain't it shocking that Gene Chandler's excellent song is now almost half a century old?  Seems like just yesterday.

This be the verse in its full splendor.   

Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl

Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl

As I walk through this world
Nothing can stop the Duke of Earl
And you, you are my girl
And no one can hurt you, oh no
Yes, I'm gonna love you
Come on let me hold you darlin'
'Cause I'm the Duke of Earl.

And when I hold you
You will be my Duchess, Duchess of Earl
We'll walk through my dukedom
And the paradise we will share.

Yes, oh, I
I'm gonna love you
Nothing can stop me now
'Cause I'm the Duke of Earl.

Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl
Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl

I'm gonna love you
Nothing can stop me now
'Cause I'm the Duke of Earl.

1)  "Duke of Earl" is classic, though late, doo-wop.  It's lineally descended from songs in which a supporting male quartet sang meaningless syllables:  doo wop, wop, wop.  In this revisiting of the genre, nonsense doo doo doo de wop has been superseded by words that carry meaning of a sort: duke duke duke of earl.  Return we now to the pages of history:  in their turn, doo wop quartets were themselves secular offspring of gospel quartets, where a reverent foursome would sing do lord do lord, do lordy lord (an good example:  the unnamed quartet supporting Georgia Peach in "Do Lord Send Me").

2)  It's a fascinating process:  Gene Chandler's replacement of doo doo with duke duke is in fact a return to the roots, except that the previous and inherent religious content has undergone secularization.  "Lord" has become "Duke," while the heaven of gospel has become the "dukedom" of doo-wop.

3.  It's easy to deride the naive aristocratic title "Duke of Earl"; but would the song preserve its meaning if it were "Duke of Buckingham?"  "Earl" may sound silly, but because it's a generic title rather than a specific one it carries allegorical significance. "Duke of Earl" is no one and therefore everyone. 

4.  It's entirely likely that the word "earl" was chosen because of it echoes "lord": liquids "r" and 'l" and unemphatic vowel. 

5.  The first line of the lyric --"As I walk through this world"-- introduces a secularized religious motif (an inheritance from the song's gospel forbears).  Some readers will recall the opening sentence of the most famous of all religious allegories, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1672):  "As I walked through the wilderness of this world."  Gene Chandler, walking through this world, is reborn just as Christian was reborn in the classic allegory.  Not religiously, but in a worldly way.  He is not saved;  he is duked.

6.  What is the significance of aggressive "nothing can stop me now?"  What obstacles stopped the Duke of Earl in the past, before his duking?  The triumphalist language is highly developed but the obstacles remain vague and unarticulated.  Audiences find their own meaning in the lacuna, but indiginities historically suffered by the black underclass lurk only slightly below the surface of the lyric.

7.  The transformation from a previous but unknown and unarticulated existence to an aristocratic, unstoppable Duke of Earl takes place offstage, nor is any explanation offered for the metamorphosis.  It's entirely magical.

8.  Because it's magic, it's pure fantasy.  Pastoral fantasy in fact, which, curiously, is simultaneously primitive ("paradise") and sophisticated ("dukedom").

9. But it's a shared paradise: the duke along with his duchess.  The retreat to domesticity is almost Victorian:  "ah love, let us be true/ To one another...."  This particular Duke does not know that "Two paradises were in one/ To live in paradise alone."

10.  The Duke retreats to domesticity and and yet he seems to stake out ("nothing can stop me now") new territory to conquer, in which regard the spacious lyric seems to embody contradictory or even incoherent vectors of thought.  However, the enthusiasm of the singing obliterates the ambiguity of the lyric;  in sum, the song is remarkably optimistic -- which is just one reason for its continued popularity. 

"The verse is not/ So long as we can say 'This be the verse'"

The most widely-known as well as the most notorious poem of the second half of the twentieth century is Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse."  For those of you who don't know the poem by heart, here it is in its brief and startling entirety.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in the turn

  By fools in old style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern,

  And half at one another's throats.

Man adds on misery to man.

  It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

  And don't have any kids yourself.

Pessimistic?  Jaded?  Angry?  Yes, I think it's fair to call it so. And let's also add, unsubtle with a vengeance.

Larkin is hyperbolically illogical.  It can't be that every generation is more deranged than the one that preceded it.  When were the good times?  A few generations ago?  In the medieval period?  In antiquity?  In Larkin's view, it's been all downhill, all the time.  No doubt those early primates were already fucking up their kids when they came down from the trees and started to walk upright on the savannah.  "There's only one piece of roasted rhinoceros left.  You take it.  I don't mind being hungry."

Despite its dyspepsia and illogicality, "This Be the Verse" is a curiously lovable poem.  Whenever I've heard it read or recited, audiences react not with horror but with amusement.  The poem's misanthropy is so absolute and its language so blunt that it can't help but provoke tittering.

The laughter arises because the poem doesn't earn its pessimism.  It's too fluent and too easy.  Unlike, say, King Lear, where the sublunary world is rank with incest, betrayal, and murder.  After three thousand lines and five full horrific acts, Shakespeare acquires the standing to conclude that life is miserable and that "humanity must perforce/ Prey on itself, like monsters of the deep." The events in Oedipus lend credibility to the difficult apercu that it's best not to be born at all, next best to die very young.

While Shakespeare and Sophocles are philosophically serious, Larkin is merely flip.  There's a monumental disproportion between his gloom and the light-verse vessel in which his gloom is contained.  And consequentially, the off-kilter comedy.  It's a whiny poem.  "Poor poor pitiful me.  I had a difficult mommy." 

If "This Be the Verse" is in fact the most popular poem of the last fifty years, it supersedes Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."  What a remarkable devolution!  While Frost endures, Larkin abhors.

I doubt whether Larkin had "Stopping by Woods" in mind, but he certainly glosses Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" -- the poem from which he drew his title.  Stevenson's performance is charming, gentle, self-effacing, and modest. 

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die.

And laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson praises the adventurous life lived well and brought to completion.  Death may end it all but it also closes the circle.  No completion, no circles in Larkin, where natural processes are crudely truncated: "don't have any kids yourself."

"This Be the Verse" is a hilarious and wonderful piece of joking, but it's victimology is unsettling.  It's tempting to claim that it satirizes its own pessimism, but, sorry, it doesn't.  Larkin loves his own gloom.

Here's another Victorian variation on the thema Larkiniana.

Is life a thorn?

Then count it not a whit.

Man is well done with it.

As soon as he's born,

He should all means assay

To put the plague away.

Pessimistic, yes.  But Colonel Fairfax, even-handed, also entertains the possibility that life might be a boon (which, as we all know, is true for at least part of the time). 

A Truly Romantic Poem

The poem that might entrance you when you're young might not be the poem for your older years.  In my "mature" phase, poems that I earlier ignored take on new significance.  I'm now quite taken with Tennyson's "Ulysses,'" a dramatic monologue that meant nothing to me until a few years ago. "Ulysses" celebrates perseverance, a late-onset virtue. 

Another poem that I've latterly come to love is Robert Burns' jaunty "John Anderson my jo, John." To me, in my present incarnation, it's the most romantic poem in the English language (or, to be precise, the Scottish language).   While most love poems celebrate desire and longing, "John Anderson," takes as its subject continuity and longevity.  As opposed to more conventional works that come to climax with a wedding, "John Anderson" situates itself near the end of life and glances happily backward over a life well lived.  It's frankness about bodily changes is comforting (especially to readers who may no longer glow with first youth).  John Anderson may be bald and gray and tottering, but he's still loved and loving.

The cheerful woman who speaks the poem has lived "hand in hand" with John A. for a lifetime. 

John Anderson, my jo, John                            dear

When we were first acquent,                           acquainted

Your locks were like the raven,

Your bonnie brow was brent;                           smooth

But now your brow is beld, John,                      bald

Your locks are like the snow;

But blessings on your frosty paw;                     head

John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John,

We clamb the hill thegither.

And many a cantie day, John,                          happy

We've had wi' ane anither.

Now we maun totter down, John                      must

But hand in hand we'll go,

And sleep thegither at the foot,

John Anderson, my jo.

The Helene Mullins Mystery

We're still cleaning out and throwing away (as I reported a couple of days ago).  Today I discovered, in amongst a small cache of books that I inherited from my father, a volume of poems called Earthbound. I'd never heard of the poet, Helene Mullins, but I traced her via a 2001 The New York Times obituary.  "Helene Mullins Johnson, a poet, died on Oct. 26 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92 years old.  She died of congestive heart failure.  Mrs. Johnson first had her poems published in The Pagan, a Greenwich Village magazine, in the 1920s. After Thornton Wilder introduced her to his publisher, Harper's published her first novel, Convent Girl, and her first volume of poems, Earthbound, in 1929. Her final collection of poems, Mirrored Walls, was published in 1970.  There are no survivors."  Google provided me with another couple of facts.  Helene Mullins was born in 1899 in New Rochelle, New York, and educated in "convent boarding schools." In 1935, she was so severely injured in an automobile accident that she lay unconscious for three weeks. 

And also: the library nearest to me that owns a copy of Earthbound is the Dakota State University, in Madison, South Dakota, which is precisely 502 miles from where I sit. 

The poems are, in my view, brimming with pre-Raphaelite fervor. The precursoress whom she most resembles is Christina Rossetti, though there's an occasional dash of Ernest Dowson, and every once in a while, a gesture borrowed from the early Yeats.  The poems are as intense and agonized and spiritual as they are, and were even in their own time, extremely old-fashioned. 

What does the world offer a hard-working but not brilliant poet who was clearly ambitious and tense, and who poured all her strength and feeling into her writing.  There she was,  a young woman fleeing the convent and shocking her family by taking up residence in Greenwich Village, where she lived among Thornton Wilder and other 1920s gentlemen of literature and frequented the irreligious offices of The Pagan.  I mourn for the struggle and yearning and effort that went into those long-forgotten poems.  And which, all said and done, earned her only the most perfunctory obituary in the Times.

But what in the ever-living universe was this volume doing in my staid father's library?   It's implausible that he could have found anything empathetic in such poems as "St. Theresa" and "The Boy Christ?"  Especially since Earthbound was the only volume of "contemporary" poetry that he seems to have possessed.  In 1929, my father would have been a buoyant, studious young fellow of twenty-five -- a diligent bachelor law clerk with still a year or so to go before he would find Lilly.  Helen Mullins herself was just thirty years old.  Is there a story here?  Am I missing something?

There are no clues;  not even a single pencil mark.  Not from one end of the book to the other. 

A Poem for my Neighbor, concerning his Cat in my Backyard

Your cat comes

on silent haunches.

It shits, polluting both

arbor and garden

with catty scat,

and then goes home.