The gods in our country, as well as Americans in general, have often overlooked its poets. This usually doesn’t bother our young bards, bent over their notebooks or computers, caught in the demanding grasp of their Muse telling them to write something, anything — Now! It says something about the state of poetry today that its ancient Muse, Calliope, called by Ovid and others the “Chief of all Muses,” has had her name adopted by the least subtle of our musical devices, loud whistles driven by hot air for steamboats and circuses.
Most beginning writers tend to be bookish; maybe not exactly shy, but aware of their separateness from others. “From childhood’s hour I have not been/As others were — I have not seen as others saw —” is the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “Alone.” Artists have odd interests and a skewed point of view, learning early to be generally quiet. They imagine themselves living their lives communing serenely or wrestling privately with this slippery Muse. Speaking in public just makes them nervous. (Hmmm: in certain ways, the closer we look at poets, the more they seem like everyone else.)
One odd development in a poet’s life is, if she succeeds at all, she’ll eventually find herself before groups of staring people while a microphone squeaks or burps as she leans her anxious head towards it.
Singing for one’s supper can be stressful. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud claimed poets discover their inner worlds by dèréglement des sens (disorienting one’s senses), which in his days (1851-1894) they did by sipping absinthe. We have different potions to choose from today, but I think contemporary artists use stimulants less to help their writing than to get them through their public readings, and to relax after work.
Many artists frequent neighborhood taverns. Dylan Thomas headed to the White Horse Tavern in New York City (to which, in our youth, Jeanne and I made some memorable late-night visits in his honor). Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” in Gallery 6 in San Francisco, the Dadaists gathered in Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, James Joyce clicked glasses in Les Deux Magots in Paris, and Jack Kerouac unwound right here in St. Pete’s Flamingo Bar. Needless to say, this “dèréglement” business can be carried too far, but there are few things more pleasant than relaxing with convivial friends after a hard day wrestling with the Muse (or presenting the results to a quizzical public).
One evening a poet named Hollis Summers (1916-1987) gave a lovely reading at a small college where I was teaching. We bought his book, shook his hand and went home. After a little while Jeanne asked, “Is anyone taking care of Hollis?” I was a young instructor, and didn’t know. Our chairman had delivered a fine introduction, but we guessed he — a quiet man — hadn’t made any later plans, and left Hollis to fend for himself (it was late evening, after all). We knew they’d given him a spartan room in a nearby student dormitory (I’d picked him up for the reading), so I went over just to check. When I knocked on his door, it sprung open as if he’d been standing behind it. “Thank God you’ve come!” Hollis said.
Remembering who attended the reading, we called colleagues and students, who soon arrived with six-packs and high energies, and threw an impromptu party, using cheap beer instead of absinthe. The local Hamm’s beer — “from the land of sky-blue waters” — was the popular choice. And the poets and poetry lovers, on many different levels, all agreed that Rimbaud, Poe, and Calliope would have approved.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.