Bill, oh Bill. No school ever enrolled
a more agile fish. Under his tongue,
begonias in suburbia became roses in deserts
and roses exploded, superfluous as sand.
We never spotted him composing outside
the classroom, his oscillating pencil
a conductor’s baton, eraser unused.
We rumored he was born on a farm,
left bowing grain and barn-raising
for the hallowed columns and arches
of letters.
Slam poets and sonneteers grinned
as Bill glid down halls, linking vowels
like strings of lights on Christmas trees.
We knew he would soon be published
in journals, in all the anthologies.
Study periods we clustered into commons,
notebooks draped over knees, revising
as he opined on the freeform structures
of plants, how to transfer them to verse.
As he spoke, pens swayed like lighters
at a concert, stabbing exclamation marks
when he sneezed, commas as he coughed.
With his every aspiration our lines
enjambed. Our poems were Everest,
oak trees, paper boats in a stream
and Bill was our Sherpa, our ranger,
the swift and modest river. Professors
ground their teeth when we converted
triolets to terza rima or framed fog.
They disallowed perfect end-rhyme
without meter and humor,
but we found punishments
new forms to puzzle into,
from which to rappel. Riddles
and walls of granite never stopped
the Greeks.
The outbound mail was stolen.
We wrote about pigeon traps,
archeologists in Egypt, cats
preening. How Bill sent queries
daily and his mailbox remained
bare as a bird’s nest in winter
no one could otherwise guess,
but we waited for eggs. Bill
barricaded himself in his room,
scrawled for hours, stopped orating.
He hired a sophomore to chart trends
in devices back to Anglo-Saxons.
We made conjectures—he’s
resurrecting caesuras; dissecting
semiology; applying golden means
to sonnet forms; developing themes
of post-post-post-modernism.
Bill disappeared. Teachers claim
he quit to pursue reptilian biology
in Antarctica. No wonder our ceilings
flake to snow, smudging floors like chalk;
why shingles molt from the roof; why faces
are blank as the dust of the moon. We organize
vigils, mail prayers through holes in ceilings
to skies clouded by cave-ins; we pass
stories in glances, safe from the betrayal
of words, raise our hands in lectures,
brush the dust from our blazers
ignoring cold whistles through fissures.
Professors smile like drooping barbed wire
and grant us four adverbs a day, but we jolt
at chips skittering like mice behind walls
and await landslides. We sketch stories
of world wars, sandstorms, Vesuvius,
candles on sills. Formalists spackle walls
and performers rip chunks down as if
to demolish a mountain with bare hands,
but nights we gather in dorms together,
pickling bodies, pencils jotting notes
we cremate in candle flame just in case.
Oh, Bill, we begin our epic with you,
who taught us the legend of Jericho.
We squirrel you away between ribs,
shelter you in valleys of silence,
etch you into mattress tags.
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Comments
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And she said:
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"All art is actually quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
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"All art is actually quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
--
"All art is actually quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
I have a few points.
In the meantime, I will just enjoy this as it is. Lovely work.
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unknown command error: sleep
Troubles:
The sentence beginning 'We never spotted' is a little odd, because it goes on to describe the action of Bill's writing what they've never seen him doing. Perhaps you could precede 'his oscillating pencil' with 'imagined' - or replace 'never' with 'sometimes' ?
'glid' in the second stanza is an awkward word. I get the alliteration with 'grinned' and the similarities in sound with 'Bill' but it's too abrupt. Perhaps 'Bill breezed down/through halls' ? Retains that smoooooothness, y'get the alliteration with B, and it's not so sudden sounding.
Perhaps being pedantic, but 'strings of lights' sounds like they're wrapping lots of strings, which is crazy, in spite of the plural on 'trees'. 'coloured tinsel in Christmas trees' functions similarly, plus you get the c t c t sounds.
I must admit I don't understand 'clustured into commons'. What's a common?
Replace 'meter and humor' with 'meter or humor' ?
'but we waited for eggs' perhaps takes the metaphor too far. 'we waited nonetheless' might function in replacement: y'get the half rhyme with 'nest' in the preceding line and the narrators' sense of hopeful resilience remains.
The sentences in the last stanza seem really long too. The list-like structure works excellently, but it depends upon full stops to generate its mounting tension and, without them, it can seem laborious. I'm thinking in particular of the sentence beginning 'We organize' here.
Need a comma at the end of 'blazers' ?
The line 'we jolt / at chips skittering' is maybe too abstract. I don't get, especially in relation to the professors' four adverbs.
And that's it. Triumphs:
The collective narration. It's a device identical to Jeffrey Eugenides in The Virgin Suicides but I love it anyway. It's like sentimental obsession. Wonderful.
The structure. Beginning and ending with an address to Bill; charting his mythology within this as clearly as you do. I really do like the list elements too, like the emotional tension of recollection rising. It's excellent.
The sounds. Like I mentioned on MSN, it's like a bow. So self-complete, somehow. You're really coming into your own here. Favourite lines:
'begonias in suburbia became roses in deserts
and roses exploded, superfluous as sand.'
I like this because the narrator alters the scale of their admiration for Bill within the single shifting image. It's very fluid, and the suggested image of roses exploding into sand is excellent. The Godlike potential of one's control of language, or something.
'he opined on the freeform structures
of plants, how to transfer them to verse.'
The suggestion of the metamorphosis of corporeal biology into poetry is excellent. I think it's the dual meaning in 'structure' that makes it work.
'Riddles
and walls of granite never stopped
the Greeks.'
The 'gr' sounds are excellent. I like unified sounds like this so much because they extrapolate upon the sentiments of their actual content, as if it say something that aurally recalls itself is a kind of reinforcement of its authority, or passion. I love it.
'Teachers claim
he quit to pursue reptilian biology
in Antarctica.'
Ridiculous, but genuinely funny within the hallowed context of the narrators' voice. The suggestion of an organised opposition within 'teachers' collectively is also fun.
Man, you're coming into your own in such a big way here, I think.
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-StationToStation-
You do however need a better title.
: P
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-StationToStation-
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