A Moveable Famine (13 page)

“Did you get that?” Ridge asked.

“Get what?” I said.

“His point. He might not be the most beautiful poet in heaven, but he’s in heaven nevertheless.”

“That’s what he said?”

“Of course,” he said. “And we’re in limbo.” He pointed his finger at himself and then at me.

Pam Rhodes came to the door, freshly made up.

“Are you ready?” she asked Ridge. And they left together.

Harvey and Lawson said the Yale prize would change Ridge’s life. And it did. Everyone taunted him. Students touted the fact that Paul Engle had beaten out Theodore Roethke for the award. They cited long forgotten winners and searched for those with the most ludicrous names. When Ridge entered a room, loudmouth Trotta welcomed him with the words, “Thomas Caldecot Chubb!” quoting Chubb’s line, “Here’s Merlin. A lonely man, his head among the stars.” He tacked a list of Yale authors and titles to the bulletin board:

Christiane Jacox Kyle, author of
Bears Dancing in the Northern Air.

Amos Niven Wilder who wrote, “Those sultry nights we used to pass outdoors.”

Darl Macleod Boyle, and her prizewinning
Where Lilith Dances
.

The next day as I was shelving Lawson’s books, Ridge brought me a cup of coffee. I showed him the dog. “That is one ugly fuck,” he said.

Lawson appeared outside the door, hands on hips, like a suspicious neighbor. He seemed uncertain about entering, so I asked him if he wanted to use his office, and I tried to slide the photo into the blotter without his noticing, but he ran in and grabbed it.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” he said, laughing. “That’s Uncle.”

“There’s something about him,” Ridge said.

Lawson explained that his neighbor adopted it from the pound for his daughter. “It was abandoned, left behind when a family moved. Can you imagine the irresponsibility of some people,” he said.

“Where’d they get the name?” I asked.

“Their little daughter saw it and called it ugly, but they thought she said uncle.” He stared at the photo, in his own Uncle universe. “I’m not sure the little girl likes the dog.”

“You should bring him in,” I said.

“Maybe I will,” he said, looking like he wouldn’t. “He seems to get cold easily. Maybe when it gets warmer.” He put his fingertips to his chin and began to scan the shelves until he found a volume of Guillevic, and turned to me, very pleased. “I’ve been thinking about one of his elegies,” he said, opening the book. He read, “He who harbors fear/Of becoming mist.”

“Good line,” Ridge said.

“Yes, but the earlier part of the poem mentions the sea, so I don’t think ‘harbors’ is a good verb. Do you?” He was looking at me.

“It’s like a pun,” I said.

“It’s very close to a pun,” he said, and replaced the book and left.

“Only Lawson can break into a smile over an elegy,” Ridge said.

“He was still high from thinking about the dog. I’ve never seen him like that.”

As Lawson got to know me better, he increased my responsibilities, asking me to type his worksheets on stencils. One assignment called for students to write their obituaries. I ran off copies on the Thermo-Fax machine. I spent my mornings and nights in his office, which I began to call simply, 405. I washed the cups, which he acknowledged with a simple “Thank you ML” on a yellow sheet he left in the typewriter. McPeak finally returned Yvor Winters’s
In Defense of Reason
and I read it in a week, sitting at his desk, straining at his marginalia. The book was very worn, thumbed through, read and reread. One day, Lawson left a poem by William Stafford on his desk, typed on the yellow paper.

ASK ME

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden: and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

It was not in my box, not to be typed for class. I wrote a note saying that the most despairing lines I had ever read were, “ask me what difference/their strongest love or hate has made.” A few days later, another poem appeared, this time by John Clare.

I AM

I am—yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes:
And yet I am, and live—like vapours toss’t
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise—
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Beside the underlined words, he wrote, “These, to me, are the saddest lines. ML”

I typed my own poem on his machine, and accidentally left it behind. The next morning, I ran to EPB, hoping to snatch it before Lawson arrived, but in the hall I saw 405’s open door.

“Looking for this?” he said, handing me the page.

“I didn’t mean to leave it,” I said.

“I thought that was your intention.” He didn’t say any more, so I reached over and took the poem. “Some of your work is witty, some is melodramatic,” he said. “It’s never really funny or heartbreaking. Your real poems are the ones you haven’t yet written.”

I wondered when I would begin.

“You know I haven’t done a lot,” he said. “A reputation as a perfectionist. I wish it were otherwise. I wish that instead of revising and revising a poem, searching for the right word, I had left it alone, or moved on to another. The changes I made which took weeks, well, I think now they made scarce difference.”

He looked again at my poem.

“Take more chances, see what happens when you forget all this,” he said, referring to the workshop.

I was touched by his candor, especially about his own life, almost a repudiation of his stature as a “craftsman.”

I thanked him and moved to the door.

“John,” he called, the first time he used my name. “The middle way is the only way that doesn’t lead to Rome.”

Ridge visited the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown at the invitation of Stanley Kunitz, one of its founders. He returned enthused about the staff, which included Alan Dugan, and its mission—giving emerging artists and writers seven-month fellowships. He described the beauty of the town on the water and the charm of the Center, where fellows worked in converted coal bins, lobster-trap sheds and rough-hewn studios. Artists and writers like Mailer, Motherwell and Lowell visited out of goodwill. Ridge was staying in Iowa to finish his doctorate, and urged me to apply. Kunitz edited a supplement for the
American Poetry Review
and included two poems of mine, which Ridge had shown him, so Ridge thought I’d have a good chance. With this report, I saw a path out of the workshop’s claustrophobic hierarchy and clawing competition. I imagined the shore, the threshold between land and sea offering a home to struggling unknowns. I rhapsodized about it to Ridge who said, “Don’t forget, Provincetown’s known as
The Last Resort
.”

Pryor started referring to Barkhausen as Galahad, and the name garnered the interest of many women who flirted with him in the halls. He brought several to 405 where they lolled around the books, shook the dry snow globes and laughed at Uncle’s photo. Lawson came in one day and seemed pleased by the little gathering.

“When are we going to meet the pooch?” Barkhausen asked.

“He’s in the car,” Lawson said.

The girls begged to see him and Lawson said it would take him a while because he had to adjust the new horse blanket coat. “I paid for it,” he said. He gave a precise explanation of the buckles and straps.

Half an hour later, Lawson came down the hall pulled by a stubby tan and spotted dog wearing a crimson jacket. A bloodhound and a truck. Loose skin hung from his neck and shoulders so that he seemed more like an old man in a dog suit than a dog. Lawson stopped at the office door while the girls gushed and Uncle looked up with huge red eyes, one long canine rising from his pushed-in muzzle. I bent over the dog, who rested his head on my knee and immediately closed his eyes, as if in relief.

“He’s still cold,” Lawson said.

“So cute,” one of the girls said, squatting next to me. Uncle stayed on my knee, drooling.

“I think he’ll grow into that baggy skin,” Lawson said, and asked me to put water into a bowl he had brought. We watched in disbelief as Uncle drank for a minute straight.

“He seems to have a hard time getting water through that muzzle,” Lawson said.

I rubbed the dog’s head and jowls, and Barkhausen joined me, asking, “Why are his eyes so red?”

“I’m not sure,” Lawson said.

“I’d have that checked out,” Barkhausen said, which annoyed Lawson who said it wasn’t anything, and he started to leave on that sour note.

“Good-bye, Ugly,” Barkhausen said.

Lawson turned. “It’s
Uncle,
Artie,
Uncle
.”

“I like
Ugly
,” Barkhausen said.

“When you get your own dog, Artie, you can call it
Ugly
,” Lawson said.

Lawson ran into Neil Clarke, his friend and teacher of romantic literature. They played a little game. When they met, they spoke
Stevens.
The rule was that their first words had to quote Wallace Stevens and be appropriate in greeting and reply. This involved two things Mitch loved—poetry and competition.

Clarke took a look at Uncle and said, “There are not leaves enough to cover the face it wears . . .”

“The creator too is blind,” Lawson replied as Clarke looked warily at the protruding teeth of the gentle pup. I went back into the office.

“That’s a funny looking dog,” a girl said. “So opposite of Mitch.”

“Who’s always so neat and refined,” the other added.

Uncle left behind a scent like a rainy day in autumn—decay, wet leaves and mud.

Barkhausen went with Pryor and Wendy to lunch. The three of them were often in a booth at The Deadwood and they arrived at readings and parties together. Barkhausen, the odd duck, the isolato of Black’s Gaslight Village, was suddenly social. I asked Ridge about Barkhausen’s sudden friendship with Pryor and he said, “If I wanted to fuck Pryor’s wife, I’d hang around with him too.”

Harvey and Lawson gave a reading, introduced by Dan Cook who wore his usual ascot and a tweed coat with patches on the elbows and left breast. Our teachers sat behind him in jackets and ties, which was odd for Harvey who always wore blue work shirts. He had let his goatee grow, and it hung from his chin like the tongue of a shoe. He could have been a high school math teacher who held eccentric theories about alien abduction. Lawson wore a tan corduroy suit with a white oxford and red knit tie, like his neighbor who sold insurance. A chalkboard off to the side emphasized the academy. Lovers of poetry, serious readers, supporters of libraries and arts centers across the state came to see their famous citizen-poets. They circled the stage like people feeding ducks. We were those who watched them feed the ducks. Harvey and Lawson were the ducks.

Harvey went first, and Dan read a list of awards, quoted reviews, and ended with Lawson’s blurb, “In his hands, the pedestrian stalks the infinite.” Harvey stood at the podium, and gave a little talk about the difference between raw and cooked poetry. He said he was proud to be reading with his former teacher, whose skill was unequaled, and who “edits with a scalpel.” He read some funny poems, darting through the pages. He took off his jacket and draped it on his chair. He began one poem with the opening line, “Renoir painted with his dick,” then stopped, looked disgusted, tore the page from the book, rolled it into a ball and threw it into the amused audience. He said the room was too warm, and loosened the knot of his tie. At the end of the next poem, he lifted it over his head, placing it on the microphone where it faced us. He thumbed through the book front to back, then back to front, reading poems at random, yet they seemed to have a thread. Sweating, he sipped from the water glass and then unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a red undershirt printed with the words
Kellogg’s of Battle Creek.
The poems became more serious, about his dead parents. His long hair fell from behind his ears and he popped on a headband from his back pocket. He ended with a sequence about the Vietnam war, perspiration showing as he now read as seriously as he had recited comically, concluding, flushed and depleted, with a forceful moral outrage. The audience applauded loudly. We had been taken from comedy to tragedy, from formality to humanity. Harvey’s spontaneity at the podium somehow arrived at a perfectly shaped performance. When he left the podium, he was an entirely different person from the one who had been introduced, changing from schoolmaster to beatnik stalking the infinite. He left the tie hanging from the microphone.

Dan walked across the stage, clapping, then bowing to Harvey. He leaned toward us, beckoning further applause with his fingertips. When silence returned, he reached for something inside his sport coat. He tried another pocket, his concern becoming panic. He felt the shelf under the podium, as if in the dark, which he was, because he had lost his introduction to Lawson. He touched his chest again, and again scanned the shelf, like an obsessive, compulsive mime. Loudmouth Trotta called for him to begin, which was followed by catcalls and laughter. Dan righted himself, looked directly at us, and said, “This man needs no introduction,” which produced an even greater roar of taunts and boos. He abandoned the microphone, headed toward the chalkboard, wrote
Mitchell Lawson!
and left the stage.