#10: I touch now his dispair
Dear Readers:
You will receive an email from me each month containing one boredom, one horror, and one glory. This is the tenth one.
Boredom/Horror. “Life, friends, is boring.” This opening half-line from #14 might be my least favorite moment in John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs. I hate it when he says “friends.” It’s like from this register he sometimes writes in that is super-wry, archly ironic, and rings so false to me, especially knowing that these dream songs were his last-ditch effort to become a superfamous beloved poet, and if that didn’t work, he was going to have like assassinate the president. Luckily it worked. He wrote more than 300 more dream songs after those first 77, probably to cement his reputation. I think the later ones are much better than the original 77, although that’s not a popular opinion. I love them for the way he uses syntax of all things to trick himself out of worrying about how important these poems may turn out to be, how great or Great he may be... My very favorite is 145, one of the many about his father’s suicide:
Also I love him: me he’s done no wrong
for going on forty years--forgiveness time--
I touch now his despair,
he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower
but he did not swim out with me or my brother
as he threatened--
a powerful swimmer, to take one of us along
as company in the defeat sublime,
freezing my helpless mother:
he only, very early in the morning
rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window
and did what was needed.
I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong
& so undone. I’ve always tried. I--I’m
trying to forgive
whose frantic passage, when he could not live
an instant longer, in the summer dawn
left Henry to live on.
There’s only one part of this poem I don’t like, which is the line “and did what was needed.” It sounds so grave and serious and still, when the rest of the poem is so propulsive. Also, he “cannot read that wretched mind,” so how does he know that the dad’s suicide was “what was needed”?
But the things I love about this poem, which are what have led me to read it 80 million times over the past 15 years, are the beginning, which is like hopping on an already-moving train, and the hardcore iambic line “I touch now his despair” (such a better line than “and did what was needed”). And the cunning syntax with which the first line of the second stanza picks up the “swimming out” scene in the previous stanza, when you think that scene already done: he didn’t do “as he threatened” in the first stanza, and that same “he threatened” is repurposed in the second stanza: “he threatened...// to take one of us along.” I have to stop myself from going on about this poem forever, but one more thing: the “I--I’m” in the last stanza makes me think of the most interesting moment in Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” in the last stanza, where he’s like,
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by
It’s like his self “diverges” across the line break, “I--/I.” But Berryman’s I breaks into pieces across the entire poem, all 385 Dream Songs, inside the line--“I--I’m,” his own “frantic passage.”
I bring all this up because I’ve been thinking about that “Life, friends, is boring” line lately, as much as I dislike it. I miss the quality of boredom I always felt, like a loose net over the world, before the Internet. My brother Sam and I both had our first serious office jobs at the same time, when the Internet was kicking into high gear but it hadn’t invaded everything. There were no smartphones yet, no Facebook. We emailed back and forth about once a minute. In one email, I wrote that when I got to work each morning, I was panicked, like a baby looking for its thumb, until I found something online to read that was long and juicy enough to get me through the day. Susan Wheeler has this poem, “The Green Stamp Book,” that begins, “Child in the thick of yearning”--that’s what I was like.
But all of life makes me feel like that now. When I watch Jeopardy with 2% of my attention as I read the New York Times on my computer with 0% of my attention, the other 98% is anxiously casting around, thinking of other things I could be doing on the Internet. After school, Sam and I used to read the kids’ edition of the World Book, which our grandma gave us as a gift, while we watched The Simpsons and waited for dinner. We especially loved the L and M volumes. In my memory, I read the World Book with like 75% of my attention, and watched The Simpsons with 25%. No extra attention anywhere. I’m more like Susan Wheeler’s child in the thick of yearning now than I was when I was an actual child. As long as the Internet is in the world, there’s something other than what I’m doing to want. I wish I was writing my encyclopedia entry on Cynthia Ozick for the children’s World Book in 1989, rather than for a literary encyclopedia that will be published online in 2021, trapped inside a database, to be read in the same way I’ll write it--while doing a bunch of other things, a dozen other tabs open.
Glory. This guy, Raphaël Feuillâtre, who I think might be the best classical guitarist in the world, came to Cleveland. He is French, and he won the GFA award, which is like the highest thing you can win in classical guitar. To get even close to winning it, you have to devote your entire life to practicing guitar. You can’t even go to the grocery store or take a walk. I was not looking forward to his visit, because it’s hard to hang out with people who are so single-mindedly devoted to something you don’t understand (I’m exposed to a lot of classical guitarists because I’m married to one). But Raphaël was wonderful! He was such a gifted performer that even I was interested in his concert. He was a technical genius, which you need to be to win the GFA, and he put such verve and passion into his performance, even in the way he bowed at the end. But more important for my purposes, he was extremely interested in reading. When we went out to dinner with him the night before his concert, he was excited that I teach English, and he asked me lots of questions about being a writer, and books, and how he could get better at English by reading. He said he had been looking for short books to read in English, and could I suggest some? I told him I’d make him a list, and he was so happy. He asked me not to put any boring books on it, and to make absolutely sure the books were short and easy to find in bookstores, because he’ll be on tour all year.
I couldn’t believe it! If I were a 23-year-old virtuoso who won the best guitarist in the world competition, I’d be a bitch. I’d be like, do you even know who I am? Why are you bothering me with this garbage? After his concert, I came up to say how wonderful he was, and he was like, “Did you bring the list?!?!?!” I had worked very hard on the list, and then wrote it out with some notes next to each book, but I had sort of assumed he would forget about it after doing his excellent performance and being praised by all these fans. But when I gave it to him, he was so excited! Here it is:
The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert
Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams
Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray
The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr
We the Animals, Justin Torres
Into Thin Air, John Krakauer
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Into Thin Air was a mistake--I really meant Into the Wild, which is just as good but shorter. I wonder if he’ll read any of these. If I were him, I wouldn’t, but he’s so wonderful, maybe he will…
Sincerely,
Lucy
Recommended: The Dream Songs; Assorted Poems, by Susan Wheeler, the books I suggested to Raphaël. And look at this incredibly beautiful poem by Joe Hall--“the light is going out but / just in one eye / why can’t we walk together / through this gate…”.
Unrecommended: I’m continuing to struggle with negative feelings toward Cynthia Ozick. More next month.