The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford

Source of book: I own this

 

One of my ongoing reading projects is to go back and read classic books from the 20th Century that were not part of my high school curriculum. As I have mentioned, while my high school education was rigorous, it was video courses and curriculum from a conservative religious school in Florida, and as far as I could tell, other than Steinbeck and a few others, the 20th Century was ignored. Likewise, my mom, who supplemented our curriculum with classic literature that she liked, had very little experience with 20th Century literature, so we never really experienced it. 

 

I do not mean this to be a criticism. First, now that a few of my own kids have completed high school, it is obvious that even the most secular of curricula have a lot of gaps, simply because there is insufficient time to read hundreds of books. And, for whatever reason, the middle to late parts of the 20th Century get left out. 

 

Second, regarding my parents, they both introduced me to great literature early, and kept us supplied with books at home and from the library - they were better than the vast majority of parents at this, and inculcated us kids with a love of literature and reading. This is very much to their credit and one of the best things they did as parents. 

 

But, what is true is that there has been a bit of a gap, and I am working to fill that, particularly through my growing collection of used Library of America hardbacks, of which this is one. 

 

 

Jean Stafford was popular during her prime - the 1940s and 50s. However, changing taste and her own alcoholism led to a decline in her reputation, and she seems rather less read these days than a number of contemporaries. She only wrote three novels, but many short stories. I own those as well, and will have to read some of them next. 

 

The Catherine Wheel is her last completed novel, published in 1952. The title is a double reference - both to the horrific method of torture and execution associated with Saint Catherine, and to the firework. Both of these are alluded to throughout the book, sometimes in a bit heavy handed manner. The final tragedy of the story becomes a sort of blending of the two images. 

 

I mentioned the use of the metaphors as the part of the book that I felt was a bit, not so much preachy, but a bit much. That really is my only complaint about the book. The writing overall is solid, and the inner lives of her two main characters are superbly written. 

 

Jean Stafford’s writing in general is highly misanthropic. However, unlike many misanthropes who consider themselves as superior than the rabble, or some such self-righteous position, Stafford sets forth her argument that we are all this bad. The loathing of humanity is also self-loathing. 

 

The plot revolves around two main characters, who more or less alternate chapters from their points of view. The two are linked by family relationships, but also by their secrets and inner trauma. While they to a degree connect with each other, their refusal to disclose these secrets while making assumptions about what the other knows leads to profound isolation and compounded psychological damage. 

 

Katherine is a middle-aged woman, who never married. As we find out, her parents took in an orphaned young girl, Maeve, and the two of them grew up together. As young women, both fell in love with John, who is a bit of a rich prick and definitely unworthy. Everyone assumed he would marry Katherine, but he married Maeve instead. Unrequited love has done a number on Katherine, although she keeps her agony secret from everyone. 

 

From that union came the other main character, Andrew, a young boy, who, with his older twin sisters (Honor and Harriet) spends his summers at Katherine’s summer estate. Andrew’s trauma is the loss of his best summer friend, Victor. On previous summers, the two of them went everywhere together, and were best of friends. At least from Andrew’s side, the obsession borders on sexual. 

 

The problem is that Victor’s love and adoration is for his older brother, Charles, who is in the navy. When Charles gets gravely ill and has to convalesce for the summer at home, Victor throws Andrew over so he can care for and fawn over his brother. Like John, Charles is a total dick - arrogant, mean, vulgar - and unworthy of emulation and admiration. 

 

Andrew becomes filled with hatred toward Charles, who has, as he sees it, stolen his friend. As the book goes on, he becomes consumed with it, wishing Charles would die, and half believing that he will indeed be able to kill Charles with his thoughts. 

 

In the meantime, Catherine has a significant shock. While it has been obvious that Maeve and John are not happy together anymore, it turns out that the trip they have taken in an attempt to rekindle the romance has failed. John writes Catherine and says he is in love with her, and offers to take her away to live on an island away from anyone they know. (Another man makes Catherine an offer, which she finds even more vulgar than the one from John.) For Catherine, she realizes John isn’t worth it, but is overwhelmed with her emotions to the point of ordering a headstone. 

 

Andrew and Catherine are, in their own way, close to each other, but neither comes out and states what is bothering them. Catherine assumes that Andrew has read her diary and realized that she wanted to marry his father. Andrew hasn’t, and never puts together the hints he has heard about the relationship. So, when Andrew asks Catherine if hating someone enough to wish them dead could kill them, Catherine assumes Andrew hates her, because of her desire for his father. 

 

In the meantime, Andrew assumes that Catherine knows of his hatred for Charles, and hates him for being such a bad person. Catherine could have picked up on this, but she is too distracted by her own issues. They come so close to connecting and revealing what is in their heads, but instead pass each other without knowing, and thinking the other hates them. 

 

The tragic ending, as I noted, gets a bit heavy on the symbolism, and is rather melodramatic. I believe that is a bit of a trademark for Stafford’s writing. But up until that point, I thought the book was excellent - the paired psychodrama is all too believable, and Stafford creates parallels throughout, letting the twin narratives unwind and become increasingly entangled. 

 

There are a host of secondary characters which all contribute to the themes of alienation and dark fantasies. Stafford isn’t particularly kind to her characters the way, say, Eudora Welty or Anthony Trollope are. Some of the descriptive lines are quite cutting and even vicious. Check out this poisonous line. 

 

It was alarming and disarming and sad to see how like that Edmund the young St. Denis was, limber and tall and fair, his oval, olive face full of poetic and boyish solemnity that would go - oh, how rapidly it would go! - when he had reached the man’s estate of real-estate and fortune-building and surrender to the second best; when the skin-deep college education or the Wanderjahr had paled like the tan of a winter holiday and the mind was left to rust and blunt like a knife left out in the rain and reflex replaced imagination. 

 

It’s not a kind picture of the future, but I bet we all know someone like that, who once seemed full of imagination, but the gloss of education and experience never changed them at a deep level, and by the time they are middle aged, their minds have essentially rusted and blunted. Perhaps one reason for this ominous premonition is the history of John. 

 

A sigh like a sob shook her as she thought how, in the end, the patience of her charm and her rigid rejection of the second best had finally won her a Pyrrhic victory. For John Shipley, grappling in his forties for his twenties, had been fooled by his needless need and, greedy as Ponce de Leon, imagining a source of rejuvenation, a new start, a rebirth, a second chance with no strings attached, had returned to her. Except he did not look upon it as a return; he believed he was seeing her for the first time and the bitterest pill of all the galling pills she had had to swallow was the knowledge that he had scarcely been aware of her those years ago but had only been impressed, snobbishly, by her situation as the only daughter of a remarkable man in a showplace of a house. 

Now, though, he must divorce his wife, must marry Katherine, must - this is how he stated it - “save himself.” Must, ought, words dear to the Puritan tongue telling lies between its veiling teeth and coating the vile mendacities with an ethical vocabulary. 

 

That certainly isn’t what Katherine had hoped for - there is something deeply insulting in saying “I must marry you to save myself.” Yuck. Definitely not worth all those years of pining.

 

The second amorous proposal is likewise rather vulgar, as Katherine sees clearly. 

 

It was a gross and platitudinous burlesque of John Shipley’s protestations, and the man was neither better nor worse than John in his effort to struggle out of his boredom and his disappointment in himself by pleading with her to build him a castle in Spain and take him on a magic carpet to the end of the rainbow. 

 

I think that Stafford is on to something here. Leaving aside all of the fully defensible reasons for leaving a marriage, there are too many that I know either personally or professionally who left essentially out of boredom and the mistaken belief that a new lover will rescue them from their ennui. 

 

Another unpleasant character is Billy the blacksmith, who hates government and women (particularly his wife.) One of these lines sounds so much like the toxic masculinity crowd of our own time as well as their orange messiah. 

 

Anything that was low or uncomfortable or dishonest or ugly was, in Billy’s mind, either womanly or governmental and he liked to confound the two abominable species by speaking of “all those women in the White House and in Congress” and calling Mayor Curley “a damned flapper.” 

 

There are also, fortunately, some lighter and humorous moments in an otherwise rather dark book. I like this exchange as a few of the old folks are talking about the young folks. 

 

“And I repeat, I’d give my worldly goods and all my expectations to be a kid again.”

“I wouldn’t give a farthing,” snorted Mr. Barker. “I like being old. Would you want to be sixteen again, Katherine? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?”

She shook her head and gasped, as he had expected her to do, and said, “Lord, no! What an appalling thought!” 

 

As I have been wont to say, there is a price that could convince me to repeat my high school years - and if you have to ask how high, you can’t afford it. No amount of money could ever convince me to repeat my Jr. high years. Nope, nope, nope. What an appalling thought. 

 

There is also a moment where the officious doctor - who people think Katherine should marry - engages in some truly egregious mansplaining. 

 

But when she came back after seeing him out she sharply fanned up the fire with the bellows as if she were attacking someone and said, “Cut the stems indeed! I know of nothing that annoys me more than to be instructed in matters I took in with my mother’s milk. The curse of being female, Andrew, is that we must pretend to be quite incapable of grasping the self-evident.” 

 

Katherine is quick on the uptake about a lot of things, and she comes so close to realizing what Andrew is feeling. Near the end of the book, the bored Andrew dresses up in Katherine’s late father’s clothes, and she has a momentary flashback and calls him John - the family resemblance strikes her. But Andrew too fails to notice, even though Katherine is sure he grasped the significance. This line is interesting to me:

 

One knew as much at twelve as one was ever going to know. Even more perhaps, since at that age one was still, philosophically if not practically, in a state of nature and could cleave through the toughest tissues to the heart of the matter. Certainly she had known, known even before she was twelve, how rickety was the scaffolding of her parents’ marriage; she had proceeded from just such a slip of the tongue as she had made to Andrew a little while ago, to the knowledge that her father had a mistress. It had been through some process infinitely more direct than logic, something instantaneous and unquestionable, that she had perceived that the reason her father had often seemed to prefer Maeve was that Maeve was not the daughter of his wife whom he did not love. Later, when he grew accustomed to his guilt, he had begun to lavish on Katherine the fruits of his cool heart. 

 

That’s quite the twist at the end. I must admit, I have long wondered why it was that my parents made an instant bond with my sister in a way they never did with me, and I remain unclear - there is no obvious reason, although perhaps as a first-born child and a male I remind them of their difficulties with their own first-born fathers and older brothers. (It definitely isn’t the same thing as the one in the book, though.) It is interesting what kids know at age twelve, to be sure. 

 

I have been reading a lot of heavy books lately, so this one perhaps felt darker than it would have otherwise. I am due to read some lighter fare (like, say, Margaret the First) and clear my head before reading more Stafford - and I will read some of her short stories next time. But I did find the writing and storytelling compelling, and am a bit puzzled why she fell out of favor. Oh well. At least a few of us are reading her still. 

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

 Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

This is a rather unusual book. It is a fictionalized account of the life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, and author. It is fictionalized in the sense that it is in the form of a story, told partly in first person, and then in third person, from her point of view. However, it takes no liberties with the facts as far as I can tell - and indeed throughout the book, her own writing is quoted. 

 

Margaret Cavendish was born in 1923 to a minor aristocratic family, who ended up siding with the Royalists during the English Civil war. In her teens, she became a lady in waiting to Queen Henrietta Marie, and followed her into exile in France. 

 

While there, she met her future husband, William Cavendish, who was in exile (as a Royalist) and poverty. 

 

He was 30 years her senior, had adult children her age, but, in a rather fascinating twist, their marriage apparently was a true love match, with mutual respect and affection. He ended up outliving her by a few years. The great sorrow of their life was her infertility - more on that later.

 

Margaret Cavendish is not remembered for her marriage, however, but for her writing, personality, and flamboyant style. 

 

In an era when few women wrote, and even fewer wrote under their own names, she wrote extensively - plays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction - and published them boldly. 

 

By her own account, her infertility was a significant factor in her taking up writing. After years of frankly bizarre and disgusting “treatments” by the doctors of the time, she and William resigned themselves that she would never have children. It was a disappointment to both of them. 

 

Margaret found herself with a lot of time on her hands, and very little to do. To alleviate her boredom, she began to write, found she liked it, and devoted herself to it for the rest of her life. 

 

Margaret and William also ran in literary and scientific circles. After the Restoration and return to his lands, William became a significant patron of the arts, most notably sponsoring Ben Jonson. The two of them kept up on the latest scientific papers together, and she discusses them in her writings - in a few cases talking smack about luminaries like Robert Boyle. 

 

Margaret was the first woman ever invited to the Royal Society - that great gathering of the scientific and literary luminaries. Unfortunately, the second woman was not invited until 200 years later, which is a shame.  

 

Of Margaret’s writings, probably the most interesting is The Blazing World, a genre-blending work of fiction that anticipates science fiction, and is considered the first work of utopian fiction by a woman. I am going to try to track down a copy of that. 

 

Dutton’s fictionalized version is a good read (or listen) in this case, bringing to life a rather extraordinary woman, quite the character, radically feminist for her time, and with a unique voice. 

 

Because this was an audiobook, I unfortunately do not have any quotes - although Margaret herself wrote some real zingers. 

 

I do want to mention some of the things I found fascinating. 

 

First is the extended description of the infertility treatments that Margaret endured - including various kinds of shit smeared on her abdomen and used as vaginal suppositories. These are, by the way, taken from her rather frank memoirs. 

 

A note on that as well: our current American prudery which continues to endure, even as its manifestation changes, is more of a Victorian affectation than anything else. Even the Puritans were able to talk about bodily functions without getting their panties in a wad quite the way that we still do. 

 

Another example of that is the fashion of the era. 17th and 18th Century women - the aristocratic ones who could afford fashion over function - went bare-breasted quite often. Doing so was a sign, not of loose morals, but of purity and high social standing. A young woman could signal her virginity - those unspoiled breasts - and older women could demonstrate that they could afford a wet nurse rather than sully her own breasts. It was considered far more risque to display an ankle than a nipple.

 

This is mentioned several times in the book - Margaret had a tendency to ignore the niceties of fashion, and occasionally showed too much at the wrong time of day - I won’t even pretend to understand all the rules, but high-class fashion has always had arcane rules and social punishments to those who fail to conform. 

 

Significant cleavage was still visible well into the Victorian era. Believe it or not, cleavage was in fashion in the Islamic world during this time as well. In significant ways, certain kinds of prudery are actually very modern. 

 

But, I think it is important to note that clothing fashions are deeply embedded in culture, and change dramatically over time and place. There is no underlying rule that applies to all places and times, regardless of what our modern day misogynists want to believe.

 

There is also a funny moment in the book involving plays. When Margaret’s writing came out, many dismissed the idea that she could have written them herself, and credited her husband. (They did collaborate to a degree, and it is believed some of her plays were co-written.) 

 

Later, when her literary reputation was established, he published a play anonymously (although everyone knew it was him), which the wags then attributed to her instead. 

 

Margaret Cavendish is one of a number of examples of women who lived unconventionally and fostered their own talents. It is surely not a coincidence that these women tended to have shockingly egalitarian marriages and supportive husbands. (See: Anne Bradstreet) By all accounts, William and Margaret loved each other deeply, and respected each other for their good character and kindness. Even in a hostile culture, egalitarians have always found a way to thrive - both men and women do better as equals rather than subordinates. 

 

Margaret the First is a fun book to read. It isn’t a typical biography, but it isn’t exactly fully fictional either. Dutton brings to life a truly fascinating woman. 

Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This is another of NPR’s “beach read” suggestions - which goes to show that the folks at NPR have interesting taste. 

 

 Diary of a Void is translated from Japanese, and the title itself is a pun that doesn’t translate into English. 

 

Also a bit lost in translation for us Americans is the culture - parents in Japan get a full year of paid parental leave after a child is born. This, of course, sounds practically insane to Americans, where the best you can hope for in most states is three months of unpaid leave. My home state of California is a bit better - parents get eight weeks of partial pay in untaxed dollars, so a wash for most people. But nothing like a full year. 

 

So, back to the title. Japan also makes available to expectant parents a handbook and diary, called a Boshi Techo, which roughly means “Maternal and Child Health Handbook.” The Japanese title of the book is Kushin Techo, substituting “empty core” for “mother and child.” Hence, Diary of a Void. 

 

The premise of the book is that Ms. Shibata (she never gets a first name) has left her old job due to sexual harassment, only to find that at her new job, she is expected to do a lot of menial tasks in addition to her regular job - picking up trash, making the coffee for everyone - because she is a woman. 

 

In order to avoid this, she claims she is pregnant and that the coffee makes her morning sick. This allows her to avoid these unpaid “women’s work” tasks, go home at five rather than work overtime, and be treated better in general. 

 

The problem: she isn’t pregnant. She’s also single and hasn’t had a date in years. 

 

Rather than admit she made things up, she starts padding her belly, taking maternity aerobics, eating better food, and logging her days in the diary mentioned above. 

 

A strange thing happens along the way, though. She starts having actual pregnancy symptoms, and even gets an ultrasound which reveals a fetus - but with a blurry face. A void, one might say. The book never really resolves at the end. Did she give birth? And to what? We never know for sure. 

 

Along the way, the incidents of the book reveal the casual everyday sexism that women have to put up with, not just in Japan, but pretty much everywhere. And also the way that men are more deferent to pregnant women - perhaps because she is filing that expected role as mother. 

 

The incident that starts the book off really made me laugh, because my wife had a very similar incident at work. 

 

This guy (who I won’t come close to identifying) was dropping hints around my wife that she needed to make him some coffee. He would carry the empty carafe around, looking at it forlornly. She never bailed him out.

 

In the book, there is an even more ludicrous twist: 

 

What seemed of greatest concern to my bosses, rather than when I could clock out, was the question of the coffee. Who would make it? Who was going to deal with the cups? Where was the milk? They asked me to type up step-by-step instructions. One day, when I wasn’t around, they had a meeting in which it was decided that a young guy who’d started right out of college would be in charge of the coffee.

“Hey, this isn’t so bad!” he exclaimed as I showed him what to do. You’re right about that, I said back. That’s why it’s called instant coffee.

 

Yeah. Instant coffee needs instructions. As they say, Strategic Incompetence. In another incident, the narrator describes the other expected tasks.

 

No one ever told me I had to do these things. But if I didn’t take care of it, sooner or later there’d be a little comment.

“Hey…Microwave?”

My name’s not Microwave.

 

Another interesting question was raised when Shibata ends up walking home late, and muses on what would happen if she got mugged. Her bag contained her cell phone and apartment keys. How would she get back in? How would she call someone with no money or phone? 

 

While pregnancy gains her some care from others, there are also the annoyances, like the guys who ask if they can touch her bump. Or don’t even ask. 

 

As time goes by and she gets used to her “pregnancy,” she wonders what her child will look like. And also wonders:

 

As I wrote in my notebook, I wondered: How many other imaginary children were there in the world? And where are they now? What were they doing? I hoped they were leading happy lives.

 

This is the kind of blurred lines that get ever more blurring as the book progresses. There is also the question of what makes a family. 

 

Maybe that’s what making a family is all about: creating an environment in which people make space for one another - maybe without even trying, just naturally, to make sure nobody’s forgotten. 

 

As an idealization of a family, that’s pretty attractive. It sounds a bit like the line in Lilo and Stitch: “Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” 

 

I will admit I felt some pain reading that line. Once, I used to feel that way about my birth family - there was space for me, space for all of us. But I was rudely shocked to discover that there was not space for my wife, and never would be. Once she left, there was no attempt to get her back or repair things, just silence and gaslighting that it was all my fault. 

 

Making space in this case is related to the void. Shibata is making space in herself for…nothing. Or is there something. At the ultrasound, Shibata is stunned. 

 

There was a baby in there. It had a place in the world. It had taken its own form, a human form. Out of nothing.

 

There is an epilogue twelve months after the birth - or whatever it turned out to be - we never see that part and never find out - Shibata is invited to a job fair where she is supposed to praise the company’s family policies. She has a snarky observation, though. 

 

I’m at a job fair today. This panel, “Balancing Your Career and Your Life,” is offered specifically to women, as if work-life balance is something only women need to consider. 

 

Years ago, one of our local judges mentioned this issue, opining that our society has normalized men neglecting their children. She was, unfortunately, right about that. Men do not get asked how they balance work and family. Men do not get the stink eye if they work late every night. And so on. It is normal for a man to neglect his children, and expect his wife to pick up the slack. 

 

And the flip side is that if a man does not neglect his children, but splits childcare and breadwinning with his wife (as I have done since we had kids), she gets blamed for taking on work so that dad can see his kids more. It’s lose-lose for women. 

 

For the most part, this book avoids being preachy. It gently addresses sexism through incident. The secondary theme of the book is social isolation, something I have seen so much in modern Japanese literature. Perhaps they are being more honest about it than we Americans are, with our idolization of “Rugged Individualism™.” 

 

Shibata makes some temporary connections with other pregnant women at the aerobics class, and an awkward friendship with a married co-worker, but in the end, it still feels like she is alone. Her imaginary child isn’t the only void in her life. 

 

Diary of a Void is a fascinating book. It’s short and quick and easy to read, but thought provoking in a way that few beach reads are. 

Spleen and Ideal by Charles Baudelaire

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Source of book: I own this

 

One of the books I found at Powell’s on our trip to the Portland area was a translation of The Flowers of Evil. This version contains both the original French and the English translation by Richard Howard. As I also discovered, it contains additional poems, so essentially the complete poems of Baudelaire.

 

In light of this, and the fact that The Flowers of Evil was meant to be Baudelaire’s version of his collected poems, I decided not to read the entire thing at once, but in pieces, so that I can enjoy it over time. 

 

The first and largest section of the work is entitled Spleen and Ideal, and contains 87 poems, which is plenty to digest at a time. Supposedly, it is meant to be a cycle of erotic ecstasy and anguish, but I found its topics to be too varied to neatly fit in that category. 

 

The art of translation is a tricky one, and compromises have to be made, unfortunately. (See my discussion of Inferno for more on the various approaches.) Although I do not know French pronunciation much at all, I at least parsed the French versions of some of the poems to compare form. They clearly have rhymes and a rhythm of sorts. It is my understanding that French isn’t accented the same way English is, so syllables are more important than lining up the accents into feet. 

 

Howard does his best to preserve the lines intact, and preserve the syllable counts. He does not attempt to rhyme, however. This gives the poems a certain feel that definitely is not that of free verse, but not quite the normal cadence of formal rhymed poetry. A little research revealed that Howard’s own poetry uses this technique - that of using syllable counts rather than accents for his metre. 

 

Thus, there is no exact equivalent to the original feel of the poems, as good as they are. Such is the nature of translation, unfortunately. Despite the necessary compromises, I found Howard’s translation to be delightfully musical and free-flowing. 

 

The poems are mostly shorter, and many appear to be sonnets, although the rhyme schemes vary, and are rarely identifiable as either Petrarchan or Shakespearean in form. For example, the two quatrains would be rhymed ABAB as in a Shakespearean sonnet, but instead of the third quatrain and couplet, there is a pair of tercets rhymed in one of the accepted Petrarchan schemes. 

 

The Flowers of Evil caused a huge scandal at the time, due to its overt sexuality, irreverent approach to death, and references to lesbianism. I didn’t get to any of the lesbian poems - those are in a different section - but I did read several of the poems that were censored. 

 

What is kind of weird is that I didn’t think that the censored ones were any more racy than others which were permitted. And certainly nothing in them is any naughtier than the stuff John Donne wrote two centuries earlier, and they do not even approach the bawdiness of Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer. 

 

There are a lot of other themes in the work, not just love and sex. Baudelaire explores what he felt was the corruption of the industrial revolution and the rise of urbanism. He muses on the changing roles of women, with some poems sounding quite progressive, and others pretty misogynistic, unfortunately. Like so many poets before and since, he contrasts sacred and profane love, considers death, and glorifies wine and song. 

 

One of the fascinating and unique characteristics of the poems is that, while most poets focus on the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, Baudelaire features the sense of smell. Everything from perfume to flowers to body odor make it into his lyrics, and he shows the same ability to find unexpected and evocative words to bring those smells to life that other poets have for scenes. 

 

Also interesting about this collection is that Baudelaire apparently adored cats. There are numerous poems about cats, a few of which I will feature in this post. As a lifelong cat lover myself, I can tell that he had a fondness and fascination with them - and a keen eye for their quirks. 

 

It was very difficult to choose which poems to feature because so many of them spoke to me, but I have done my best to cull them to a reasonable number. I would definitely recommend getting this book, and spending some leisurely time reading and re-reading each poem.  

 

I had to quote the opening poem, “To the Reader,” because it captures the wry, pessimistic, and scandalous tone of the work so well. 

 

To the Reader

 

Stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust

Torment our bodies and possess our minds

And we sustain our affable remorse

The way a beggar nourishes his lice.

 

Our sins our stubborn, our contrition lame;

We want our scruples to be worth our while -

How cheerfully we crawl back to the mire:

A few cheap tears will wash our stains away!

 

Satan Trismegistus subtly rocks

Our ravished spirits on his wicked bed

Until the precious metal of our will

Is leached out by this cunning alchemist

 

The Devil’s hand directs our every move -

The things we loathed become the things we love;

Day by day we drop through stinking shades

Quite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

 

Like a poor profligate who sucks and bites

The withered breast of some well-seasoned trull,

We snatch in passing at clandestine joys

And squeeze the oldest orange harder yet.

 

Wriggling in our brains like a million worms,

A demon demos holds its revels there,

And when we breathe, the Lethe in our lungs

Trickles sighing on its secret course.

 

If rape and arson, poison and the knife

Have not yet stitched their ludicrous designs

Onto the banal buckram of our fates,

It is because our souls lack enterprise!

 

But here among the scorpions and the hounds,

The jackals, apes and vultures, snakes and wolves,

Monsters that howl and growl and squeal and crawl,

In all the squallid zoo of vices, one

 

Is even uglier and fouler than the rest,

Although the least flamboyant of the lot;

This beast would gladly undermine the earth

And swallow all creation in a yawn;

 

I speak of Boredom which with ready tears

Dreams of hangings as it puffs its pipe.

Reader, you know this squeamish monster well,

Hypocrite reader, - my alias, - my twin!

 

Perhaps a warning shot across the bow of the reader’s skiff: you may look down your nose at the vice portrayed in this collection, but you know it is in your heart too. 

 

I also loved seeing “Trismegistus” on a page again. For those of us who loved Tristram Shandy, we recall that the narrator of that book was supposed to be named Trismegistus (meaning “thrice-greatest” and applied to Hermes), but mistakes were made, and he had to settle for being the namesake of a knight of the Round Table instead. 

 

Next up is a more conventional lyrical poem, but with a definite undertone of existential dread. As one who loves to escape the city and hike up mountains, I agree with Baudelaire here - while I prefer to live in the city for a variety of reasons, my heart is in the mountains, with the clean air and flowers and the feeling you can touch the sky. 

 

Elevation

 

Above the lake in the valley and the grove

Along the hillside, high over the sea

And the passing clouds, and even past the sun!

To the farthest confines of the starry vault

 

Mount, my spirit, wander at your ease

And range exultant through transparent space

Like a rugged swimmer reveling in the waves

With an unutterable male delight

 

Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere

To a higher plane, and purify yourself

By drinking as if it were ambrosia

The file that fills and fuels Emptiness.

 

Free from the futile strivings and the cares

Which dim existence to a realm of mist,

Happy is he who wings in an upward way

On mighty pinions to the fields of light;

 

Whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise

Into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked,

Outreaches life and readily comprehends 

The language of flowers and of all mute things.

 

I decided I wanted to mention one of the longer poems, “Guiding Lights,” which is mostly a set of four-line tributes to various painters, from Rubens to Goya. Three closing quatrains offer paeans to art, describing it as humankind’s offering to the Divine. 

 

I’ll quote the one to Delacroix, one of my favorite artists, and often underrated - they are best seen in person, in my opinion, where the careful use of color draws the eye around the narrative contained on the canvas. 

 

Delacroix

 

Evil angels haunt this lake of blood

Darkened by the green shade of the firs,

Where under a stricken sky the trumpet-calls

Like a fanfare by Weber fade away…

 

Next up is one of the sonnets, rather dark, but with incredible imagery. 

 

The Enemy

 

My youth was nothing but a lowering storm

Occasionally lanced by sudden suns;

Torrential rains have done their work so well

That no fruit ripens in my garden now.

 

Already the autumn of ideas has come,

And I must dig and rake and dig again

If I am to reclaim the flooded soil

Collapsing into holes the size of graves.

 

I dream of new flowers, but who can tell

If this eroded swamp of mine affords

The mystic nourishment on which they thrive…

 

Time consumes existence pain by pain

And the hidden enemy that gnaws our heart

Feeds on the blood we lose, and flourishes!

 

I particularly love how he flips the images of sun and rain. Sun lances suddenly (like a rainstorm), while the usual nourishing rain has desiccated his garden. 

 

This next one expresses the truth that, while some art endures, there must be so much more that never saw the light, whether because it was not recognized, or because the artist never had the time or support to create it at all. 

 

Artist Unknown

 

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires

            Sisyphean patience for its song.

Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short

            And Art is long.

 

No illustrious tombstones ornament

            The lonely churchyard where I often go

To hear my heart, a muffled drum, parade

            Incognito.

 

‘Many a gem,’ the poet mourns, abides

            Forgotten in the dust

                        Unnoticed there;

 

‘Many a rose’ regretfully confides 

            The secret of its scent

                                    To empty air.

 

There is a sequence of poems (17-20) that muse on love and female beauty. These are, shall we say, not the most conventional. This one is my favorite. 

 

The Ideal

 

My heart is closed to belles in curlicues,

Those worshipped beauties of a shopworn age

When fingers were for spinets and when feet

Wore out six pairs of silver-buckled shoes.

 

I leave to Gavarni, anemia’s laureate,

His twittering flock of insubstantial girls - 

In all those sallow blossoms who could find

One rose to reconcile my read ideal?

 

This heart is cavernous and it requires

Lady Macbeth and an aptitude for crime,

Some Aeschylean flower of the South,

 

Or Michelangelo’s great daughter, Night,

Who slumbrously contorts the marble charms

He carved to satiate a titan’s mouth.

 

So far, these are not too far out there. This next one definitely is. Baudelaire combines young love and rotting flesh, throwing in stink, flowers, prostitution, sunshine, and death. 

 

Carrion

 

Remember, my soul, the thing we saw

            That lovely summer day?

On a pile of stones where the path turned off,

            The hideous carrion -

 

Legs in the air, like a whore - displayed

            Indifferent to the last,

A belly slick with lethal sweat

            And swollen with foul gas.

 

The sun lit up that rottenness 

            As though to roast it through,

Restoring to Nature a hundredfold

            What she had here made one.

 

And heaven watched the splendid corpse

            Like a flower open wide -

You nearly fainted dead away

            At the perfume it gave off

 

Flies kept humming over the guts

            From which a gleaming clot

Of maggots poured to finish off

            What scraps of flesh remained.

 

The tide of trembling vermin sank,

            Then bubbled up afresh

As if the carcass, drawing breath,

            By their lives lived again

 

And made a curious music there -

            Like running water, or wind,

Or the rattle of chaff the winnower

            Loosens in his fan.

 

Shapeless - nothing was left but a dream

            The artist had sketched in,

Forgotten, and only later on

            Finished from memory.

 

Behind the rocks an anxious bitch

            Eyed us reproachfully,

Waiting for the chance to resume

            Her interrupted feast.

 

- Yet you will come to this offense,

            This horrible decay,

You, the light of my life, the sun

            And moon and stars of my love!

 

Yes, you will come to this, my queen,

            After the sacraments,

When you rot underground among

            The bones already there.

 

But as their kisses eat you up,

            My Beauty, tell the worms

I’ve kept the sacred essence, saved

            The form of my rotted loves!

 

This next poem takes its name from a motto of Queen Elizabeth I - “Semper Eadem” - always the same (with a feminine word gender.) There is a bit of irony in the title considering the content of the poem.

 

Semper Eadem

 

‘You’re like some rock the sea is swallowing -

What is it that brings on these moods of yours?’

Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain

Of being alive. You wouldn’t understand,

 

Though it’s as obvious as that smile of yours:

An open secret. Nothing ever grows,

Once the heart is harvested . . . You ask

Too many questions. No more talking now,

 

My prying ignoramus, no more words,

However sweet your voice. You call it Life,

But Death is what binds us, and by subtler bonds…

 

Come here. The only lie that comforts me

Is the refuge of those lashes - let me sink

Into the silent fiction of your eyes!

 

While there is often a thorn hidden in every rose, there are a few that are just sweet. I think this one expresses how I feel about my wife pretty well. Okay, except for the part about the Devil, because he has never popped in to ask that question. 

 

Altogether

 

The Devil it must have been

Why came to my room this morning

And, trying to catch me out,

Insisted I answer his question:

 

‘Among the miracles

Her spell over you comprises -

Among the black or pink

Objects composing her body -

 

Which is dearest?’ My soul 

Responded thus to the Demon:

‘No single part is best,

For each in its way is a solace,

 

And if the Whole enthralls,

Is any detail the seducer?

She dazzles like the dawn

And like the darkness consoles me;

 

Too close the harmony 

That governs her lovely body

For reason to divide 

One rapture from another;

 

My senses all are fused

By subtle transformation -

Her breathing makes a song,

As her voice emits a fragrance!’

 

If that one is a bit too full of treacle for you, balance it with this gem.

 

Incubus

 

Eyes glowing like an angel’s

I’ll come back to your bed

And reach for you from the shadows:

You won’t hear a thing.

 

On your dark skin my kisses 

Will be colder than moonlight:

Caresses of a snake crawling

Round an open grave.

 

When the morning whitens

You find no one beside you:

The place cold all day.

 

Others by fondness prevail 

Over your life, your youth:

I leave it to fear. 

 

The caress of a snake crawling round an open grave. That’s delicious. 

 

To end this post, I figured I would feature some cat poems. 

 

The Cat

 

Come here, kitty - sheathe your claws!

Lie on my loving heart

And let me sink into your eyes

Of agate fused with steel. 

 

When my fingers freely caress 

Your head and supple spine

And my hand thrills to the touch

Of your electric fur,

 

My mistress comes to mind. Her gaze -

Cold and deep as yours,

My pet - is like a stab of pain,

 

And from head to heels 

A subtle scent, a dangerous perfume,

Rises from her brown flesh. 

 

The details are the key to this poem - he knows cats. As a sonnet, it is fascinating too: you can see the parallels between the first part (the cat) and the second (the woman) - eyes, sensation, for or flesh, and the threat of a stabbing. 

 

Cat

 

As if he owned the place, a cat

Meanders through my mind,

Sleek and proud, yet so discrete

In making known his will

 

That I hear music when he mews,

And even when he purrs

A tender timbre in the sound

Compels my consciousness - 

 

A secret rhythm penetrates

To unsuspected depths,

Obsessive as a line of verse

And potent as a drug:

 

All woes are spirited away,

I hear ecstatic news -

It seems a telling language has

No need of words at all.

 

My heart, assenting instrument,

Is masterfully played;

No other bow across its strings

Can draw such music out

 

The way this cat’s uncanny voice

- seraphic, alien -

Can reconcile discordant strains

Into close harmony!

 

One night his brindled fur gave off

A perfume so intense

I seemed to be embalmed because

(just once) I fondled him…

 

Familiar spirit, genius, judge,

The cat presides - inspires

Events that he appears to spurn,

Half goblin and half god! 

 

And when my spellbound eyes at last

Relinquish worship of 

This cat they love to contemplate

And look inside myself,

 

I find to my astonishment

Like living opals there

His fiery pupils, embers which

Observe me fixedly. 

 

Yeah, he is a bit besotted, I would say. But cats are, as Death said, nice, and one of the reasons to keep living. Finally, let’s end with this sonnet. 

 

Cats

 

Lovers, scholars - the fervent, the austere -

Grow equally fond of cats, their household pride.

As sensitive as either to the cold,

As sedentary, though so strong and sleek,

 

Your cat, a friend to learning and to love,

Seeks out both silence and the awesome dark…

Hell would have made the cat its courier 

Could it have controverted feline pride!

 

Dozing, all cats assume the svelte design

Of desert sphinxes sprawled in solitude,

Apparently transfixed by endless dreams;

 

Their teeming loins are rich in magic sparks,

And golden specks like infinitesimal sand

Glisten in those enigmatic eyes. 

 

There you have it - clearly a cat lover. I often have a cat cuddling me when I read in the evenings - we have three indoor cats that vie for my attention, so it depends on who gets there first. The others will drape themselves about the bed, or go find one of the kids to snuggle.

Here is our half-grown kitten (rescued from an engine compartment at WalMart, of all places...):

 

I look forward to reading the rest of the collection in the future.