Okay. So, I have worked and reworked this poem, trying to get it right, but, in the end, have to admit defeat, I think. Did it become too abstract, or was it too abstract from its inception, because I knew how I wanted it to go, and therefore couldn't make it go there? Perhaps, the only true poems are the poems that write themselves in a way. I will tell anyone who will listen that as long as you are willing to accept constant humiliation and rejection, you can do anything, at least, that's my method. So, here for now is the failed attempt:
The Invitation
I have an old invitation
Serving as a bookmark between
Pages 24 and 25 in my used copy of
The Modern Student’s Library Edition
Of Matthew Arnold: Prose and Poetry,
Copyright 1927, published by Scribener & Sons,
(I once met one of the great grandsons, who was decadent
To the point of mental illness; he would drink so much
And take so many drugs that often at parties
He would end up on the floor spasmodically thrashing around
And making animal noises, or maybe it was just a style he outgrew,
It was the late seventies after all;)
But the book, according to a book plate
About the size of a small return address label,
Or a piece of tape, formerly belonged
To Willard B. Rockwood of 234 McKinley Street,
Minoa, New York. I bought it for
$1.50 at Carlson Turner Books
At 241 Congress Street in Portland’s East End.
The card itself is made of a stiff composite paper
And slightly larger and more square than a calling card,
Yellowed almost to brown and spotted with age,
So that it looks burned at the edges,
The strangely formal invitation
Reading in printed gothic script:
“Please present this card at Franklin Hall,
Friday, November 21, 10 p.m., Mr. Pond.”
Although the ink is faded, the polite command still hangs there;
An ‘invitation,’ from the Latin, invitare, to join life, in a way.
Mr. Pond, apparently, however, chose not to attend,
Distracted by some sudden circumstance,
Or never intending to make his appearance,
Otherwise I wouldn’t have the invitation to use as a bookmark.
I often wonder if there was someone waiting for him
At Franklin Hall at 10 p.m., an acquaintance perhaps,
Who was hoping to become something more, a friend,
And who was disappointed that Mr. Pond did not arrive.
Pond, surprisingly, is an Anglicized French name;
The first Pond in America being Daniel Pond
An Englishman, at Dedham, Massachusetts in 1630,
Who wrote a letter to his father back in England in 1631,
In which he confessed that he had been an undutiful child,
And then, after describing the native residents,
As “crafty people” and “subtle” who would “cozen and cheat,”
Spent the rest of the two page letter asking his father to send him money.
The Mr. Pond to whom the card referred, of course,
Would be a different Pond, a descendant perhaps.
I imagine a late nineteenth century striver,
Marching forward under the gaslights of Willimantic.
Or I see him hailing a horse-drawn taxi if late,
Slightly nervous of disposition, this young man,
Old money, but new to Connecticut society, a bachelor, perhaps,
Just establishing his rooms, keen on cultural events
Of the sort that would be held at Franklin Hall,
Lectures by great men of the time
Or concerts of classical music; but also
Ambivalent, unsure of himself and the demands
Put on his social skills by intermission chatter
And the attentions of the opposite sex,
The kind of person who would accept such an invitation
But not attend. The bottom of the antique card marks
The place where I temporarily stopped reading
The Function of Criticism, where Arnold states:
“It is the business of the critical power, as I said
In the words already quoted, ‘in all branches of knowledge,
Theology, philosophy, history, art, science,
To see the object as in itself it really is.’ Thus
It tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation
Of which the creative power can profitably avail itself.
It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true,
Yet true by comparison with that which it displaces;
To make the best ideas prevail.”
So like Arnold, so steadfast and Victorian
In its schoolmaster belief of one idea besting another,
And yet, in the phrase, ‘if not absolutely true,’
A hesitation, as if even he could sense the approach
Of relativity and ambivalence just around the bend.
The card did not come with the book, but I found it
Inside a family heirloom, an old traveling secretary,
Sometimes called a lap desk, a wooden box,
Hinged in the back, with a rich purple felt covering
Both inside halves, these held fast with hook latches.
The wood, I think, cherry, with a gold leaf design
Painted on the top, now rubbed thin. Inside, under the felt writing pads,
An old ink bottle whose well has dried to a fragrant dust,
And ebony slim pens with brass nibs, the kind of writing instrument
Almost like a scalpel that Matthew Arnold himself might have used
To carve his stern words on the thick-skinned page.
We had a lot of this kind of stuff hidden away in the house where I grew up.
The house itself was very modern, having been remodeled in the sixties
With plush wall to wall carpet in almost every room
And an attic the size of a small gymnasium, where
Stacked on its plywood floors
Was all sorts of treasure we weren’t supposed to touch,
And which, of course, we couldn’t help explore:
The old revolutionary flintlock, my dad’s
Doctor bag from the fifties
When he was a resident at Philadelphia General,
Inside of which was a dried up vial of iodine,
Not unlike the inkwell in the desk,
And old glass syringes which my brother
Would borrow to become a heroin addict;
Also packed away in the attic,
Was a family bible, where the first birth in America was inscribed,
“Elizabeth Bacon, Salem 1647,” who, it turns out,
Would eventually marry the son of Daniel Pond.
The point is not to name drop here
As I did with Scribener up above,
But to note how everything seems as random
As using an old invitation as a bookmark,
But how everything is also connected in a way
And how all this family history appeared to me
Years later wedged between the pages of a book.
Our heritage was not at all a part of our fondue and swim meet lives,
We had fun, we played kick the can in the street,
Or tackle football in the yard.
Even our pretensions were thoroughly modern:
A French poodle, a water pic, and German cars.
Our house was the only house on the block
That had a ‘library’, two bookshelves
Flanking the fireplace in the living room
Where my parents would stack the books
They received from the book clubs to which they belonged,
Modern editions of classics whose spines were rarely cracked,
The Sun Also Rises, Travels With My Aunt, Darkness at Noon,
And The Last of the Mohicans.
My parents sent us all to private schools as soon as they could,
And, worse, made us all take dancing lessons,
Interminable evenings wearing dark wool suits
And white cotton gloves, learning the steps
To the Foxtrot and the Waltz, while maintaining
A respectful distance between ourselves and the girls
Who were taller and already knew the steps.
The climax of all this effort was the Cotillion
Held each year in the ballroom of the Statler Hotel.
I remember receiving the invitation in the mail
Its fine card stock and expensive calligraphy
Like a death certificate in my hands,
“Mr. Keith James Dunlap, you are cordially invited to attend.”
What was being asked of me? Not much,
And yet it all seemed an impossibility:
I was afraid because everything that was to be
Was waiting for me and I could only imagine
What would happen, what would unfold,
To become a part, to join society,
To inherit a life already sharpened and dulled
By insincere pleasantries; I did not have the skills,
And knew that there was nothing in it,
And yet, I was the dutiful child and would attend.
And somehow that decision was the end
Of everything and also the beginning.
To accept the invitation, and find
That everything would fit together
In a way I couldn’t have expected.
Keith Dunlap
