The Point

Really, what is the point?  I have decided to re-launch my blog, a place where I can think out loud about poetry and topics related to poetry, which, I guess, is just about everything, and also "publish" my poems, often as I am still working on them and before they are finished, giving my friends a chance to chime in, if inclined.  I will also post other peoples' poetry up here, stuff I like, stuff I don't like, although often as I am actively not liking something, I sometimes become unconvinced.  The poem that has really been on my mind lately is Stevens' "The Man With the Blue Guitar," which is much too long to reproduce here, but has become a kind of spiritual retreat for me.  I would love to hear what others think.

Here is my latest production, definitely a work in progress (long, so fasten your seatbelt):

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 provisions.

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 grandson 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 only 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, Adventures With Charley, 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.”

Anxiety drank from my heart as if it were a cup

And seemed to empty it. A premonition

Of embarrassment  and conspiracy,

A vision of my own clumsy destiny,

Took hold, and I did not want to go.

I did not want to join the ranks

Of sneering aristocratic society,

A life shaped and sharpened

By insincere pleasantries; I did not have the skills.

And yet, I was the dutiful child and did attend.

And somehow that decision was the end

Of everything and also the beginning.

Keith Dunlap