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Here's one of the "germ" poems I read at the meeting last week:
"Up There"
There--it is up there that souls set free
do sail, hail and hallow Maker of all made! We
below believe--Believe? Long led, we
hope, hail and hallow, worship with wild
wailing or soft sighing. Faith, either mild
and hoping, wild and groping--Either, child,
behooves us, stamps and proves us not beguiled.
I'm sure I knew what I meant when I wrote it, nearly two years ago.
"When I wrote that, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant. And now--" (quoting Robert Browning)
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I sort of know why I wrote that poem. I was thinking about putting Stevie Weidman in my "Big Baby" book. Stevie was autistic or something. He looked and sounded intelligent but very nervous, and he had this tic of saying "up there," apropos of nothing. I remember hearing him talking to Paw Paw, and he would say, "Uncle Reed (up there), yesterday (up there) I was over at the spring (up there, up there)--" Sometimes he would get started saying it and couldn't stop. Anyway, I thought maybe Stevie knew something that was going on Up There.
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Mr. Jarrett, who could hear them talking in that town "up there," had two sons. The older one was named Hoyt, and he's the only one I can remember. Mrs. Jarrett had a refrigerator with the motor on top, and that's what I visualize when I talk about the electric refrigerator at the boarding house, in the Book. But probably, by the time the boarding house got one, the motors were enclosed. I'll Google it.
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This is the 1935 Frigidaire, probably what would have been in the boarding house in 1941, when Betty was showing it to Mary and Philip. This is like the gas stove in the story. It's also like the one that was in Granny SDS's apartment in Powderly, about 1945-46.
7 comments:
I hadn't read "The Bells", so I found it on-line. I like "The Raven" more. Every time it said "bells, bells, bells", I thought of Quasimodo. Just the way my mind works! I loved your poem. Have you put your poems together in a book? I'd love to read them if you have. Let me know when you publish your book. I look forward to reading that also.
Have a good day and, just between you and me, I hear bells all the time. I try to tell myself it's just my windchimes, even when the wind isn't blowing!
Hugs....
Deb: If you'll email me your address, I'll send you a copy of the little chapbook I published in 2005, I think it was. It has some of my poems that have won prizes. Thanks for reading the blog. - my email: jocage@charter.net
I like that stove. It's pretty. I haven't ever read anything by Poe that I didn't like. I guess my favorite of his poems is Annabel Lee. But I do like The Raven and Ulalume. And all of them. And his stories are awesome.
Suze: I like all of them, too. But I think he was at least as unbalanced, let us say, as many writers are. Well, I watered that down to a very mild diagnosis.
I love the 1935 Frigidaire. Are we sure it was electric, or was it an ice box?
And, I'm pretty sure that Mr. Poe was a little nervous. The Bells makes me think he needed a Librium.
That's so funny and a little sad about Stevie. I seem to remember him talking that way ... I wish you had mentioned it a few years ago when my memory was still functioning on command. Now it's just hit or miss. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it misses.
That's the 1935 electric Frigidaire, or so said the stie I Googled.
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