It was the summer of '91.
Somehow I was at this babe's house in West Seattle. We had absolutely nothing in common, and it was a mystery why she wanted to hang out with me, but not as much of a mystery as to why I was hanging out with her. In any event, I was feeling very unencumbered and free, and ready to explore areas of my town I knew little about.
West Seattle, at least back in '91, was a haven for white dysfunctional boeing employees, who had escaped the trailer parks and yearned for suburban, domestic catholic tranquility, while their children yearned for designer jeans, peroxide, cocaine and hot sweaty sex with complete and total losers.
That particular night, while the babe walked around on the phone and planned the logistics for the evenings brain cell depleting festivities, I sat on the couch and scanned her environment to get a read on her situation.
My eye caught the T.V. stand and shelf below where some magazines and newspapers lay. I noticed something that seemed out of place. It was a large book of collected poetry by an author, I'd never heard of before, W.H. Auden. I lunged forward from the couch, grabbed the book, cracked it open and began to read. Within a few lines my world became the world of the poem. The poem was "On the Circuit", and it began,
Among pelagian travelers,
Lost on their lewd conceited way...
Of course, I had no idea what pelagian meant, but the whole lewd conceited thing was imminently comprehensible. One of the things I liked to do, when I was blasted out of my mind was speak as if I were a stuffy, English Professor. The absurdity of an older, Englishman, who is continually affronted by faux pas of etiquette was an inexhaustible mine of hilarity to me when I was as rude as an irish sailor.
This poem seemed to hint at someone with the sensibilities of a stuffy Englishman, yet disenchanted rather than stout. As I read deeper into this poem, I found a few other key lines that delighted me, such as:
I cannot now say where I was
The evening before last,
Unless some singular event
Should intervene to save the place,
A truly asinine remark,
A soul-bewitching face,
Or blessed encounter, full of joy,
Unscheduled on the Giesen Plan,
With, here, an addict of Tolkien,
There, a Charles Williams fan.
The poem is about being on the lecture circuit, doing poetry readings and book signings. And it seems that when he returns, the only thing he remembers are "asinine remarks" and "soul-bewitching faces" also, the poem reveals that Auden is a fan of Tolkien and Carlos Williams!
But, I couldn't help but to wonder what kind of poet writes about being on the lecture circuit? I knew my Dante's and Ben Johnson's and Virgil's (and even my Theodore Roetke's!)... and they never wrote about flying from city to city selling books...
Who was this guy?
But first, a last line from "On the Circuit" that I really dug...
Is this my milieu where I must
How grahamgreeneish!How infra dig!
Snatch from the bottle in my bag An analeptic swig?
Infra dig! what the hell did that mean? I didn't know, but months later I finished a work of poetry and short stories and I named it "ultra-dig" cause it just sounded so cool.
It turns out that Auden is not a silly bombastic poet, but one of the greatest of our age (in my and a few others humble opinion). I was so taken with this poetry that although I was drunk and ready to go tear up the town, I offered this babe $20 on the spot for the book. I wanted it badly. She said her mother had bought it for her and she had never/would never read it, and so a deal was struck, and the book was mine. Over the following months and years, there were many poems in that book that captured my heart, and resonated with my sensitivity for the rapturous fecundity that lies sublimely within all creations and events.
There was "Nocturne" which begins so majestically,
Appearing unannounced, the moon
Avoids a mountain's jagged prongs
And sweeps into the open sky
Like one who knows where she belongs.
To me, immediately, my heart:
"Adore Her, Mother, Virgin, Muse,
A Face worth watching Who can make
Or break you as Her fancy choose."
and then touches the cold reality of insignificance...
And neither of my natures can
Complain if I should be reduced
To a small functionary whose dreams
Are vast, unscrupulous, confused.
And ends in prayerful supplication..
That gushing lady, possibly,
Who brought some verses of her own,
That hang-dog who keeps coming back
For just a temporary loan;
A counter-image, anyway,
To balance with its lack of weight
My world, the private motor-car
And all the engines of the State.
There were so many great poems on love and life, that I read from that book faithfully. During lulls in my day, the poems would play over in my mind like the great Soul/R&B ballads. Over time, my indebtedness and gratitude to W.H. Auden was such that the first time I went back to New York in '96, after a 30 year absence, one of the places I went, was the former residence of W.H. Auden. I followed the directions, and just north of St. Marks off of Avenue "A" I arrived at the location. There was a plaque noting that it was the residence of W.H. Auden, but other than that, it was a completely non-descript brick building. As I looked upon the building, I was somewhat stunned that It was completely ordinary. I stood there a long time, looking at it, trying to discern something, anything that would seem to indicate that someone of greatness once resided there. I left after a while, utterly defeated in my quest to pick out some special feature. As I contemplated and attempted to reconcile the great man with the ordinary building, I realized that Auden wasn't great because of what he had, or where he lived. W.H. Auden was great because he was The quintessential 20th century poet who successfully linked the greatest aspects of the epic poet tradition, with the end of days, brought on by the creation of a multi-tiered modern society.
My favorite poem in the collection, which sounds as fresh and vital to my ear now as when I first read it, is,
"First Things First"
It speaks of longing, loneliness, companionship, nature, love, finality...
Woken, I lay in the arms of my own warmth and listened
To a storm enjoying its storminess in the winter dark
Till my ear, as it can when half-asleep or half-sober,
Set to work to unscramble that interjectory uproar,
Construing its airy vowels and watery consonants
Into a love-speech indicative of a Proper Name.
Scarcely the tongue I should have chosen, yet, as well
As harshness and clumsiness would allow, it spoke in your praise,
Kenning you a god-child of the Moon and the West Wind
With power to tame both real and imaginary monsters,
Likening your poise of being to an upland county,
Here green on purpose, there pure blue for luck.
Loud though it was, alone as it certainly found me,
It reconstructed a day of peculiar silence
When a sneeze could be heard a mile off, and had me walking
On a headland of lava beside you, the occasion as ageless
As the stare of any rose, your presence exactly
So once, so valuable, so very now.
This, moreover, at an hour when only too often
A smirking devil annoys me in beautiful English,
Predicting a world where every sacred location
Is a sand-buried site all cultured Texans do,
Misinformed and thoroughly fleeced by their guides,
And gentle hearts are extinct like Hegelian Bishops.
Grateful, I slept till a morning that would not say
How much it believed of what I said the storm had said
But quietly drew my attention to what had been done
-So many cubic metres the more in my cistern
Against a leonine summer- putting first things first:
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
There is no comment needed.
Greatness is it's own comment,
and the world of this poem is complete from creation to end
Thank You W.H. Auden!!
Tell Christopher Isherwood I said, "Hi!"
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