It's pretty obvious that aging work-averse me didn't follow up quite as intended. I have not yet posted a revised version of any of the poems that are in my book, Wild Once, and Captured, that have appeared on this blog. Nor have I made audio recordings. Not doing so to this point hasn't been one of my wiser moves, but here's the longish introduction and the first three poems--short ones--as they appear in the book:
If I am a poet…
it is due, in large part and in equal measure, to the
intersection of my life as a high school kid with three people, Mr. Rast,
Geoffrey Chaucer and Jill Littlewood. The three are almost iconic to me, though
I could very easily be misremembering them and the classes in which they each
played a role.
Mr. Rast taught 11th (or 12th) grade
English at Hyde Park High School. Tall, thin, dour, like Washington Irving’s
Ichabod Crane, Rast was often far too low-key to capture my attention.
We read Great Expectations
in his class. He tried hard to get us to like the book. Alas, we were none
of us Pip, or refused to identify, and the experience put me (and, maybe,
everyone else) off Dickens pretty much forever.
Other equally deadly encounters with Samuel Butler’s Way of All Flesh and Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter come to
mind. I can’t say for sure whether they were also readings assigned by Mr. Rast,
rather than some other entirely forgotten teacher, but the point is that my
memories of Rast suffer more than a little from being part of a Great
Expectations-Way of All Flesh-Scarlet Letter scrum.
He also had us read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Arguably Chaucer is no more or less deadly than
Hawthorne or Dickens, but, in the course of guiding us through the poem, Mr.
Rast came stunningly alive himself.
Our principle task, I think, was the requirement that we
memorize the Prologue to the Tales.
Doing so, Rast told us, would help us relieve future tediums, like those nights
when we were on guard duty (a likelihood that seemed remote to begin with and
grew more so the deeper the country plunged into the Vietnam era).
In any case, the assignment was universally despised. But,
relentless as always, Rast made earnest effort to inspire us. And when he recited
line after line from the Prologue— long and loopy Middle English vowels,
guttural consonants spilling from his lips—I was stunned.
Adults, in my experience, were devoid of obvious enthusiasms
and added little of value to the lives of children, no matter their age. Yet,
here was Rast, come alive before me. I was charmed and, in an obscure and
mysterious way, wished to be like him (only not as old).
The experience did not make me a better student. Nothing
could have done that. But I learned about 20 lines of the prologue and know
some combination of them still.
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour…”
When I recite the lines, I strive to mimic the sounds Rast
gave to the words, but somehow the cadence of my own voice and idiosyncratic
pronunciations makes the verse feel like my own. And as the sounds of the lines
drift away, I wonder that one of Chaucer’s great achievements was to so inspire
Mr. Rast. And one of Rast’s great achievements lies in how he first captured
me, and, in my later years, worked a continuing and seductive magic on me.
It is only a small leap in memory from Rast and Chaucer to
Jill Littlewood. Blond and appealing, Littlewood was in most of my classes
through four years of high school. We didn’t date. I thought Jill was into
smart, mature (at least physically) black guys. I on the other hand, was a disinterested
student and a skinny, barely adolescent, white guy. What I learned from her
affected me because it was unique, not because we were involved or because I
pined for her in full sophomoric blush.
Rast also had us write poetry of our own, and collected a
poem from each of us to assemble into a class anthology. [1] My
inspired contribution to the class project was a lament about the Chicago White
Sox and their seemingly perennial also-ran status.
Some of the poems in the collection were accompanied by illustrations
produced by the poets. My poem ran with my drawing of stick figure ballplayers
strategically positioned around a ball diamond, each of whom had one big
baseball-gloved hand and an exploding head.
The poem, “The White Sox go poof,” was unfortunately less memorable than the artwork.
Jill’s poem, on the other hand, included a line, a phrase,
really, that has long since solidified in my memory. The poem, perhaps
illustrated, I cannot say, described a vision of Jill’s Hyde Park neighborhood
after a rain shower. Five of her words:
“mud luscious and puddle wonderful”
echo and splash in eternal recall. These words have lots of
u’s and l’s and require an active tongue and are shiny wet and sexy. To my
sixteen or seventeenish self they hinted at experiences, at words as vehicles
to ride, at things to see with innocent eyes, at delights laid or laying before
us.
Years later, I have my own versions of Jill’s words (and other
intentions, perhaps) but there are places full of
…mudbath magic and
where the sun strikes home
rises
the smell of eternity.”
For stimulating my first creative interests beyond the
childhood games I would still play if I could, I thank Littlewood, Rast and
Chaucer. They have been small, glowing suns. By their light, I have seen a few
things.
***
Now, in my 65th year, being a poet has become a
rock for me, a core piece of how I think about myself. To celebrate the fits
and starts and passions of that life, I present this book of poems and an
essay, or two. And this Introduction, with which I intend only to clarify a few
points.
Two poems, specifically Elijah
Hanavi and Jezebel, are intended
to be understood together. The first is about a stiff-necked theist and his
denunciation of the Phoenician princess Jezebel, the gentile wife of Ahab, king
of Israel.
The second, a longer look at Elijah and Jezebel, includes a
relationship between them as young adults. That encounter is not described or
suggested anywhere in the bible. It is, instead, the story according to Jeff.
But the bible is the collective effort of dozens, if not hundreds of anonymous storytellers,
polemicists, ideologues and redactors—those last, the leaders in the long
effort at selecting, editing and sequencing the stories that would become the
Bible. Of course, I am making stuff up here, but I am certainly not the first
guilty party to do so.
The Judean author(s) of Kings told the story of Jezebel,
Elijah and Ahab about 200 years after the alleged events would have occurred in
the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel, the terminally unfortunate victim of
invasion, subjugation and exile by Assyrian conquerors. The story portrays the
northern kingdom under Ahab as an offender against Jewish belief. For those
offenses Israel earned the wrath of the one god, who stood aside and left the
country to its fate at the hands of Assyria. It is a story told by the victors,
or, in this case, a story told by the scribes of Judea, survivors of the
catastrophe that primarily fell on the less orthodox Jews and Judaism of the
cosmopolitan state of Israel.
The evolution of the stories that would later be compiled in
the bible, and the choices of which stories to include and which ones to
exclude, served the interests of the compilers and their patrons. Repetition,
institutionalization and the exegesis of religious leaders over time make those
stories history, however far they might have wandered from the facts.
My version of events, recounted at some length in Jezebel, tells the story of a zealous
prophet forecasting the political defeat and death of a woman with whom he once
had a very different relationship. There are no widely acknowledged
archaeological or historical facts that support the biblical version, or many
of the other events detailed in the Torah. Most of the available evidence
suggests that Jews, themselves, and the distinctly Jewish kingdom of Judah appeared
on the scene during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, too late to support
the veracity of biblical narratives that includes an account of the exodus from
Egypt, forty years of desert wandering, or the arrival at and conquest of a
promised land.
My biblical story imagines a prior relationship between the
young Elijah and the young Jezebel; a relationship of sufficient intensity to
account for an unhinged prophet calling down the lord’s vengeance on his
ex-lover (whom he may not even remember). I do not claim that my version is
more factual than any other . Its chief merit lies in its challenge to the
authenticity of bible stories and the political, cultural and social uses to
which they are routinely put.
Of course, I want the two poems to be judged on their merit
as poems, but I also hope that they will raise questions in the minds of a few
readers and cause them to reevaluate where justice might lie in the conflict
between Zionism, the ideology of the world’s last colonialist expansion, and
the nationalism of the Palestinians who were there in Haifa and Jaffa and
Jerusalem first or, at any rate, for a very, very longtime. In my version of
this conflict, the Palestinians are the Indians of the New World, the Jewish
settlers are the Puritans, longing for New Jerusalem.
My Jezebel is clear when she asks the absent Eli,
“Will the story of Jezebel and Ahab be told
according to Elijah?
And what will be the fruit that grows
from such stories?”
***
This book is my message to whoever will listen, especially
to my children.
I want them to know how much I love them and what I have
been thinking about them and thinking about other things. I want to say hold
fast to some portion of your dreams, adjust and maneuver however you must, and
construct something that marks your place in time. I want them and others to
take the message of Occupy to heart; it is what comes next for all of us that
matters most. We will be dust soon enough, but before that happens we are part
of an endlessly long and unbroken chain of human struggle. That, of course,
accounts for why there is so much sadness in each life, but it also is why we
look at each other sometimes and exult in our terrible beauty.
There is also, my dad, Bernie Epton, who stands very near to
the heart of this publishing thing. I learned to be both ambitious and
delusional from Dad, who seemed to me a towering figure throughout his life. He
wanted to make a grand contribution to the world and to be recognized for it.
That he did not quite pull that off is a story I would like to write another
time.
Most of my poems, I suppose, have some biographical element,
sometimes in very small doses. A few lines from The Unfolding are most certainly about Dad and I:
“As from a mountaintop,
he looked upon me,
called me to account,
but I stepped beyond the shouting
with a fresh scheme for thieving
and a dream of myself retrieving
the fantastic honors we imagined for ourselves.”
Thanks, Dad, for the delusions.
***
Knowing and loving Marrianne McMullen, Brendan’s mom and the
person (and editor) to whom I am married, has been the most rewarding
experience of my life. I work a little harder around her, and a little bit
better, as well. Our conversations about her work and mine help both of us to
sharper focus. There is also the healing laughter and the tender moment. And,
finally, there is Infatuation, a state we still visit from time to time.
There are plenty of others to thank, long-time friends and
ex-friends, a slew of folks with whom I used to work and struggle, and all the
people who walk their dogs on the streets of Washington, D.C. and elsewhere; a
fraternity to which Jetta and I are happy to belong. Dog walking is an occasion
for gregarious, mammalian interaction. It is also an opportunity for rest, for rhythm
and for reflection. I always have pencils and paper in my pocket when Jetta and
I leave the house.
My siblings deserve separate thanks, also. Sister Dale understands
my poetry, I think, and is a big fan, regardless. Sister Teri is a tougher
audience, but she tries because she loves me, and for that I am grateful.
Brother Mark, who sometimes pretends not to understand
anything I’ve written, is the kind of guy who frequently comes late to the
fight, but who also and always shows up. Most of the last minute corrections to
this manuscript came because Mark chimed in at that moment. His suggestions
made me think hard, especially that I might want to harm him. But most of the
changes that he inspired went in and made the manuscript better. Of course,
because his input came so late in the game, he probably ought to share some of
the blame for any errors that were introduced at the last.
Elissa Miller, who has been my good friend since 1970, and Andrea
Vincent and Leigh Dingerson made crucial contributions to this book. They read
most of the poems in manuscript and made suggestions. They challenged me about
the meanings of words and poems, and helped me to see ideas and themes that I
had somehow missed. Their productive responses helped me move unfinished poems
along and make this book happen. They bear no responsibility for its flaws,
which, of course, are all mine.
Ella Epton, my sister-in-law, is a talented designer and
artist. Without her, there would be no book. Stacee Kalmanovsky, my niece, sat
through two or three recitations of some of the poems before she produced the
art that soars and splashes across these pages. Thanks to Ella and Stacee for
making this a family affair and a shared accomplishment.
Finally, all poets, good or bad, stand on the shoulders of
other (and better) poets. It seems foolhardy to try and name all the ones who
have made a difference to me, but I’ve gone on a fool’s errand before. Thanks,
then, to the poets whose poetry has helped to push and tumble me through life.
There is W.S. Merwin, who has explored the inside of
pencils, there is Mary Oliver and Mary Karr, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne
Rich and June Jordan, Gregory Corso, Rita Dove, Sherman Alexie, Anne Sexton,
Langston Hughes, Marge Piercy, Edward Robinson, Paul Dunbar, Patti Smith, Derrick
Brown, William Thigpen, Espada, Neruda, and the galaxies around.
Jeff Epton
Washington, DC
March 2012
PS. Everybody should try this self-publishing thing. It
beats waiting on the world to notice you.
[1] Perhaps
one day I’ll speak to Jill or someone else who was in those classes and they
will remember a different teacher and other assignments. If so, I can only
repeat that my indifference to high school and its various features ran deep.
Laying Fallow
Sometimes
words one does
not write are plowed back
into the brain in restrained hope that
there may be a more bountiful harvest next time
Self-Control
We are,
each of us,
reimagining our own story.
This is how
we pull ourselves forward
into whatever is coming next.
I Am Your Journeyman
I am no poet of the
interior voyage.
But I am a journeyman,
giving good effort
for wages or food.
I know the paths
through caves and
forests.
I know the edible fruit
along the way.
I’ll show you the shallow fords
across the river of
tears.
Follow me
picking the way
through the woods
on black days. Heed this moonlight
exalting the heart
even through
this night of fear.
Caution now,
there may be need
for stealth.
Keep pace.
Keep close.
Keep
faith.
Savor
this good bread,
considering without regret
the
choices you have made.
We’ll
arrive safely soon enough,
resting on Thursday,
moving
on, refreshed, on Friday.
Along the way,
we’ll
learn more trust,
celebrating dews and frosts and thunder.
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