Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season
Nobody has a butler anymore –
or at least nobody that I know.
Some other domestic perhaps?
Cleaning woman, leaf blower?
The police have not named a suspect.
I suspect they haven’t a clue.
Nor do I.
Nor do you.
photo by Wesley Moore
Over the years, my friend (and one-time collaborator) Dr. Paul O’Brien has guest-lectured for my classes in various capacities, e.g., to introduce Beowulf or Hamlet or the genre of poetry. In the poetry intro, he begins by reciting “Who Goes with Fergus” in his rich baritone but then admits he doesn’t exactly know what it means:
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all disheveled wandering stars.
But he does know that he loves the way it sounds, its imagery.
He goes on to tell the students that poetry can be “your companion, your friend.”
In this context, I’ve found Yeats’ “To a Friend’s Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” a comfort on days like today when I’m down:
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
However, this phenomenon of literary friendship is not only limited to poetry; I count Frank Bascombe, the narrator of Richard Ford’s trilogy, a pal, and every time I finish one of the Bascombe novels it’s like saying good-bye to someone I’ll miss hanging out with. I’ll miss Frank’s voice. (Though rumor has it Frank survived Hurricane Sandy and will tell us about it in a new short story).
I’ve recently run across a new companion, J.I.M. Stewart, whose Eight Modern Writers is the final volume of The Oxford History of English Literature, published in 1963. Now you might expect – or should I say one might expect – a critical volume sporting such a title to be as dry as unbuttered melba toast; however, reading Stewart is like listening to an erudite uncle with a whiskey in his hand and a barb in his throat.
Here he is one Yeats, the featured poet above:
Yeats has too vigorous a dramatic sense to make any kind of grateful stroll out of old age’s necessary descent from Helicon to the Academy, or to accompany it with pleasant murmuring of years that bring the philosophic mind. Rather he is going to be carried down kicking, and his masters are going to find a rebellious pupil:
I mock Plotinus’ thought
And cry in Plato’s teeth
And here is Stewart chiding the master:
[In “Under Ben Bulben”] there are no such things, we want to tell him, as “Base-born products of base beds.”
And one more on reading the first part of Joyce’s Ulysses:
Indeed, it’s as if we’re locked inside of Dedalus’s mind, and although an interesting place, we sometimes find ourselves beating our fists wishing to get out.
As it turns out, Stewart (1906- 1994) was a novelist himself, and in a less serious pursuit wrote over 50 detective novels under the pseudonym Michael Innes.
At any rate, I’m very happy to be spending this week in his company.
James Innes Michael Stewart
When I first started teaching at my current school, I was 32, and the mamas of the Upper School students looked matronly to me. Now 30 years later, the students’ mamas look like jail bait, and those very first students I taught look matronly.
Which begs the question, what do I look like?
Click arrow above for sound.
Selfie
For every tatter in its mortal dress . . .
Now, when the man in the mirror stares back,
it’s not my father I see,
but old WH Auden himself,
that mask of overindulgence,
pocked and puckered,
eyes rheumy, cross-hatched with red,
the tattered, bruised bags beneath
stuffed with hobo rags – used t-shirts,
yellowed boxers – plus a half pint of rot gut —
artifacts of excess, of bad habits
embraced like brothers,
boon companions for many a year.
WH Auden
Here’s the dub version of “Nassau Street Song,” copyrighted in 1987 by University of South Carolina Press
Click the arrow above for sound.
Mad Luke went down to the shanty town
To find the mon dat stole he wife.
With whiskey on he pantin’ breath
And wit he brother switch blade knife.
He be so mad he blood do scald
And tears gush out he bloodshot eyes.
He curse de two dat cause de strife
Still hoping’ dat it be a lie.
But in he heart he know it true –
He seen de looks dat she be given’.
He see dat mon a-hangin’ round.
He heard the wimmins whispering.
So he run down the street a-wailin’
Swearin’ he gwine put den underground.
De other folk look out dey door
To see what make dat devil sound.
When he get back to he own house
He kick de lock door open wide.
And there in bed be he own wife
With another mon by her side.
They rumble in dat shanty house.
Luke cut de mon, den cut he wife.
Dat bedroom be all colored red
Dat just last month been painted white.
De police siren scream through town
and lights was flashing everywhere.
And when the police squad show up,
Dey shocked to find that Luke still there.
Dey put den two under de ground.
They took mad Luke to the prison farm,
And now them two can’t cause no strife,
And now mad Luke can’t cause no harm.
Osmond Watson, “City Life”
Bravo to Senator Brad Hutton D-Orangeburg who filibustered the baphoons who want to punish the College of Charleston for choosing Fun Home for summer reading.
Senator, this dub poem is dedicated to you.
Click arrow for sound (a must)
South Carolina legislature ain’t got no culture
State legislature ain’t got no culture
Bunch of baphoons, mon
fools, mon
Hutto sat upon de rock
and watch baphhon go by
sat upon de rock
and watch de babhoon go by
He say,
“Gwine fillabuster
them ignorant bible-thumpers
gwine say over and over
till my throat gone sore:
gwine say
“‘Hey, Senator Fair,
Senator Grooms,
Listen, you cracker ass baphoon,
you sanctimonious
psalm-singing
son of a bitch
burner of de witch
arse-belching vulagarian,
self-anointed librarian –
Hey, you, leave de the College alone!”‘
Wes Moore, dub poet/sun god
Follow on Twitter @ragwatercat
Click great arrow for sound
Pick pocketed, mon
lot by lot,
field by field.
Pappy dirt gone forever, now,
sold for
dat ready cash, you know,
back in the day,
cash dat dwindle away
bit by bit,
drop by drop,
dollar by dollar
disappearing
like water from a leaky
bucket
a-plunk
plunk
plunk
No, not a drop left, now, no.
So dat is dat,
De bucket dry,
Me pockets empty
here in the shade of a shed
across from a field of condo
on the road to Kiawah.
Hello, college student. I can’t believe that slave-driver of a professor of yours has assigned Titus Andronicus. Smart move coming here. Believe me, after reading this summary of the plot, you’ll be praising Jesus you didn’t give the text a try. In fact, the plot is so conjunkificated with murder and mayhem, you might not even get through this easy-to-read amped up version.
Note, I’ve modernized and shortened the names of the characters. Before taking a test or writing a paper, you gotta check out Wikipedia for the real deal on what these fools actually went by back in the day.
Okay, let’s get this over with.
Protagonist Titus sacrifices the eldest son of Tammy, Queen of the Goths, to avenge the deaths of his own sons killed during a 10-year campaign against her people. Titus turns down offer of becoming emperor (bad, if not tragic mistake) and supports the previous emperor’s son Satch’s claim to the throne, much to Satch’s younger brother’s Bass’s chagrin. Satch promises to marry Titus’s daughter, Lavinia, even though she’s engaged to aforementioned younger brother Bass.
You following? Bass done been double-dissed.
Titus’s surviving (but not for long) sons Quinn, Martin and Matt point out to stubborn daddy that Roman Law sez Bass gots first dibs on Lavina, but Titus don’t dig backtalk from offspring and accuses the boys of treason. In the subsequent ensuing scuffle, Titus slays his own boy Matt, which prompts Satch to denounce the crazy-ass Andronicus clan. So he marries Tammy, whose lover, the moor Aaron makes Iago look like Al Roper in evil comparison.
Anyway, Tammy talks new hubby-to-be to pardon little brother Bass and the entire Andronicus family. You’ll see why shortly.
Next day, on a royal hunt Aaron convinces Tammy’s sons Demmy and Ron to kill Bass so they can rape Lavinia. “Sho nuff,” they say, do the deed, dump poor Bass’s body in a pit, drag Lavinia into the woods, rape her, then lop off her tongue and hands so she can’t squeal orally or in writing. Aaron then forges a letter that frames two-thirds of Titus’s surviving sons, Martin and Quinn, for Bass’s murder, so of course, Satch arrests their asses.
Got it?
Okay, Titus’s brother Marcus finds mutilated Lavinia and takes her to Titus, who’s still reeling from the accusations leveled at Martin and Quinn. Enter Aaron the Moor with an alleged message from Satch saying that he’ll spare M & Q if Titus or brother Marcus or remaining son Luke cuts of one of their hands and sends it to Satch. Titus volunteers and lets Aaron hack off his left hand.
What was he thinking? Who knows?
Aaron hacking off Titus’s hand
Is this making sense? You see, it’s all about vengeance.
Guess what? Aaron double crosses Titus. A messenger delivers to Titus the severed heads of his sons Martin and Quinn along with his own severed left hand.
Finally, Titus has had enough, time for revenge. He sends last son Luke off to raise and army among their previous enemies the Goths.
Resourceful Lavinia picks up a stick with her mouth and using that orifice and her two stumps writes the names of assailants Demmy and Ron in the dirt.
Tammy (who seems as adept as Sarah Palin in hiding pregnancies) gives birth to a bi-racial child. Aaron kills the midwife and nurse (after all, cutting off tongues and hands is no guarantee of silence) and flees with his baby, only to get nabbed by Luke with his Goth army in tow. Luke threatens to hang the baby unless Aaron sings, which he does, like a
canarymagpie, tells all of the above in blank verse.
Aaron and his newborn baby
Meanwhile, back in the Imperial City, Titus pulls a Hamlet and feigns insanity, sort of.
Thinking Titus is insane and might buy a staged visitation of spirits, Tammy, Ron, and Demmy dress up like allegorical manifestations of Revenge, Murder, and Rape and tell Titus they’ll grant him revenge if he talks son Luke out of attacking Rome. Tammy splits, but Titus talks Demmy and Ron into hanging around.
Bad move, boys.
He slits their throats, grinds their bones, and bakes their heads into a cake.
Okay, ready?
Next day Titus throws a feast and asks Satch if a father should kill her daughter if she has been raped. “Of course,” Satch says, so Titus kills what’s left of Lavinia.
When Satch calls for Ron and Demmy, Titus informs him that they’re in the cake mother Tammy’s munching on.
Titus kills Tammy, Satch kills Titus, Luke kills Satch, is crowned emperor, orders Tammy’s body to be thrown to the wild beasts that hang out outside Rome’s city limits, and sentences unrepentant Aaron to be buried up to chest to starve and/or die of thirst.
Aaron rues not being able to live longer because he feels as if he hasn’t done enough evil in his life.
Theme: bad karma breeds bad karma/violence sells.
Serving Tammy sons baked in a soufflé
Throughout 23 April 2025, the 461th birthday of William Shakespeare, I imagined his actual birth, picturing in my mind’s eye the room where the event occurred. There would have been a midwife there and perhaps some of Mary Arden Shakespeare’s lady friends who might witness the appearance of his bald dome, the final push, the slap and scream – perhaps punctuated in crescendoing iambs. He would have been immediately swaddled.
Not-necessarily-accurate internet sources claim that an Elizabethan birth room would have been decorated with the finest “hangings” the family possessed, and I don’t doubt this superstitious possibility given I know 21st Century football fans who wear the same totemistic socks every Saturday during a win streak. After all, the chances of an infant surviving until puberty weren’t promising.
For example, here’s a list of John and Mary Arden Shakespeare’s children:
Joan b. 1558 d. 1558.
Margaret b. 1562 d. 1563
William b. 1564 d.1616
Gilbert b. 1566 d. 1612
Joan Shakespeare Hart b. 1569 d. 1646
Richard b. 1564 d. 1613
Edmund b. 1580 d. 1607
William himself (often away from Stratford in London) only fathered three children (two of them twins) and lost his only son at the age of 11.
No wonder they farmed infants off-site to (I would lie to imagine) buxom nursemaids. Don’t want too get too attached to something with the life expectancy of a gerbil.
But Will did make it, made it real big, as Eric Burdon said of Bo Diddley, so in celebration of Sweet William’s nativity (as the ladies supposedly called him). I thought I’d share with you a few rather non-famous but killer quotes from the plays.
Now, the rotten diseases
of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
loads o’ gravel i’ the back, lethargies, cold
palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
limekilns i’ the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
again such preposterous discoveries!Patroculus counters with “[. . . ] you ruinous butt, you whoreson/indistinguishable cur, no.”
But is bested by Thersites with this venomous tirade:
No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle
immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet
flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s
purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered
with such waterflies, diminutives of nature!
O my stars!
So let us praise that mid-wife, that plump wet nurse, Will’s immune system/good luck and/or God for the Bard’s survival, for what a gift to all us that birthday boy was!
Oh, yeah, he also died on the 23rd of April.
Click arrow above for sound
The Caribbean wind
has miraculously
displaced
a strand
from the slab
of George Will’s
toupee.
It dances a samba aloft,
like a kite string, aquiver.
Snapped open, his laptop gongs
its corporate fanfare
glowing into life.
Yahoo Sports!
Click. Click.
NL Scores
Cubbies 7, White Sox 6.
The thin crease of his lips
parts with an inaudible yes!
He takes a celebratory sip
and catches the eye of the waiter.
follow me on Twitter @ragwatercat
About a dozen or so years ago after returning from home a mole removal/biopsy procedure, I received a visitation from the muse of country music – let’s call her Twangella. The poem – as they say = wrote itself.
Click the arrow for sound:
Drunk me some wine with Jesus
at this here wedding in Galilee.
He saved the bestest for second
and provided it all for free.
So I quit my job on the shrimp boat
to follow him eternally.
No longer bound by them blue laws
enforced by the Pharisee.
And we had us some good times,
Till them Pharisee done him in.
Ain’t got no use for the religious right
After I seen what they done to him.
So when Saul/Paul stole the show
I just sorta drifted away,
Cause he never done quite understood
what Jesus was trying to say.
Paul was more like them Pharisee,
dissing this, cussing that,
giving the women a real hard time,
gay-bashing and all like that.
So I drink at home most nights now
trying to do some good,
offering the beggars a little snort
whilst praying for a robin hood.
Drunk me some wine with Jesus.
It was the bestest day I ever seen.
Drunk me some wine with Jesus,
partying with the Nazarene.
Jesus the wine-bibber, the whore’s buddy, a lot more uptight about money exchange than sins of the flesh. Actually doing a little jig in the Gospel of Thomas. A reformer. To hell with this harsh desert mentality, he preached. While he’s witnessing a throng preparing to stone an adulteress, half a world away in Tahiti naked girls with their parents’ blessings are chanting come-ons as they dance in a conga line past boys’ huts. Family values.
You Do Hoodoo 