30 Pieces of a Novel

The Poet

IT’S SNOWING; HE’S in Washington, D.C., carrying his radio news equipment back to the office (heavy tape recorder, mike and mike stands, tapes, extension cords, briefcase of books, newspapers, magazines); gave up on finding a cab; snow slashing his face to where he can barely see two feet in front of him, must be eight to ten inches on the ground already, twenty inches or more are predicted. Snow started this morning when he was taking the trolley to work, let up, his boss told him to go to the Capitol, which was his regular beat, and get a few stories and interviews and about ten choice minutes apiece from some hearings going on, then from the office window of a congressman he was interviewing he saw the snow coming down blizzardlike. “Oh, my God,” he said, and the congressman said, “What’s up?” and turned around and said, “Holy smokes; well, worse comes to worst, if I can’t get to my apartment across town I’ll spend the night here on the couch.” He called his editor, it’s around 3 P.M. now, and Herb said to hustle right back, government’s been shut down, “You might as well get here before you can’t get here, as we’re short of air material and can use whatever you got so far.” Called cabs, waited for cabs he called, went into the street and tried hailing the few passing cabs, for they’re allowed to pick up four different fares at four different spots: nothing. So he’ll walk, he thought, slowly make his way back till he finds a cab or bus going his way. It’s about a mile to the office on K Street from where he is now. Or even farther — two miles — for these streets are so long. No bus, and when he stuck out his thumb several times, no cab or car stopped. Well, who can blame them, nobody wants a sopping-wet fare or stranger in his car with all his sopping-wet gear. Walked about a half hour in the snow, only has rubbers on (“trudged,” he means, instead of “walked”), feet are frozen, hands will be next, pants soaked to the knees, doesn’t see how he can make it to the office with all this equipment — it must weigh sixty pounds altogether and is cumbersome to carry. He might have to go in someplace, a government office building if one’s still open or a museum, and plead with someone there to store his stuff till tomorrow. Should have left it in the House radio/TV gallery while he had the chance, then walked to the office with just the tapes to be edited and aired, and he might have got a hitch without all the gear — when a car pulls up, driver leans over the front seat, rolls down the window, and says, “Need a lift? I’m heading toward Georgetown, I hope I can get there before I have to abandon this car, but you seem stuck.” It’s the new Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, did an interview with him a few months ago, same outfit and tobacco smell: tweed jacket and button-down shirt, bow tie, pipe back in his mouth, smoke coming out of the bowl. “Gosh, you bet, but I’m awfully wet and I’ve got all this stuff with me,” and the poet says, “So what, this rattletrap’s seen much worse,” and puts his blinkers on, jumps out of the car, and helps him stick the equipment into the backseat; they both get in and the poet says, “Where to?” and he tells him and the poet says, “That on the way to Georgetown? I still haven’t got my bearings in this town,” and he says, “It’s sort of, with a slight diversion, but I wouldn’t want you going out of your way — you’ve been too kind as it is,” and the poet says, “Ah, listen, you help a guy in need, you earn a few extra coins to use in the slot machines in heaven, so why not? If it’s at all feasible, I’ll take you to your door, and if we get stuck in a drift, you’ll help push me out. You must have a ton of belongings back there, what do you do? A TV repairman?” and he says, “Radio, a news man, you don’t recognize me, sir?” and the poet says, “Why, you famous? Someone I should be listening to to know who’s who in town?” and he says, “Me? Just starting out, but a small news service, so I get to cover just about everything. I interviewed you when you took up your position. Your first news conference. I mean, you gave one, right after you got to Washington, also read a poem for the TV news cameras, and then I asked you for a more personal interview and you granted me one in your office.” “No kidding. I did that? Did I say anything intelligent? I must be a nice guy, seems like, but a forgetful one. Maybe it’s your hat and your snowy eyebrows,” and Gould takes off his hat and rubs his eyebrows, and the poet says, “You want to shake the chapeau over the backseat?” and he does and the poet says, “And the snow on your shoulders and hair — you’ll catch a cold,” and he says, “Sorry, should’ve brushed myself off before I got in,” and the poet says, “Don’t worry, nothing’ll hurt this heap and these are intemperate times where just survival is in order,” and looks at Gould and says, “You look a little familiar. What’d we talk about? Did I dispense my usual nonsense? I tend to freeze up before you electronic news guys when you jut your paraphernalia in my mug,” and he says, “No, you were fine, my boss said. He was afraid, in his terms, I’d get a supercilious literary stiff, since I was the one who suggested my going to your press conference, your building being so close to the Capitol, which I normally work out of. But you know: about your job, what you’ll do in it for the year you’re here or two years if you feel like staying on. What poetry means in America — there never was a time it commandeered, you said, anything close to center stage in the States. And how you plan to make it more a part of the mainstream — your primary goal,” and the poet says, “I propounded the possibility of that? What an idiot! And of course I gave no ways how I’d go about it. Listen, poetry will always be for a small devoted clientele, and nobody in government’s interested in it in the slightest. My position’s a sham — no one consults me and I can’t find anyone to consult — and it took a coupla months to learn that. But I am getting plenty of writing done — teaching’s much tougher and more time-consuming — and meeting a few nice people, though no one who’s read a stitch of my work or knew me from Adam till I arrived here, and I know they think anyone calling himself a poet’s a joke, except Sandburg and Frost, because they were homespun and made it pay. Next time disregard any poet who takes on a government sinecure, even with the word ‘poetry’ in it, or holds a press conference, at least during the first two months of his job.” The drive’s slow, the poet’s funny, garrulous, and lively, slaps his knee, relights his pipe several times, offers him a candy and, when he refuses, a mint and then a stick of gum, drops him off in front of his office building. Gould shakes his hand and says, “I can’t thank you enough, sir. I would’ve frozen out there if you hadn’t showed.” The poet says, “Drop in on me if you like — when I’m there, door’s always open. I can use the company; all the officials and librarians in the building stay away from me as if I’ve the plague. I won’t have anything to say into your machine, but we can have a coffee and chat.” He tells his boss what happened: “I meet him in a blizzard and he turns out to be the nicest guy on earth.” “Did you get another interview with him? Would have been a good bit; Washington conked out by its worst storm in twenty years, but it doesn’t stop the muse.” “Oh, come on, the guy helped me out of a terrific spot.” “You could have put the recorder on the floor, held the mike up to him while he drove. He would have loved it, maybe composed a sonnet about the storm, on the spot. Poets die for such attention, and like I told you on the phone, with the Hill probably shut down the next two days, we’ll need more tape than you ever could have brought in,” and for the first time since he got the job he thinks he has to get out of this profession.

Now he hears the poet’s in a nursing home and most likely will never come out. He’s past ninety, has been sick and so disoriented that he hasn’t been able to come to his Maine summer cottage for two years. Gould met him once up here; no, twice. First time at a reception after a poetry reading ten years ago. Was sitting next to him and said, “Excuse me, sir, you no doubt wouldn’t remember me, but around twenty-five years ago you did something for me I was always thankful for and could never forget,” and the poet said, “I did? We’re acquainted? Here, at the colony or at my university?” and he said, “No, this is the first time I’ve seen you since the incident. You were the Poetry Consultant then — this took place in D.C. — and I was a radio news reporter, and one of the worst blizzards to ever hit the city was going on and I had all this radio equipment to carry back to my office. I couldn’t get a cab so I thought I’d shlep the stuff rather than leave it in the Capitol building, which is where I worked from. Nothing was transistorized then, everything was still tubes and complicated circuitry, or at least my tape recorder was. That’s right, some radio newsmen had started to use these hand-held ones, but my outfit stayed with the enormous Wollensacks because they said the sound quality was better. I’m just trying to show how heavy my equipment was — metal microphones and mike stands — and so how grateful I was to you for giving me a lift,” and the poet said, “How’d I do this again?” and he said, “You stopped on the street in the middle of a blinding blizzard — you were in your car and must have seen me struggling in the snow. I’m not getting this out right, but without knowing who I was and that I’d even interviewed you in your office a few months earlier when you started your position, you offered me a ride back to my office. You even jumped out of the car and helped me with my equipment. It was — I don’t mean to embarrass you with this — one of the most magnanimous kindnesses ever done to me, since you were risking your life, almost. Oh, that’s going too far, though the streets had to be very slippery and big drifts were piling up fast. I know, for I was trying to wade through them, without too much luck, and I don’t even know if you made it back to your Georgetown residence after you dropped me off,” and the poet said, “Where’d all this happen again?” and he said, “Washington — when you were the Poetry Consultant, your first year. Winter, during this record-breaking snowstorm, and you were probably driving home from the Library of Congress, told like everyone else to get the heck home while you still had the chance. They closed — the government did — all their offices early because of the storm, Congress included. But who actually does give the order for the government to close up? I just thought of that. Probably no one person or office but each branch, given the separation of branches and such, or even each department gives orders for its own closing, wouldn’t that seem right?” and the poet said, “Don’t know,” and stood up and said, “Lucy, listen to this. This nice young man here. I stopped for him in a blizzard when I was the Consultant in Poetry in Washington and gave him a lift,” and Gould said, “Consultant in Poetry? That was the official title? Now it’s Poet Laureate,” and she said from across the room, “When did all this occur?” and the poet said, “I just told you: in D.C., Washington, the capital, when I was the C.P. to the Library of Congress, or should I say ‘the C.P. to the L.C. in D.C.,’ though no one called the Library that. The institution, you remember, that typically came with all the honors and regard money couldn’t buy, but scant remuneration. I don’t recall the episode myself, not even the blizzard, but this nice young man here seems to recollect it perfectly. I pulled over for him during a raging snowstorm, it seems. Act of kindness, he calls it, because he had a bevy of heavy radio equipment for his news work, and I took pity on him, I suppose, when I saw him trekking through hills of snow. I did that. Do you recall my ever telling you of it?” and she said, people she was sitting with looking at him too, “That was around thirty years ago?” and the poet looked at Gould and he nodded and the poet said, “I believe so,” and she said, “No, but it would be like you to do that. That’s how you were. But at this moment, for me, though I remember the consultancy well, it’s as if this is the first I’ve heard of the incident, which would also be like you — not so much not to remember but not to tell me of the good deeds you did then. But I could have forgotten,” and the poet said, “It was sort of nice of me to do it, wasn’t it, something I couldn’t afford to do today because of my age? And I don’t even drive anymore — you do, or our college-student driver. And a little self-admiration isn’t undesirable from time to time if you’re feeling especially down on yourself, am I wrong?” and she said, “I think it’s fine, anything you wish; you deserve even more,” and resumed talking to the people near her. The poet said to Gould, “Thank you for reminding me of it, young man. That was extremely gracious of you. Do you know the quote of Samuel Johnson about the rare friend who will help you celebrate a good review? I like things to be brought back, especially acts like that. What do you do now, still a journalist?” when a woman stopped beside them and said, “Bill, I wanted to say good night,” and he said, “Well, good night, and I guess I’ll be seeing you at the Academy this year one time,” and she said, “The Academy? I’ve never been to it, so why would you think I’d see you there?” and he said, “You don’t go? You never went? I haven’t seen you there any number of times? The Academy in New York, the one we’ve been members of for so many years, of Arts and Letters and things?” and she said, “My goodness, I thought you meant the Maine Maritime Academy training vessel, so I thought, Why on earth does he think I’d step onto that old tub?” and he said, “Perhaps because we both spend entire summers so close to it, you in the same town and straight up the street from the pier, in fact,” and she said, “Yes, but there’s still nothing there for me, can’t you see that? So why must you insist on winning this misunderstanding instead of simply laughing at it?” and he looked at her, mouth open, stared at the ceiling a few seconds, felt around behind him for the chair arms, grabbed them and made a move to sit, but then sprang up straight, kissed her cheek, and left the room, smiling as if he’d just exchanged some simple but satisfying pleasantries, and the woman said, “Lucy, you have your hands full, I see; I didn’t realize how much,” and Lucy said, “Don’t tell me, dear, let me guess.”

The second time Gould met him in Maine was a year later, over drinks at a little dinner party. Gould sat down next to him and said, “So, how are you, sir, you’re looking fine,” and the poet said, “I know you? What’s the name?” and he told him, and the poet said, “Sorry, no bell struck. What do you do, young man?” and he said, “It’s nice to still be considered young, but now I’m a teacher though I was once a reporter,” and the poet said, “For whom?” and he said, “You mean teaching?” and the poet said, “I mean both: whom, what, where, when, all the journalistic questions,” and he said, “Well, many years ago I was a newsman in Washington when you were the Consultant in Poetry,” and the poet said, “Lucy, latch onto this; this pleasant young man was a reporter during my Washington consult-the-poet days, can you believe it?” and she said, “I think I knew that,” and Gould said, “Not only that, sir — and I think we talked about it before, but at a crowded party in Castine and pretty quickly — but you gave me a lift once,” and the poet said, “I did, on one of the roads here — your car broke down, son?” and he said, “I meant in Washington then, during a tremendous snowstorm, and you stopped for me and drove me to my office, something I was always grateful for. I mean, you didn’t know me and just appeared when I needed help the most because of all the heavy gear I had on me — I was in radio news, did interviews, so carried my own equipment,” and the poet said, “Lucy did you hear what I did for this young man years ago? Stopped in a snowstorm, didn’t even know who he was or what he did, and gave him a ride to his office when he needed one the most,” and she said, “It was very nice of you” and, to Gould, “I can tell, after so many years, that you were quite appreciative,” and he said, “It was wonderful, one of the most selfless acts anyone’s ever done for me, because I’m telling you, this was some snowstorm — a blizzard, knocked out Washington for several days,” and the poet said, “Good, I’m glad you survived it and are here today to recount it,” and a couple of people in the circle of chairs they’re in started laughing and the poet said, “Did I say something that seemed to you unintentionally funny? Well, good, it’s summer and we’re supposed to be relaxed, so people should laugh.”

It’s in Maine at the old farmhouse they rent that Gould hears the poet’s in a nursing home and his wife died the past year. He asks about him, and the man who told him says, “As far as anyone knows, the old fool’s on his way out too.” The man’s wife says, “Now that’s unkind,” and the man says, “I only meant he was once a fairly good poet and critic, and two to three of his poems are among the best produced by any American in the last four decades, which is something, but he’s been an old fool for more than thirty years, the longest period of addlement I’ve witnessed in a human being. Besides, with his memory failing for years he’s become a menace to our entire cliff colony, forgetting he turned on a gas stove, leaving his suburban van parked on a steep hill with the hand brake disengaged, and things like that.” “I’m sorry to learn of it,” Gould says, and the man says, “We were too, but worse to observe it. Most of us haven’t the kind of fire insurance to cover a completely burnt house. It’s punitively expensive because of the local infatuation with arson on our peninsula; nor has anyone devised the type of body armor needed by one of us or our grandkids to withstand a ramming from a megaton van,” and Gould says, “Excuse me, but I meant I was sorry to hear about his wife and illness and confinement and so on. What a pity, for what a nice man.” “Excuse me, and Dolores will no doubt rebuke my pitilessness to this moribund old fool, whom we both like, mind you, enormously, and, as I said, admire. But to be honest, a greater egotist, braggart, social manipulator, and literary operator never walked so assuredly through the fields of poetry, and I’ve run across some lulus in my time. An example, and this also of his idiocy, since it didn’t start when he first became senile, you know—” and his wife says, “Now that’s enough,” and he says, “No, let me finish, since I never could make any sense to Bill on this score, simply because he refused to see anything he’d done as wrong, no matter how inappropriate, ill-considered, or just plain dumb it was. Once, an anthologist was putting together a book of poems by poets under forty. When our poet hears this, and he had his ears screwed into anything he thought could help his career, he contacts the anthologist and says, ‘Why haven’t you asked me for any poems?’ ‘Because you’re over forty,’ the anthologist says; ‘you’re sixty-two.’ This was a number of years ago, of course, though he never changed. And Bill’s answer? ‘So what? If you’re compiling an anthology of contemporary American poetry I’d think you’d want my work in it, because who cares what age a poet is when you read his poems?’ Does that make any sense to you? Are we talking here of a truly great self-effacing unfinagling realistic guy?” and Gould says, “He’s — well, yes, it doesn’t make much sense — but still, and maybe this’ll seem silly to you, but he once did something so wonderful for me that it’s hard to think anything bad of him.” He starts to tell the Washington story and the man says, “I know, I was at some party up here when you gushed all over him in recapitulating it, but you must know that everyone has his three to four involuntary selfless acts to his credit, and Bill probably has a few more than that, and not just because he’s survived past ninety, but listen to this”—and he reels off a number of stories showing the poet manipulating people and institutions—“and I’m only going back fifty-some years, which is how long I know him,” and Gould says, “Still, you can’t see what I’m saying? I’m sure there was this other good side to him. Not so much involuntary or momentarily magnanimous but downright selfless and bighearted and generous. Going out of his way for a stranger when most people in the same situation — a blinding snowstorm, which also meant he couldn’t have recognized me as the fellow who interviewed him months before — would have driven past. Ten inches on the ground, maybe another fifteen expected, and you’re in your warm car with your warm pipe and you want to get to your warm home fast with maybe even a fireplace going? Risking your life, you can almost say — that’s not so farfetched. The snow was piling up a couple of inches an hour and the car could skid, when if he didn’t stop for me and take all the time it took to load my equipment up and drive me to my office, he might be able to make it home safely … anyway, the chances of it would be better. But what did I start out saying? This other good side of him that I caught immediately from that one situation and which I don’t hear anything of in what you’re saying about him over fifty years. And the interview he granted me when I first met him. That’s what I meant by saying he didn’t recognize me at first. He didn’t have to give it. I was a shrimp of a reporter, and the news service I worked for was small too. And I should’ve got his press conference on tape when the other radio and TV guys did, if any other radio newsman — I forget — thought there was anything potential there to even attend it, but I asked him for an interview right after. I might even have given him some cock-and-bull story that my tape jammed. I did that then to get solo interviews — lied, finagled, cajoled, etcetera, all the things you said he did,” and the man says, “Sure he gave you an interview. For the fame, not because of your cajolery. When Bill saw a newsman’s tape recorder and mike, he saw an audience of millions and possible book buyers and poetry-reading invitations and so forth. I bet you even had him read a few of his poems for radio,” and Gould says, “I think I did; it’s what I normally would have done for an interview like that with someone in his position,” and the man says, “That’s my point. The regular press conference was what came with the turf of being introduced as the new Poetry Consultant, but your solo with him was gravy that made him giddy. You showed him individual attention that also had a good chance of being on radio for a lot more time than a news report of the pro forma press conference,” and Gould says, “But if I remember, he told me to come back anytime for a coffee and chat but not to bring my tape recorder. So if that’s the case—” and the man says, “Ah, come on, he was only trying to show he was more interested in you than in what you could do for him. But you probably would have brought your tape recorder and he would have seen it and somehow worked you around to where he ended up gladly giving you another interview,” and Gould says, “No, I’m not getting through to you and you really can’t change my initial opinion of him, though you have opened me up to him a little, mostly because I didn’t know him. Anyway, he did a wonderful thing for me, and I just wish everyone would do things like that for people in similar situations, and I also feel lousy about the condition he’s in now,” and the man says, “That’s not the question; we all do.”