Virginia Aronson
from Collateral Damage: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Poet
The Poet's Muse
(Emily Hale on T.S. Eliot)More than a thousand
secret letters of love
my flesh still intact
his genius still abroad
intimate only
with his posterity
the artist needing solitude
in order to soar
above his muse
(me, he claimed
his hyacinth girl)
my wings clipped, legs
he told me once
like stuffed telephone poles.He locked me in
his prison of devotion
his kind of faith
issued from bleakness
from invisible despair.Despite his ejaculations
moments of deep fusion
his was a dry brain
I had to call him out
a seasonless man, unable
to bear much reality
like unclean yellow feet
soiled hands, the stench
of a life together.He locked himself
in a glazed mirror
a man meeting himself
masked face to face.After I surrendered
to his reverent avoidance
he withdrew his offers
my life a sinkhole
he stepped past, blind
to my destitution
converted in his lyrics
about useful moments—
moonlight on the yew tree
that frightening beauty
cast by my memory,
and me buried underneath
the tree of graveyards.He locked himself in
his own oral history
willing victim of time
wings of the future
darkened by the past
my life a touchstone
a rock in his path
he rested upon
for two decades
all alone.The Poet's Wife
(Caitlin Macnamara Thomas on Dylan Thomas)He blew the bones
out of the hills, the sky
brightened for everyone
while I stood by, waiting
the lonely leftover wife
of a famous artist, yes
I had to have him
and the heart of a werewolf
full of worms, needles, thorns
until he died young
from drink.He wrapped the tame
in the wild convolutions
of his eccentric mind,
a complicated way
of communicating
filtered through Welsh
country life, humor
with a special injection
of Celtic energy
he made the biggest lies
sound true
only after drinking
all day all night
did the devil's truth
come out.A public barbarian
in private sensitive
his writing he said
reconciled the conflict
(a beast, an angel, and a madman in me)
and his forever themes
birth, death, decay
the rot in life
he said he struggled
through his writings
from darkness
to some measure
of light.He was weak, decadent
I was drunk, hostile
we had no money
dressed in rags
I made him shirts
cut from curtains
we stole
from our friend's homes
their money, good wine
I cooked his mother's food:
faggots and peas
tripe and leeks
laver bread
(the bread of the sea)
spread with cockles
and salted butter.
He read for the BBC, wrote
scripts that were produced
radio plays, illustrated
little maps of the islands
on his two-tongued sea
his intellectual gifts
hidden at the pub
a man of the people
secret life in a shack
where he sat, smoking
writing down to death.
I wanted to write too
of the ice-cream hills
the crackling black sea
the nutcracker bar hounds
with their taproom noses
but when I asked how
he said
you either feel it
or you can't
and I couldn’t
I was always drunk
pregnant, on edge
sweet as a razor, he said
a needling stalactite hag.While I washed the dishes
or cleaned up his messes
he'd recite his long poems—
the seasaw sea, sloeback
crowblack fishingboatbobbing sea—
I couldn't even listen,
made no sense to me
I was afraid
I would drown
in his ocean
of words.Drink was his temporary escape
from the slavery of his calling:
to embody the deepest cry
of his homeland
the craggy hills
the gray road to the sea
the dirt lanes to the pub
the camaraderie he felt
there
was no escape
for me
from Dylan
his werewolf heart
full of black blood
until he died
from drink.The Poet's First Wife
(Jean Stafford on Robert Lowell)He learned to be a brute
at boarding school
the big boys beat
the small boys while
the old men watched
fondly he claimed
from the wings.He learned in school
he was bigger, stronger
his own raw power
fist fighting his friends
menacing his enemies
impressing his teachers
with the exotic language
of an emotional wildman.Spending time in the South
he learned how to speak
how to smooth a drawl
in his Boston accent
how to ease into a story
like there's a peach
in your mouth.Apparently he also learned
to be less burly and surly
to be fun, witty, unaffected
take a bath, trim his hair
to live the poet's lifestyle
to use the poet's charisma
to charm all kinds
of women like me.And he learned from older
writer role models
the poet's prerogative:
move from wife to wife
and maintain a string
of desperate mistresses
coldly discarding lovers
causing severe emotional distress
like he did with me
repeatedly
I took him back
I thought I could fix him
fix me, stop drinking, stay
sane always afraid
of what he would do
hands around my throat
driving drunk smashing up
my face, a punch there
rebroke my poor nose
he said I breathed too much
my murderer-poet.Eventually he learned to hate
his WASP upbringing, converted
to a Catholic fanatic, crucifixes
all over the house
our wooded Maine home
left it behind, left me
I wanted to die, die
in the mental hospital
reading his poems
about me
so cruel, hateful.A bestselling author
proud of my success
I lost my way
I was never the same
apparently he learned
how to ruin everything
for someone
like me.The Poet's Ex
(Hettie Cohen Jones on LeRoi Jones)We bonded at work
on a music magazine
this jazzy wiry dude
kind, good-humored, fun
he liked to laugh
vault fire hydrants
parking meters
be the loudest
in the theaters we liked
plays, playing, poetry
poets so we founded
an underground press
publishing the Beats
Howling the truth
about the warmongering era
Ginsberg wore our couch
on his head like a hat
Kerouac our shy friend
Frank O'Hara, the painters
drinking at our place
exploring abstract worlds.A mixed race romance
in the '50s and '60s
was despised, dangerous
we had to be tough
his family accepted me—
smart, strong, hardworking
his parents more educated
more middle class than my own
beloved Jewish bigots
leery of the young black man
in love with their daughter.Loving him I lost
my dad
declared me dead
I lost
my way
the girl with ambition
became the woman behind
the man with ambition
not writing, silent
I sat smiling, quiet
a shadow of myself
wanting to know how
to make myself happen
I had just begun
to make myself up.What you own
you can give away
as an old Irish woman
spit in disgust, Men
and their damned lives!
and that's how it was then
in a world of proud men
and beautiful women
I told one of them:
Don't call here. Call again
and I'll fuck up your face
I'd begun to know how
to make myself happen
I'd begun at last
to make myself up.After we split up
I gave myself voice
a desk, a space
a pen replaced him
and I wrote
children's books
editing, anthologizing
watching my ex
try on different hats
changing his face
beaten, bloodied, behind bars.He was not in my life
never spoke to me again
but he wrote about me
how significant it was
that the white woman had not
produced a boy child, only girls
so no, he was not in my world
but always in the news
feared, hated, loved
he'd opened the doors
to theatre, arts, publishing
and the Black Arts Movement
he helped establish
has never stopped.The Poet's Widow
(Amina Baraka on LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka)Amiri never understood
what it was like for real
working class America.He was petty bourgeoisie
middle-class easy street
he thought he was poor
'cuz he wore his house key
'round his skinny neck
mother sewing piecework
'til the War launched her
uptown to office work
his dad laddering up
to postal supervisor
LeRoi grew up comfy
played sports, trumpet
wore hip clothes, bebopper
able to afford to sidestep
our ugly American ghetto
our day-to-day reality.He never knew me
but he loved me.He married me after
his avant-garde phase
Greenwich Village blues
East Village hipsters
his white marriage
his white friendships
his white women affairs
but once he met me
he denounced all that.By the time he turned 40
he was rejected, hopeless
political swindler and charlatan
pretending to be a revolutionary
he couldn't get published
in trouble at every stage
claiming the black artist's role
was not to look to whites
for validation or standards
of beauty and value
but to aid
in the destruction
of (racist) America.He claimed he married me
yearning to be whole
deep in the black aura
of non-integrated life
but he wasted my life
dominating and silencing
abusing and betraying
locking me in a cell
of non-recognition
while he pursued destruction
of what he called evil
to burn the thing
inside it, he said
and that thing, that thing
screamed.He called them all out:
the Fascist Bureau of Intimidation
the Crazed Imperialist Assassins
the church of specific reality
but he didn't call himself out
for cheating on me
for putting politics first
for neglecting his children
dismissing, exposing them
to harassment, terror
our babies shot, locked up
for being black
for being his, ours.
No, he blew us up
over and over, yeah:
Amiri Baraka the man
who blew up America.The Poet's Widow
(Carol Orchard Hughes on Ted Hughes)At home on the moorland
under well-meaning clouds
we bred beef cows, fluffy sheep
beautiful beasts, my dad in charge
a mobile archive of farm knowhow.After Dad passed we moved
back to her thatched house
Sylvia's ghost in every corner
in oaks and ash and apple trees
the wood pigeons in loud flocks
breathing together in the womb of time.
I was no poet
but I was full-hearted
and loved our life
the wild peacocks and our bull
followed me across the fields
he called me a wonder, light
after giant steel doors shut down
over parts of him
and the atmosphere he breathed
left him less air to live on
as Her Husband
trapped in their blood-jet past.Her fame spread, her death ignited
an uprising of hatred, steep
tax debt from her estate
earnings swamped us
and he felt persecuted
treading a minefield
publicity like sticking electrodes
in his children's heads he said
the poison was still poison
for being fact.He said we all owned the rights
to the facts of our own life
and I helped him
write, write
in privacy and solitude—
the years as Poet Laureate
decades as the people's poet
deerstalking with Prince Charles
fishing with the Queen
world travels, readings, fans
my blind eye to his many follies
the mistresses, sub-mistresses
while I gardened, cooked, hosted
stability so he could give
voice to pain, reconciling it
with the rest of the civilized world.After he died, a lion ran loose
in the moors, left a paw print
near the river bed
and disappeared.I encouraged my husband
to put himself first, poetry
above all else—including me
and he did love me
not most, but longest
lady, he said
are you satisfied
and I was.
Virginia Aronson is a poet, novelist, and textbook writer who lives in the lush, lurid tropics. Her poetry collections include Farmlandia, a novel in verse, as well as the chapbooks Hikikomori, Itako, and Tropical Diagnoses. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and has been nominated for multiple awards.