Dispatch #6

Roll Call

I SLICED UP Ezra Pound this morning, one of the Cantos, then I stapled him to Allen Ginsberg, an excerpt from his Kaddish. Ruth Stone was on his other side, followed by Muriel Rukeyser talking about Oedipus and what he couldn’t see. Then George Oppen and Gwendolyn Brooks and finally Stanley Kunitz, recalling at sixty-four how his mother slapped him when he retrieved, from the attic, the portrait of his father, a man she never forgave for committing suicide when she was pregnant with their son, the one who grew up to write poems.


The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

—Stanley Kunitz

A walking carnival ride

WORKING ON these old photographs tends to produce in me mixed emotions, but there's no denying that it can get me down. Too much loss. So, fortunately, yesterday, I attended a very nice family get-together, and it made me conscious of present circumstances about which I can be very glad.

More specifically, I'm happy to be a part of the lives of my niece and nephew. They're like pups or kittens, full of energy, full of fun. They seem to think that I'm a walking carnival ride, Mr. Toad's wild Uncle.

1. Most of these photos are "details" from much larger photographs taken by my father more than thirty-five years ago. At the time of this shot, Fanny and I were in High School, and my little brother, at right, had just turned six. We're somewhere in the Sierra Nevada.

2. The second photo reveals how close I was to my littlest brother back then. We used to sing to Beatles records together—Help was a favorite. Nowadays, such affection as is revealed in the photo is never seen between us, although it is manifest and abundant between me and his two wonderful kids. I call 'em weasels.

Sometimes, when I'm singing or playing with young Adam, age three, I'm conscious that I had precisely the same relationship with my little brother, their "papa," a long time ago. I'm determined not to allow the relationship to become less close. But who knows.

3. Here we are near El Morro. Like my hair? Salt water does that.

4. This shot includes Fanny's fiancé, Davey-Doo, an engineer, at left. He was very successful in his field. Made big bucks up in Silicon Valley.

A few years ago, he flew his super-duper stunt aircraft straight into the ground. Fanny tells me that his body was never found. She says things like that, and then, for a split second, she awaits a reaction. She'll deny it.

People are complex.

5/6. My new car. Not really new, but new for me. I get a car every ten or twenty years.

This one looks damned good, if you ask me. The design team for the Chrysler 300 was led by a Haitian/Canadian named Ralph Gilles (pronounced "Jeel").

Way to go, RG.

I gave Adam and Sarah a ride in the thing yesterday, and, in the back seat, they squealed and rocked to the music: Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" and The Damned's "New Rose."

I think Sarah's gonna become a dancer, like her mom. She was doing The Monkey back there, that little weasel.