The Eurydic Verses

I don't want to repeat myself, returning to the same wells time and again. I had kind of hoped I might be able to do a different poet every day for a year, but since I've included myself several times I guess it's a moot point.


And anyway, the last time I included one of Mr. Dennis' poems it was back in January.

Eurydice

Carl Dennis

If the dead could speak, I'd entreat you
Not to blame yourself for losing me near the exit.
I was gone before you turned to glimpse me.
Your hope I would follow you into the light -
That was only a poet's faith in the power of music.
I followed as far as the law of Hell allowed me
And then turned back to my dark home.
For us to live together, you'd have to descend
Again to the place that chills the heart of the living.
I wouldn't want you to lie awake beside me
Straining to look on the bright side,
Spinning out plan after plan full of adventure.
I wouldn't want you to wait with patience
For my reply, to assume my lengthening silence
A thoughtful prologue. The hours would grow into years
While you dreamed up a song about our ascent
Meant for the ears of friends on our arrival.
I wouldn't want to hear it dwindle and fade
As the truth gradually came into focus
And you slowly deferred to a greater power.
Who would you be then? No one I know,
Not the man who thought his music enlarged creation.
If I could speak, child of the sun,
I'd assure you I'm still your wife.
That's why I want you to stay as long as you can
Just as you are, the mistaken
Hopeful man I married.




Like Stephen Dunn (for some reason I've always linked the two poets in my head) they both have the chops and education to take classical mythology and both contextualize and remythologize it. Whether it's Dunn's Sisyphus relaxing in his retirement villa or Dennis' Eurydice shaking her head fondly at her silly, sweet stupid husband, there's something there that's both immediate and larger than life.


I appreciate this contemporary approach to myth, where instead of using it to further your own aims, burnish your poetic gifts, these stories are ways to take what we all know and look at them again. As a silly, sweet, stupid husband myself I can see a lot of myself in Dennis' Orpheus. How's the variation go? Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.


I was also surprised in looking this up to realize just how prevalent the Orpheus/Eurydice myth is. Certainly I knew of Rilke's very powerful version, and I think I'd heard of H.D.'s, but there's Margaret Atwood, Carol Ann Duffy, Charles Algernon Swinburne, the list goes on. I guess love and loss does tend to be more popular than anthropomorphic gods assuming bird bodies to rape unsuspecting virgins. (I'm looking at you, Yeats, you dirty perv.)


Still and all, I must admit my secret weakness, fetish, actually, for what I consider the greatest reworking of the Orpheus myth and no, it's not "Moulin Rouge." (That's the 2nd-greatest.)


Salman Rushdie's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is one of my all-time favorite novels, with enough allusions to Dante, The Who, Eliot, U2, Ovid, the Upanishads, Elvis Presley, to make both Harold Bloom and Lester Bangs squee.


It's touching, epic, human, immediate, foreign, instantaneous, mystical, down to earth. I can't read it more than once every 5 years or so because it tends to give me Stendhal Syndrome. Actually, I can't even read more Rushdie because it's just not going to be the same as that book and I can't deal with that kind of disappointment. So yeah, I'm a lit dork, you wanna make something of it?


One last note about the novel: how many times do you get to write a book and have "The Biggest Band in the World" cover the theme song?