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Recently I saw a facsimile of your hand-writing. It was small, precise, all letters beautifully shaped and well proportioned — much as your physical person was said to be. I pride myself on my leanness, write long-hand for pleasure in my tidy script. As for beauty, I cannot say; let others judge. The light crawls across the rug, noses toward one leg of my writing desk. I become obsessed with divining differences and samenesses between us. This morning I have made columns of opposing influences. I line them up like players in a football game. My philandering poet daddy against your thespian wife-deserting papa. Your hard-nosed step-father, Allen, against my Baptist surrogate-father, Berg. Your lost Virginia, for whom you grieved so long and hard versus my disloyal Dianna, whose actions so nearly spelled my end. Our similarities seem near-mirror images of one another. I give them full weight of significance, but see also how you and I are different. I have mentioned your military background; nothing like that appears in my past. Your southern birth and all it implies of a certain rebellious and aristocratic spirit must also be given its due. What have I to weigh against these biographical shadings of yours? I go back again to my father, my own run-away daddy. He was a poet — a rare and fabulous beast in his day and age — yet wrung a living from it, won fame, love and respect from readers of poems he had not met. I suppose poets to be a kind of truant aristocracy. Their brief is to be truth-tellers before all else. Their word will not be bought though they accept payment for value given. They insist that poet
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Epistle to Poe II 2 |
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