We Are Who We Read

25 March 2012

The dining hall was massive and impressive,
we were in a mansion on a cliff above the Atlantic,
great chandeliers lined from one end to the other of the room,
we all carried a novel from our most beloved writer with us,
each of us lost in the impassioned importance -
of discussing the reason why our writer was the greatest.
And we were gracious hosts to our writers.

There was a special table in the corner for the Russian writers,
but the hosts of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Pasternak were not present,
it seems they had all killed themselves by jumping into the sea.
Tolstoy's reader sat by himself mumbling incoherently,
quarantining himself away from the rest of us all.
Nabokov's host sat on the other end of the table,
saying he didn't belong there and attempted to flirt,
with a waitress pouring drinks.

I was pleased to find myself almost alone,
for I sat at a table beside a Vonnegut reader.
He kept appearing for a moment or two,
merely to light up a Pall Mall and grin at us,
just to literally disappear once again.
He was a very quiet fellow.
Honestly, I couldn't tell you if he was coming or going.

Across from me sat William Faulkner's host,
an elderly man with delicious cherry-blend tobacco,
dragging on his pipe and having a conversation,
with Mark Twain's reader beside him.
Faulkner's host was discussing how a bear is just a bear,
while Twain's host horse-laughed and drank whiskey.

There was a large crowd congregated around a burly man,
wearing a sweater (in the heat, nonetheless!),
discussing hunting and fishing and being loud as all hell,
as another little man lay in a drunken slumber beside him.
Needless to say, I did not need to look at their novels,
to know the burly man was Hemingway's host,
nor the nearly past-out drunk to be a Fitzgerald.
Pretentious asses, I thought to myself,
of course they would attempt to dominate the place!

Salinger's host stood outside the dining area on the balcony,
giving glares of death to anyone who would dare,
attempt to sneak up on him for any conversation at all.
In the meantime, there was a terrible scuffle,
as Norman Mailer's reader attempted to stab Gore Vidal's reader,
it was a bloody mess as they ended up beating each other fairly badly,
I found the entire event to be highly amusing.

At another table a few poets had pithy conversations,
each of them seeming to look down on the rest of us.
They were a quarrelsome bunch, each of them thinking,
they were better than the other poet-readers around them,
and God knows far better than the rest of us!
I tried my best to ignore them as they were constantly feuding,
almost nothing more than children.
A rare exception was Bukowski's host,
who had left the table of poets,
had taken Fitzgerald's bottle of rum when he had collapsed,
and sat in a corner laughing at everyone around him.

A man wearing a sports jacket stumbled up behind me,
tapped me on the shoulder and grinned.
I embraced him when I realized he was Raymond Carver's host,
"John Cheever's reader, you dirty man!
Surely there's enough action here,
to entertain you for hours! Vile contemptuous folks, are they not?"
I could not help but laugh at this,
"Like us all, they see themselves as the best,"
I responded back to his equal amusement.
"The poets are always the worst!"
he yelled as we both shook our heads in agreement.

The two of us retired to the bar,
sat beside Poe's weeping host,
otherwise the bar belonged to us.
And there we watched the festivities,
each of us downing most of the bar's stock,
while we agreed that a meeting of the biggest fans of writers,
was a terrible tragedy waiting to happen.
For the only good that could come from it all,
is in the sharing of arrogance and copious amounts of alcohol.

j.p.

This is an interesting scene, almost like a play with all the writers present. To me it seems rather rambley, and might need some editing, however, it might not, mine is only an opinion. Thanks for the sharing, Warmly, Tasha

I like this a lot, Jason. Yes it rambles quite a lot, but I think that that's appropriate for this kind of poem. It's most imaginative and creative, and interesting throughout. I can't think of any improvement!

Pujakins wrote:

This is an interesting scene, almost like a play with all the writers present. To me it seems rather rambley, and might need some editing, however, it might not, mine is only an opinion. Thanks for the sharing, Warmly, Tasha

Hi Tasha, thanks for coming by to read. I actually made several modifications in cutting this down to a page and a half (reasonable length I imagine for a prosaic poem). I had some thought of including Stephenie Meyer as being outside the mansion not being allowed in with the real writers but figured it wasn't really focusing on the internal events.

I appreciate you coming by to read, as always, though. You always post some excellent feedback!

j.p.

Ozymandias wrote:

I like this a lot, Jason. Yes it rambles quite a lot, but I think that that's appropriate for this kind of poem. It's most imaginative and creative, and interesting throughout. I can't think of any improvement!

Hi Rory, your thoughts are much appreciated. I think the message is pretty accurate too - it seems, from my experience, that like minded individuals are generally drawn to specific writers they share a common identity with in some way or another. I can certainly say great Carver and great Cheever's outlook on the degradation of social traditions as they saw them in their time and the plight of the suburban world have had a MAJOR impact on me and my work.

Thank you, as always, for coming by to read and share your thoughts.

j.p.