We had
spent forty-five minutes analyzing “Crossing the Bar,”
and the first problem was what it meant. And on the off chance that you don’t
remember it, here it
goes:
Sunset and
evening star,
And
one clear call for me!
And
may there be no moaning of the bar,
When
I put out to sea,
But
such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too
full for sound and foam,
When
that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns
again home.
Twilight
and evening bell,
And
after that the dark!
And
may there be no sadness of farewell,
When
I embark;
For
tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The
flood may bear me far,
I
hope to see my Pilot face to face
When
I have crost the bar.
It
was all Mr. Fernández’s doing, since in one night of lessened sobriety, he had
waxed lyrical about the poem. And “Crossing the Bar” was the poem that Tennyson
always wanted anthologists to place last, a fact about which Mr. Fernández
makes much.
“OK—so
what’s the business of ‘sunset and evening star?’” I ask Montalvo.
“He’s
talking about nighttime?” says Montalvo.
This,
Gentle Reader, is to what we’ve come. (Sorry for all these twisted
constructions, but Mr. Fernández has taken to reading the blog, after which he
showers me with bracing criticism….)
“I’m
in the sunset of my life,” I tell him.
“Hunh?”
“What
does it mean, ‘I’m in the sunset of my life?’”
“Damn,
I hate it when you ask those questions!”
OK,
we figure out about the sunset of my life, then we have to find out what this whole
sea / boat image is about.
“So
he’s taking a trip somewhere?”
Right,
we sort that out, and then it’s time to figure out the rhyme scheme.
“I
don’t get this ABAB stuff,” says Montalvo.
For
this they invented paper and pencils, and we write down the last word of each
line. He gets it, and that’s when we get to the most fun—meter, in this case iambic pentameter.
“Man,
he did all this shit and I didn‘t even notice it! One fucking dude!”
So
he drifts off to cadge some coffee, and I start to write the first line of a
stanza:
When
first I saw the young Montalvo smile
Well,
he’s on top of that like a sailor on a you-know-whom, and he does quite well,
which is good, because you know what? His goal—modest though it is—is first to
become poet laureate,
and then to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature; his motivators, as we used to say in human resources, are a bit
more external than internal. To this end, Montalvo has the acceptance speech
all planned out.
“I’m
gonna stand up there and hold up the trophy and say, ‘YO, BROTHERS! NOTHING TO
SAY, GUYS! MONTALVO RULES, MAN! I BE THE BEST! PANTIES DOWN, LADIES!!!’”
I’m
speechless, a state which occurs less frequently than the sun darkening at noon
with roaring lions pacing the streets of the city. But I do point out that
we’re in public.
“PANTIES
OFF, LADIES!”
Did
I mention there’s a lot of rough in this diamond?
But
a glimmer of a shine as well, because now we’re going over his poetry, and he
says it:
“Man,
this poetry is crap! I can’t believe I wrote this. This is AWFUL!”
“It
could be improved,” I tell him, and then tell him about the opportunity /
problem thing at Walmart.
“There
are no problems, just opportunities….”
Won’t
repeat what he said: there’s already been too much profanity in this post.
But
now it’s time to go back to being supportive, because he’s looking at me,
almost with tears in his eyes, and asking not if he’s going to win the Nobel,
but if he’ll ever be a good poet.
Yes,
I tell him. Otherwise, why would I be doing this?
We
go back to work, ripping apart the poems, joining up the line breaks,
eliminating the dreadful dashes. At last we can take it no more, and he’s still
a bit discouraged, my son.
“Don’t
worry,” I tell him, “Tennyson didn’t
win the Nobel Prize either….”
