By now Sam was feeling somewhat sulky there’d been no praise of his own eccentric bit of electrical information. He was not about to condone all this biography. “It doesn’t sound all that good of a poem.”
“Well, in a way, it’s not. But it’s what poetry — real poetry — is made of: ‘… The dripling tide that dripples, re-ripples…’ Really, for any word-lover, that’s quite wonderful! Words must create and tear down whole visions, cities, worlds!” (Sam was not sure if he was saying Sam — the other Sam — did this or didn’t.) “And then, Sam was only a child when he died — twenty-three. I’m twenty-four now. A year older than Sammy. But I suppose he was too young, or too uneducated — too unformed to make real poems. But then, Keats, Rimbaud — all that materiaclass="underline" you can feel its sheer verbal excitement, can’t you?” He chuckled, as if to himself. “Twenty-four? In a moment I’ll sneeze — and be older than Keats!”
Sam looked at the face now looking past his; at first he’d put it at Hubert’s age. But there was a dissoluteness to it — the skin was not as clear as it might be, the eyes were not as bright as they should be; and, of course, just the way he spoke — that made the man seem older than twenty-four. Sam asked: “Don’t poems have to make sense, besides just sounding nice?” A teacher down in Raleigh had once explained to them why Edgar Poe was not really a good poet, even after they’d all applauded her recitation of “The Bells.” Apparently Poe had not been a very good man — and people who were not good men, while they could write fun poems, simply couldn’t write great ones.
“Oh, do they, now? But there’re many interesting ways to seem not to be making sense while you’re actually making very good sense indeed — using myths, symbols, poetic associations and rhetorical gestures. I never wrote my mother about Sam — just as I never wrote her about Jean’s scooting off with Margy. I haven’t written her about Emil yet, either — but I’ll have to do that, soon. I wonder if I’ll write her about you? Grace proffers the truth in a regular Sunday Delivery, and I send her back lies — of omission mostly. (Can you imagine, telling her about some wild afternoon I had at Sand Street, skulking down behind the piled-up planks and plates beside the Yard?) So I just assume they can be corrected later. I dare say it’s all quite incoherent to you. But it’s leading up to something — a bigger truth. I just have to get my gumption up to it. At any rate — ” he chuckled — “Sam was not only a poet. He drew pictures. He played the piano beautifully, as I said — at least that’s what my friend who’d known him told me. You see, it was a poetic sensibility in embryo, struggling to express itself in all the arts. Do you play an instrument?”
“The cornet.” Playing the cornet, Sam had always figured, was like knowing about electricity in Hartford and the number of stories in the Woolworth Building. Or maybe a couple of magic tricks.
“Well, then, you see?” the man said. “You and little Sammy Greenberg are very much alike!”
“He was a jewboy!” Sam exclaimed — because till then, for all he’d been trying to withhold, he’d really begun to identify with his strange namesake who had once walked across the bridge and had seen, as had he, the water dripple, re-ripple…
“Yes, he was, my young, high-yellow, towering little whippersnapper!” The man laughed.
Once more Sam started, because, though he knew the term — high-yellow — , nobody had ever actually called him that before. (He’d been called “nigger” by both coloreds and whites and knew what to do when it happened. But this was a new insult, though it was given so jokingly, he wondered if it was worth taking offense.) Sam put his hands on his thighs again, then put them back on the bench, to arch his fingertips against the wood, catching his nails in weathered grain. Was this man, Sam wondered a moment, Jewish? Wasn’t there something Semitic in his features? Sam asked: “Do you write poems, too?”
“Me?” The young man brought one hand back, the slender fingers splayed wide against the sweater he wore under his corduroy jacket. “Do I write poems? Me?” He took a breath. “I’m in advertising, actually. Ah, but I should be writing poems. I will be writing poems. Have I ever written poems?” He scowled, shook his head. “Perhaps I’ve written poems. Once I found a beautiful American word: ‘findrinny.’ But no American writer ever wrote it down save Melville. And since it never made it from Moby-Dick into any dictionary (I’ve looked in half a dozen), I’ve finally settled on ‘spindrift.’ Go look it up! It’s equally lovely in the lilt and lay of what it means. Believe me, if I wrote a real poem, everyone would be talking about it — writing about it. When I write a poem — find its lymph and sinew, fix a poem that speaks with a tongue more mine than any you’ll ever actually hear me talking with — you’ll know it! Boni and Liveright did Cane last year, Beyond the Pleasure Principle this year; I just wonder when they’ll get to me. I can promise you — Crane,” he said suddenly, sat forward, and scowled. “Isn’t that endlessly ironic?” He shook his head. “Crane — that’s whom they’re all mad about now. Someone showed me the manuscript. And, dammit, some of them are actually good! They’re planning to get endorsements from Benêt and Nunnally Johnson — he lives in Brooklyn, too.”
“A poet? Named Crane?” Sam asked.
The man nodded, glancing over. “Nathalia Crane. She lives in Flat-bush, out where it builds up again and Brooklyn starts to look at least like a town; and she’s in love with the janitor’s boy — some snub-nosed freckle-cheeked mick named Jones.”
“In the heart of Brooklyn?” Sam said.
“If Brooklyn can be said to have a heart. I wonder why, no matter how hard I try to get away, I always end up working with sweets — Dad makes chocolates, you see. Well, I’ve lived off them long enough. Personally, I think Brooklyn, once you leave the Heights, is a heartless place. For heart, you go downtown into the Village. Really, the irony’s just beyond me. She’s supposed to be ten — or was, a couple of years ago. They go on about her like she was Hilda Conkling or Helen Adam. And they actually gave me the thing for review! I mean, I told them — under no circumstances would I! Could you think of anything more absurd — me reviewing that? If I liked it, people would think I was joking. If I hated it, they’d think I was simply being malicious. They thought it would be fun. No — I said; I certainly wouldn’t be trapped into that one. Poetry’s more serious than — ” Again he broke off and turned, to regard Sam with a fixity that, as the silence grew, grew uncomfortable with it. “I mean, any poem worth its majority must pell-mell through its stages of love, meditation, evocation, and beauty. It’s got to hie through tragedy, war, recapitulation, ecstasy, and final declaration. But sometimes I think she’s got more of the Great War in her poems than I do. I wonder if that makes the geeky girl a better poet? No, I’m not going to be able to take these engineering specifications, instruction manuals, and giant architectural catalogs much longer — Lord, they’re real doorstoppers! Soon, I’m going to leave that job — the only question is, at my behest or theirs?”