[Michael Cantor]

I suspect I workshopped an earlier version of this during the Hoover administration. I'm trying to put together another book, and looking at some of my older, unpublished and rewritten work to see what works.

Googling the Dead

A girl I knew committed suicide
(or at least a woman with her name
and history), and I reflect that I

will never see the paperback Verlaine
she borrowed over sixty years ago –
the one she saw me swiping from the bin

at Eighth Street Books. No others now will know
of stolen Symbolists, or drunken tears,
or why she left my bed and just went home.
. . .

Last night I found some ancient news of Butch –
but not of dividends or corporate Boards,
instead a story with a different touch –

and laughed at how the gasbag must have felt
when blue lights sharply flashed, and Butch appraised
the badge the dark-haired, flirting hooker held:

her painted eyes contained a cop’s cold gaze.
Was he jammed in handcuffs for a judge’s
hearing, did he try to hide his face?

I’m sure he got all puffed-up, at his club
(we haven’t spoken since he fired me),
and blamed it on entrapment, or bad luck.
. . . .

At two and three AM I search for them –
old lovers, colleagues, classmates, neighbors, friends –
and most have disappeared, and others seem

to flicker and recede, but now and then
a life sprawls on the screen and, spot lit there,
illuminates our corners, and our ends.

And me? I wander through the disappeared
to seek more hidden souls – a furtive look
will sometimes do, repeated every year.
. . . .

They called us Butch and Sundance at the start,
and when I think back over all those years
it was because we brought a joyful art

to managing the business; taught our peers
it’s smarts and balls and diligence and drive –
not stone-dumb numbers guys and engineers –

that set the pace. Success defined our lives,
we dismissed the others with a half a glance,
and saw more of each other than our wives.

Then Butch became the President, and Sundance
stayed the Sundance Kid; and Butch got staid,
and Sundance played, and Butch said one dance

more would be the end of that charade,
and neither could recapture what was gone.
The stock price tanked, and Sundance got the gate.

So after all these years a closing shot.
it’s good that I can now remember Butch
as shopping for a blowjob from a cop.
. . . . .

It’s Google that now animates my life;
and with a name and some enlightened guesses
I resurrect the lost, bring back the nights

of laughter or relive the days of stress.
I wonder if they know I slink among
their lives, these shadows that I chase,

these traces of a past– perhaps they feel my touch,
my love or anger, know that someone minds –
and shrug, and stay whatever they’ve become.

And now, before I sleep, I’ll try to find
that fine-boned Swedish girl I met in Brussels,
who drove with me to Paris Christmas night.

Changes:

S17L3 was "I resurrect the past and lost, bring back the nights "

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

A delightful take on the Ubi Sunt Michael, however it is one that could be reduced for a better poetic effect. The ‘rambling’ is indeed how it would unfold from N’s lips, is that accuracy warranted here?

Jan

[Carl Copeland]

Thanks, Michael. I now have a name for something I’ve done often.

A few nits:

My tin ear heard only occasional rhymes until I noticed the terza rima. Even then, though, “boards/felt,” “judge’s/club” and “gone/shot” failed to ring my bell.

I scan two lines as tet and two as hex. It wouldn’t be hard to regularize them—by dropping “past and” from S17L3, for example (“past” is repeated a few lines later)—but it doesn’t concern me unless it does you. Three other lines are ambiguous: S1L2, S6L2 and S13L2 could either be headless or begin with an anapest. Since pent is default, I suspect the first two are headless and the third has an anapest.

I might quibble about punctuation in a few places, but that’s better left to your copyeditors. I’ll only suggest closing up “spotlit” and moving the comma in that line from after “screen” to after “and.”

“Flirting hooker” sounds a little like “handy repairman.”

The verb “mind” in the penultimate stanza struck me as a little off. You seem to mean “care,” and I’m sure you can find a dictionary entry to justify that, but I’m used to the negative, disapproving sense: Do you mind?

I never recommend radical cuts, because I feel unqualified, but I do find myself wishing there were less of Butch between the women in Manhattan and Brussels.

Brilliant concept for a poem, Michael. Wish I’d thought of it.

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Michael.

I think you need a period after "shopping for a blowjob from a cop"

This is delightful. Cantorian. I especially like how you end it. The final stanza is a thoughtful close, with the narrator's thoughts of himself wandering through the disappeared. And ending on the Swedish girl from Brussels is a nice touch.

I also like how you go back to Butch, providing background.

I can relate to your poems about the working world and former positions in it. But I have to use my imagination when it comes to Swedish girls from Brussels, sadly.

RM

[Michael Cantor]

Thanks, all, for the helpful feedback.

Jan - I don't know if it works or not, but I wanted this to be longish and rambling - an old guy, wandering through his past and trying not to drool on his posole. The original was twice as long, and I've already cut out an entire marriage and the New York art gallery scene in the Seventies (the problem I had was not describing those scenes, but in filling in the Googling interjections without repeating myself.)

Carl - Good point on S17, and will use it. S1 and S6 are headless - not only don't I have a problem with that, but - particularly in a longer poem - I think it helps to sometimes break up the ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM of iambic pentameter.

S13 is more of a question. I could "normalize" it by going to:

dismissing others with a half a glance
we saw.....

but somehow I think I prefer the original. Have to sleep on it.

I did close up "spotlit" originally, and my computer said I was a moron, and it should be separated. Go figure. I'll leave it to the editor. But I will change the comma in that line.

"flirty hooker" is a little less of a cllche, but the sonics aren't as good to my ear, so I'll stick with "flirting" for now. And I don't share your concerns with "mind".

Rick - thanks for the good words. Will add that period. The Swedish girl and the Christmas Eve drive to Paris were real (okay, I met her in Antwerp, not Brussels, but Brussels sounds better) - I was a schmuck engineer just out of the Bronx, and I got a love poem out of it - an eight stanza villanelle-on-steroids that was published years ago - and more recently I wrote a much longer free verse poem that envelopes the villanelle and tells the truth (maybe) about the weekend in Paris. I'll probably unleash it here soon.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

S1 and S6 are headless - not only don't I have a problem with that, but - particularly in a longer poem - I think it helps to sometimes break up the ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM of iambic pentameter.

The only problem with headlessness—Matt mentioned this recently—is metrical ambiguity when the first syllable of the line isn’t naturally stressed. I’d naturally read S1L2, for example, as tet with an initial anapest, and it’s only later, when I learn that pent is the base meter, that I can go back and re-scan the line as headless pent. Either way, though, varies the meter and reads well.

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

I did close up "spotlit" originally, and my computer said I was a moron, and it should be separated.

Your spellchecker would be happier with “spotlighted,” but the dictionaries I’ve checked allow “spotlit” as well. As you say, though, leave it to the editor.

[Matt Q]

Hi Michael,

I like this. It drew me in, and I relate to the theme (it's one I've tried to write about too). I'm guessing this is something that lots of us do.

I do wonder if there's a tension in the poem between the general statements (parts 3 & 5) -- that tell us the N searches for "old lovers, colleagues, classmates, neighbors, friends" -- and the fact that the poem primarily focusses on one person, Butch. I find myself wondering if it's more a poem about the N's history/relationship with Butch, or more a poem about looking people up online?

I guess you might consider dropping part 4, the return to Butch (but I'd try to keep the last stanza of part 4, maybe append it to part 2). And in its place add recollections of one more person. Then it's more clearly a poem about searching late at night for people gone from his life. Alternatively, you might consider just focussing on Butch: It seems to me that part 2 and 4 combined make a good poem in their own right.

Independently of the above, I'll add that I enjoy the more specific sections, the details of the memories, to the more general contemplations of part 2 and part 4 S1-3. The former is what draws me into the poem.

A specific nit or two:

"No others now will know" bugs me. Firstly, did others (plural) previously know? Or is it rather the case that only one other previously knew and the number who know (first hand, at least) has dropped from two to one?

Given the future tense, the phrase reads to me very much like: "Now nobody new will learn of this", but again this doesn't seem a consequence of the woman dying, unless she was previously telling others, so that now she's dead can tell no one else. And, of course, the N can still tell others. And in fact, is telling others (the readers) about it in the poem. So now we, the readers, know -- about the stolen book and the tears at least.

So I wonder if what you intend is that now the N is the only one who was there, who directly remembers (rather than knows) what happened: "Now no one else but me remembers". I guess "Now only I recall" would fit the metre (but not rhyme).

"spot lit" looks odd to me. I'd go with "spotlit". As Carl says, it's how the dictionary has it.

best,

Matt

[Jim Moonan]

.
I rarely dissect a poem here, preferring to devour it whole and comment. I don’t typically delve into details. But this one read so beautifully it led me to look closely at the poem to see how it worked and, in the process, I found a few things that may be helpful to you as you consider final touches…

I feel funny even suggesting that you rethink how you’ve grouped these stanzas on the page. There might very well be nuances to the sequence that I’m not giving full credit to… You may very well be intentionally interspersing the general with the specific and hence stanzas 8-10 may be placed as a digression from/ intermission between the full accounting of the N's memories of his business/friendship with Butch, but it begs the question: why do you separate S7 from S11. Don’t get me wrong, it works. Just wanted to mention that, as I think someone else did, too. The final stanza is the most powerful stanza of them all, imo. The entire group of 20 stanzas could very well be broken into a suite of poems vs. sections of one poem.

There are two stanzas that begin, “And me?”


This line:

“At two and three AM I search for them “

looks odd as written.

Maybe something like “At 2 and 3 a.m. I search for them “. Or “At two and three a.m. I search for them".


I love the loose rhymes. They echo beautifully the memory-driven conceit. of the poem.

The title is great. I wonder, though, if it might be better to leave Google out of it and call it “Looking Up the Dead”. Probably not, but it’s a thought.

I love the undercurrent of the poem: The way the N recounts the unearthed news of long-gone friends, etc. and how the search sweeps him away.

(Btw, I think I know that woman who drove you from Brussels/Antwerp to Paris. Did she drive a bus? —Ha! I went from Amsterdam to Paris back in the mid-seventies on what was at the time called The Magic Bus" and it was driven by an older woman whom I couldn’t take my eyes off of, though she never even so much as looked my way. I was sitting in the front seat on the right and had a side view of her the whole way. I exited the bus in hopeless love and in a mild state of depression : ))

.

[Michael Cantor]

Carl - thanks for coming back on this. I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I'm basically more casual about metrics than you are - if it sounds okay I'll go with it - and more often than not if I'm writing metrical I end up churning out good old Iambic Petrameter - but not always. I go with my ear, and it's usually okay, and I like a bit of clutter.. As I said in my book Furusato:

I love a line of trochees now and then
Snort them up - my ear will tell me when
I’m due again - set for that metric hit -
the off-beat rush I need to discomfit
and chop the chain of pure iambic verse
that spreads a sonorous Shakespearean curse
across my winter sonnet’s boring drone.

I'm thinking of going with: a life sprawls on the screen: spotlighted there - but not sure.

Matt - I did start with the bit about the woman who committed suicide, so it wasn't all about Butch, but my intent was to essentially focus on one story and use that as a platform to talk about googling the dead. In earlier drafts I introduced other individuals - I had some good stuff about an ex-wife and her paintings disappearing from the internet (when you have no kids - she got custody of the dogs - and you move to different cities, after forty years or so you lose touch), but it became too much repetitive blah-blah, so I pared it down and focused on Butch.

I'm afraid I don't share your problems with No others now will know. The guy (me) had behaved like an asshole on a date, had always been ashamed about it, and now he was free. But, just to set the record straight, I never stole anything from Eighth Street Books. A classmate of mine used their discount rack as a free buffet table, and I used him to add a little zip to the poem. She did take my Verlaine, but it was paid for. I had other problems, but I wasn't a bookjacker.

Jim - I originally wrote the poem as a linear poem, with almost all the blah-blah about searching the internet at the end, and it was boring and kinda predictable. It's not exactly the greatest story ever told - it's essentially a geezer geezing. But it seemed to me that by breaking it up - dipping in and out - I (a) replicated the way the narrator's mind worked, and b) made the poem more interesting.

Yeah, AM looks a bit funny to me, now that you mention it. Maybe your second choice is better. I did some checking after I saw your comment, and it appears that AM, am, and a.m. are all used, depending on the editor.

The ride to Paris was in 1961, the Swedish girl worked at their Consulate in Antwerp, and I borrowed a company car (and demolished a fender on the way out of Paris - and it cost me about a week's salary and two years off my life to get it repaired on the QT the day I returned to Antwerp.)

[Catherine Chandler]

Hi, Michael. As one who has often Googled the dead, I thoroughly enjoy and relate your poem. I was going to quibble about some of the bumpy meter, but, as you point out, due to the length of the poem (which is a bit too rambling with respect to the corporate culture) it provides a bit of relief.


My only suggestion would be to shorten the section that begins with "They called us Butch . . " and place it before the section "At two and three AM" - OR, were you to drastically shorten the "They called us Butch" section, you could (possibly) close with (or add to the Swedish girl lines) the ironic "So after all these years a closing shot" lines.



I wish you well on your new poetic project.



Cheers,
Cathy