Among Others

So I’m going to help her write a poem at prep, which will probably mean writing it. I haven’t written mine yet, though there’s plenty of time, I have until Friday.

Thursday 8th November 1979

I wrote Deirdre’s poem, and I was quite pleased with it. But yesterday as I was sitting here reading Waldo and Magic, Inc. (which are two quite different novellas), Miss Carroll came over with a pile of modern poetry books, which she said she thought I might like to look at.

It seems poetry has moved on since Chesterton. Who knew? Clearly not Gramma, and nobody in any schools I’ve been to. I’d seen one stanza of one poem by Auden, that Delany quoted, and not even heard T. S. Eliot’s name, or Ted Hughes’s either. I got quite drunk on Eliot and was late for Latin and got an order mark. I got revenge by translating Horace just like Eliot, and she couldn’t say anything, because it was also accurate.

I’ve written a poem for the competition. I don’t feel very confident of it. I’ve mastered the Chestertonian, I really have, but I don’t feel as if I’ve had time to master this. It’s about nuclear war and Dutch elm disease and how we should actually be getting into space while we can.

There’s apparently a long T. S. Eliot poem called Four Quartets which the school doesn’t have. I’ll order that on Saturday as well. According to Miss Carroll, T. S. Eliot worked in a bank when he was writing The Waste Land because being a poet doesn’t pay.

“Oh dark, dark, dark ... those are pearls that were his eyes ... With these fragments have I shored up my ruins.”

Friday 9th November 1979

It doesn’t seem so terrible that the elms are dying when it’s autumn and all the trees seem dead.

Another letter. I’m going to have to burn them again. I almost want to know if she’s said anything about what I did. I’d like to have confirmation. Though I know it worked.

I handed my poem in. Miss Lewes looked at it but didn’t say anything. Miss Gilbert, who teaches English to the Sixth Form, will be judging.

I’m hoping there’ll be some books waiting for me at the library tomorrow, because I’m almost through with what I have. I’m reading Nine Princes in Amber again.

I keep dreaming about Mor. I dream she’s drowning and I don’t save her. I dream I push her in front of the car instead of trying to pull her away. It hit both of us. I have a reminder of that in every step I take, but not in my dreams. I dream I’m burying her alive in the centre of the labyrinth, throwing earth down on top of her while she struggles and it gets in her hair.

It was a year ago today. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but it keeps ambushing me.

Saturday 10th November 1979

Going into town on the bus, the anticipation of the library filled me with delight. It almost made the wet grey streets nice, but not quite. It was drizzling, and the sky was very low and flat.

The librarian, the man, was a little startled at how many books I wanted to order, but he just gave me a pile of blanks and had me fill them in myself. Lots of books were waiting for me! Then I went down to the bookshop and bought Four Quartets, Ted Hughes’s Crow and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsinger. I also bought a box of matches.

I did not buy a book called Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which has the temerity to compare itself, on the front cover, to “Tolkien at his best.” The back cover attributes the quote to the Washington Post, a newspaper whose quotations will always damn a book for me from now on. How dare they? And how dare the publishers? It isn’t a comparison anyone could make, except to say “Compared to Tolkien at his best, this is dross.” I mean you could say that even about really brilliant books like A Wizard of Earthsea. I expect Lord Foul’s Bane (horrible title, sounds like a Conan book) is more like Tolkien at his worst, which would be the beginning of The Silmarillion.