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Miss Crespo’s Halloween
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
—Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, Scene 2
Silhouettes in window panes,
The flickering of a bluish light
And paper demons in danse macabre:
A candle bakes the pumpkin’s brains.
Miss Crespo doles out trifling sweets
To a clamorous Holy Ghost,
Forgetful of this passing noise
Returns to tepid tea and toast.
The teapot waits in proud repose
Encircled on the obliging tray
By four solicitous attendant cups
Each marked with one anemic rose.
Her book is finished. A frozen eye
Fixes her shadow to the wall:
Hallucination knocks to offer
Things that harrow and appall.
The choker with its cameo
Grows taut about her wattled throat:
Three flustered Graces catch a glimpse
Of maidenhood’s blunt antidote.
Miss Crespo shuts her sunken eyes,
Shakes these phantoms from her head,
Deaf to the whispered conjurings
That summon the unrestful dead.
No cross will swell and blush with blood
No hair will bristle on crawling skin
No palsied chair leg sprout out green:
Miss Crespo keeps herself within
But without, to tolling bells
Medea, Circe, Hecate rave
Touching themselves with obscene wands
Inside the verdant, teeming grave.
—from Formal Complaints
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Recollection
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance:
Pray, love—remember…
—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, scene 5
She asks if I remember June last year,
Us lying in the midst of summer’s heat
Love-tangled, adolescents in the grass,
Talking of all and nothing twixt each kiss.
Remember? Yes and more—I am that summer,
And the limb-pressed carpet of green lawn,
The glazed sleep of our quietude and fullness,
Caresses and the cherishing all done.
All this I am—mere memory’s a lie.
The pressed dried flower flattened in a book
Is less than one small bright and living stone
Mortared in the mosaic of my soul.
.
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Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide. He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.
I am overwhelmed with these slightly salacious powerful poems of pure passion, the first pertaining to a strange scene that is vividly amplified by amazing
setting and detail, the second beautifully accomplished by the exquisite alliteration and thought of “living stone/mortared in the mosaic of my soul.” These are great classical poems that appeal and enthrall.
Thank you, Roy. I’m glad that the poems work for you. The salaciousness was more accidental than deliberate, but poems that are sexually salty always draw more curious customers.
To Mike Bryant — the phrase /danse macabre/ in the first quatrain should be italicized.
I enjoyed re-reading the Halloween poem, Joe, as I’ve already read it in your book (I’ve finished Formal Complaints and I’m almost done with Nonsense Couplets), but my understanding of it is limited since I’m a Shakespeare philistine, though I plan to change that soon.
Recollection takes me back to my younger teenage days and the romances I had — simpler days when courtship didn’t come with all the bells and whistles, as it does in adulthood. I always love a poem that can evoke such emotions.
Dear Drilon —
Thank you for your kind words. The quotes from Shakespeare were nothing more than catalysts to ignite each poem. The first was to set the stage for witchcraft, the uncanny, hallucination, and horror — all contained within a spinster’s experience of Halloween. The quote heading “Recollection” was to bring up the idea of memory, and of a lost love — just as Ophelia’s love for Prince Hamlet was stillborn.
Miss Crespo’s Halloween is salacious, yes, but not with a casual reading.
There is so much story there. You also could turn it into a short story, and then you could up the ante on James Tweedie’s haiku to sonnet poetry challenge.
The “Miss Crespo…” poem is essentially about repression, both intellectual and sexual. There are things that Miss Crespo does not wish to think about, much less experience.
I don’t like mixed genres, so I would never turn a poem of mine into a prose story. Poetry is an end in itself, and not a gateway to some other art.
I see your point. I am honestly interested in knowing more about this opinion you have, it is so strongly held, and that is interesting in itself.
But do you apply it to music as well? Much choral music has been written around poetry, and when that happens, poetry can be brought to a wider audience. I for one would never had known about Archibald Lampman had it not been for Loreena MeKennit. I would never have known about Reiner Maria Rilke had it not been for Morten Lauridsen. Looked at this way, music can be a gateway to poetry, which I see as a good thing. Miss Crespo might be made into a quirky choral piece, which could bring your poetry to a larger audience. Would that not be a good thing?
I suppose it’s possible, and I couldn’t object to anyone trying to do that. To answer your question about my strongly held view, it goes back to my earliest training in childhood, which was to see a poem as something ON THE PAGE, in perfect print, every line as neat and clear and well set out as a dining table in a grand salon. Elegant and choice English, nothing slovenly or low-class, every word as finely chiselled as Roman capitals on a triumphal arch. I can’t think of a poem as a potential screenplay.
That’s why I’m impatient with the three miseries of “meaning, message, and moral.” Poems are not vehicles. They are intrinsically valuable treasures.
Thank you for your comments.
Joe, I like this explanation of what a poem is to you, as much as I like both examples you offer here. The two poems contrast in style and length and (dare I say it?) in message, but the explanation clarifies your practice in not allowing your “miseries” scope to overwhelm perfection on the page or in the reading.
Many thanks, Margaret. My sense of what a poem should be like goes very far back into my childhood.
I want to address both your comments, Mr. Osborn. Although your point about a piece of art being a vehicle by which one can boldly go from one discipline to another is clear and obvious, it is nonetheless fascinating and perennially renewable. Even within a discipline, as you observe (the haiku-sonnet challenge, or differently, Lauridsen’s setting of “O magnum mysterium” leading one to Vittoria’s; or vice-versa). I’m sure the topic has occasioned many symposia, but it is truly inexhaustable.
These spins of the mind have the poet’s touch–fantasy, brightened by remembrance in the 2nd at least, and sensitive poetics, with judiciously added syllables (mostly starting with a vowel) and rhetorically effective deleted syllables here and there (e.g., “and the limb-pressed …”–my favorite line). Thanks for both, Joseph.
The adding or deletion of a syllable here and there, for the sake of variation or to keep within the boundaries of fluency, are traditional tools of English meter. If they are handled well, no serious reader objects to them or is troubled by them. I’m glad that what I did pleased you.
Thank you for your kind words, Julian.
Joe, I have always thought of a poem as a polished gem on a page – something beautiful and contained within itself. An essay is another thing.
Your poem “Recollection” is remarkable, nor only for its crystal-clear memory but for its jewel-like qualities. I love it.
It puts me in mind of the times a friend and I rolled down a slight incline in Central Park because I wanted her to get the feeling I had when rolling down a similar incline at the home of my great-aunt, when a child.
Those rolls changed my perspective, I swear.
Thanks, Joe, for showing us a side of you we don’t usually see.
Sally, it’s been a VERY long time since I rolled on the grass with a girl. But I’m happy with the recollection of it.
Thanks for your appreciative words.
“Recollection” is quite a remarkable poem. The best I have read in some time.
Thank you, Stephen. I’m glad that the poem pleased you.
Such fine pieces, Mr. Salemi. Since the previous comments have already praised Miss Crespo’s Halloween so beautifully, I don’t think I can do any better. “Recollection” is a great example of what brevity and carefully chosen words can do. I have a strong proclivity for love poems with sad endings, and every image here transported me to my teenage years. I fully agree with Stephen’s words!
Thank you, Shamik. “Recollection” is the kind of poem one writes when one is young, but not too young to ignore the passage of time, and changes.
Once again Joe, fabulously astute and crafted verse. I love the imagery, and especially – bizarrely – the line:’A candle bakes the pumpkin’s brains.’ The idea of a pumpkin having a brain is surreal in itself, but the candle baking it … love it. I don’t know but suspect that these poems come from a period of your life long ago: the Crespo poem has strong shades of TS Eliot and his Sweeney sequences. Having said that, these stand out in themselves and have their own ‘crisp’ messages for us. Thanks.
James, I’m happy to have pleased you with my work. You are quite correct — both poems are from the 1970s, at a time when I was still heavily influenced by Eliot. His “Sweeney” sequences were always my favorites.
Joe, these are two fascinating and highly entertaining poems which offer extremely different gifts to the reader.
“Miss Crespo” is oddly frightening to me as it shares the subject’s encounters with multiple instances of the macabre embedded in the ordinary. The ordinary can seem monstrous and although Halloween is the stated catalyst for these frightening things, one gets the feeling Miss Crespo lives her life this way. One of your comments says “repressed” and yet it is a repression which bubbles out in ways she cannot control. I fear for this woman’s sanity. The language is lush and gothic and offers more interesting psychological morsels than one could acquire by trick-or-treating.
“Recollection” in 12 short lines of blank verse strikes me as highly Shakespearian, with phrasing such as “love-tangled” (“star-crossed?”), “twixt,” the emphatically romantic “I am that summer…” You comment that the quote was a mere springboard for the poem (both poems, actually.) But I find Shakespeare here in the poem’s soul. Shakespeare’s romantic language could be grandly dramatic and if it flirts with grandiosity we forgive it because it’s so obviously sincere — the idea that no one ever loved before Romeo; the use of imagery which invokes immortality, a beauty which never fades, a love which will never die… you tap into this mindset stunningly well I’m intrigued – charmed, actually, by the contrast between the pressed flower and the mosaic stone. Pressed flowers, though once-living, will eventually fall to dust. Mosaics are about as immortal an artform as exists – moreso even than statues since mosaics retain their color . Given the Shakespearian inspiration and the romantic subject-matter, you could have written a sonnet rather than a blank verse love declaration. Your choice calls to mind Shakespeare’s plays rather than his poetry. As I prefer his plays to his poems, this is a choice I applaud.
Many thanks for these comments, Brian. The Miss Crespo poem is definitely about a repression that is slowly coming apart at the seams — the sexual repression of straitlaced uptight spinster living in a secluded world of bone china teacups, cameos on velvet chokers, and desiccated virginity. Halloween and noisy trick-or-treaters pry open her world a small crack, and she can only close her eyes and ignore the threat, while three witches masturbate in an open grave.
I’m glad that you see the Shakespearean quality I tried to put into “Recollection,” combining the dolorous fate of Ophelia with the all too human tendency of a young summer love to morph quickly into a placid memory. The death of Ophelia has always upset me, just as Romeo’s quick dismissal of his love for Rosalind upsets me.
I thoroughly enjoyed both poems, Joe. Thank you!
For me “Miss Crespo’s Halloween” casts a spell with its sensuous grotesquery. It enveloped me in such vivid imagery, I felt like I’d burst in on a naked Miss. Havisham gorging on wedding cake. How did you do that!?
Although both poems are connected by the passing of time, they are very different – which showcases your skill as a versatile poet perfectly. I simply adore the closing stanza of “Recollection” – to have a special moment “Mortared in the mosaic of my soul” is a gift time and fading memories will never steal. Magical and beautiful!
Many thanks, Susan. Your sharp perception and generosity in commenting are always dependable. All I can tell you about “Miss Crespo…” is that the poem took a very long time to write, and I agonized over every quatrain.