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***This is #101 in a
never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice
Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that
specific poem. All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of
this piece.
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#101 Backstory of the Poem
“Rare Book
and Reader”
by Ned Balbo
Can you go through the step-by-step process
of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain
until final form? I’m not sure when exactly I conceived the idea for “Rare
Book and Reader.” I’ve carried the memory that lies at the center of the poem
since the day I walked into the Vassar library’s rare book room as a first-year
college student and asked to see an original volume of The Prophecies by Nostradamus.
It was around 1976 or so that, as a
high school student, I’d first read about the French court physician and seer
in the liner notes to Al Stewart’s (Below Left) album Past,
Present, and Future. The album cover text was drawn from British author
Erika Cheetham’s (Below Right) spooky speculations about all the historical events that
Michel de Nostredame had supposedly predicted before they’d taken place. I
think that in our early years, especially at transitions like the one between
high school and college, the attraction of imagining our own faraway future is
tough to resist.
I Googled the information I needed to ensure my memory of the location, procedures, and rare book room holdings was as accurate as possible. Then I went to work.
Stunned
to contemplate the transformation
Time
brought to the living and the dead;
Hesitant
to face the transformation
Time
would bring. Before me, dead ahead,
Phase-shifted
strumming near ten minutes long,
What
other proof in time would come along?
that
hucksters knew would sell
Repackaged
and reprinted
Bunk
centuries old interpreted anew
A
priceless book the college could afford
To
lock away and guard
I
sought the book that gave birth to the song—
A
first edition, vulnerable and rare,
On a personal note: as a regular reader of superhero comics till around the age of thirteen (my first publication, ca. 1971, are letters in Marvel’s Daredvil and Tomb of Dracula, and Warren Publishing’s Creepy), I was happy to discover that the figure leaping into the time portal on the cover of Al Stewart’s album (Right First) is Stan Lee (Right Second) and Steve Ditko’s (Right Third) Doctor Strange –recognizable by the trail of his collar and cloak as he vanishes, halfway through but mostly obscured (probably to avoid copyright infringement). I’d never noticed this back in the days when I actively listened to the album.
That discovery, as quirky as it is, enriches the poem for me. It reminds me of how random elements (two of Marvel’s celebrated creators, Al Stewart’s (Right Fourth) music, an unsung graphic designer, etc.) are swept along by time and, briefly, brought together by happy accident.
Has
this poem been published before? And if
so where? Rattle, Fall 2016.
Anything you would like to add? Thanks for having me aboard, Chris. It’s a pleasure to talk bout our shared
vocation and all the unexpected factors that come together and ignite into a
poem.
Rare
Book and Reader
Helen D. Lockwood Library, September 1977
Back
in the days when we called freshmen freshmen,
I
was one, a lank-haired Vassar co-ed
newly
landed, searching for the reason
I
was there. Before me, dead ahead,
the
future held its promise like the shaded
vistas
in brochures, or like an album
on
the rack the moment you’ve decided
that
you have to buy it, take it home—
And
so I felt (caught in that no man’s land
of
post-arrival limbo, nothing sure
except
how much I didn’t understand
of
privilege, wealth, and class), this much was clear:
the
album’s title—Past, Present, and Future—
and
the cloak of Marvel’s Doctor Strange
vanishing
through some portal on the cover
promised
an escape—at least a change.
The
last track was inspired by Nostradamus
Gallic
seer and astrologer
who
wrote The Prophecies, mysterious
quatrains
of cryptic riddles that declare
foreknowledge
of disaster, plague, and war,
offering
hints that tease and tantalize
(through
allegory, tangled metaphor)
the
gullible who read with opened eyes—
Hister (Hitler?), three brothers (Kennedys?)
world wars (all three?)—well, sure,
he could be wrong,
but
if Al Stewart thought the prophecies
troubling
enough to put them in a song,
what
else would time confirm before too long?
I
sat, the huge book open to a page
five
hundred years old, in a foreign tongue
(French
mostly), brought out carefully from storage
by
a young librarian, or senior,
watchful
and amused at my expense.
Who
wouldn’t be? She knew I was no scholar
steeped
in sixteenth-century charlatans,
but
just some boy who’d wandered in by chance
or
impulse, new to college, drifting still,
his
mind enraptured by coincidence
proclaimed
as proof, each generation’s will
to
buy such bunk, as always, bottomless.
Now
I’d beheld an ur-text, reassured
it
did exist. A reader under glass,
I
sat, sealed in the hush, but not one word—
archaic,
clue-encoded—struck a chord:
I’d
never studied French! And yet I’d seen
the
priceless artifact kept under guard
in
some dark vault climate-controlled within
the
labyrinthine archives I envisioned;
briefly
exposed to light and then returned
to
deep oblivion, the world’s end
unknown
and waiting. What else had I learned?
That
where the distant future is concerned,
no
language equal to it can exist
nor
is there language clear and unadorned
to
show how time recedes into the past
—Or
if there is, it’s written not for us
but
for the eyes of one whose practiced gaze
sees
farther than our own—who knows that loss
becomes
the weight and measure of our days—
who,
in the hidden turnings of a phrase,
detects
a revelation cast in code
we
almost grasp but which remains, always,
unbroken,
like the mercy that we’re owed.
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM
LINKS
001 December 29, 2017
Margo
Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”
002 January 08, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake
Café”
003 January 12, 2018
Barbara
Crooker’s “Orange”
004 January 22, 2018
Sonia
Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”
005 January 29, 2018
Ellen
Foos’s “Side Yard”
006 February 03, 2018
Susan
Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”
007 February 09, 2018
Leslea
Newman’s “That Night”
008 February 17, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
009 February 24, 2018
Charles
Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”
010 March 03, 2018
Scott
Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
011 March 10, 2018
Anya
Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
012 March 17, 2018
Angela
Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
013 March 24, 2018
Jan
Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”
014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim
Honjo’s “Colors”
015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn
Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”
016 April 27, 2018
Beth
Copeland’s “Reliquary”
017 May 12, 2018
Marlon
L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”
018 May 25, 2018
Juliet
Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”
019 June 09, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”
020 June 16, 2018
Charles
Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”
021 July 05, 2018
Marla
Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”
022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s
“Studying Ariel”
023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus
Zombie”
024 July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag
2016”
025 August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only
Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
026 August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In
the Details”
027 August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen
Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
028 August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two
Deaths”
029 August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s
“Faces in a Crowd”
030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The
Risking Point”
031 September 24,
2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After
We Drove”
032 October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s
“Astral”
033 October 13, 2018
Robert Craven’s “I Have
A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
034 October 17, 2018
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache
Peaches of Heaven”
035 October 23, 2018
Timothy Gager’s
“Sobriety”
036 October 30, 2018
Gary Glauber’s “The
Second Breakfast”
037 November 04, 2018
Heather Forbes-McKeon’s
“Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
038 November 11, 2018
Andrena Zawinski’s
“Women of the Fields”
039 November 00, 2018
Gordon Hilger’s “Poe”
040 November 16, 2018
Rita Quillen’s “My
Children Question Me About Poetry” and “Deathbed Dreams”
041 November 20, 2018
Jonathan Kevin Rice’s
“Dog Sitting”
042 November 22, 2018
Haroldo Barbosa Filho’s
“Mountain”
043 November 27, 2018
Megan Merchant’s “Grief Flowers”
044 November 30, 2018
Jonathan P Taylor’s
“This poem is too neat”
045 December 03, 2018
Ian Haight’s “Sungmyo
for our Dead Father-in-Law”
046 December 06, 2018
Nancy Dafoe’s “Poem in
the Throat”
047 December 11, 2018
Jeffrey Pearson’s “Memorial
Day”
048 December 14, 2018
Frank Paino’s “Laika”
049 December 15, 2018
Jennifer Martelli’s
“Anniversary”
O50 December 19, 2018
Joseph Ross’s “For Gilberto Ramos, 15, Who Died in
the Texas Desert, June 2014”
051 December 23, 2018
“The Persistence of
Music”
by Anatoly Molotkov
052 December 27, 2018
“Under Surveillance”
by Michael Farry
053 December 28, 2018
“Grand Finale”
by Renuka Raghavan
054 December 29, 2018
“Aftermath”
by Gene Barry
055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
056 January 7, 2019
“The Seamstress:
by Len Kuntz
057 January 10, 2019
"Natural History"
by Camille T Dungy
058 January 11, 2019
“BLOCKADE”
by Brian Burmeister
059 January 12, 2019
“Lost”
by Clint Margrave
060 January 14, 2019
“Menopause”
by Pat Durmon
061 January 19, 2019
“Neptune’s Choir”
by Linda Imbler
062 January 22, 2019
“Views From the
Driveway”
by Amy Barone
063 January 25, 2019
“The heron leaves her
haunts in the marsh”
by Gail Wronsky
064 January 30, 2019
“Shiprock”
by Terry Lucas
065 February 02, 2019
“Summer 1970, The
University of Virginia Opens to Women in the Fall”
by Alarie Tennille
066 February 05, 2019
“At School They Learn
Nouns”
by Patrick Bizzaro
067 February 06, 2019
“I Must Not Breathe”
by Angela Jackson-Brown
068 February 11, 2019
“Lunch on City Island,
Early June”
by Christine Potter
069 February 12, 2019
“Singing”
by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
070 February 14, 2019
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P. Locke
071 February 18, 2019
“How Silent The Trees”
by Wyn Cooper
072 February 20, 2019
“A New Psalm
of Montreal”
by Sheenagh Pugh
073 February 23, 2019
“Make Me A
Butterfly”
by Amy Barbera
074 February 26, 2019
“Anthem”
by Sandy Coomer
075 March 4, 2019
“Shape of a Violin”
by Kelly Powell
076 March 5, 2019
“Inward Oracle”
by J.P. Dancing Bear
077 March 7, 2019
“I Broke
My Bust Of Jesus”
by Susan Sundwall
078 March 9, 2019
“My Mother
at 19”
by John Guzlowski
079 March 10, 2019
“Paddling”
by Chera Hammons Miller
080 March 12, 2019
“Of Water
and Echo”
by Gillian Cummings
081 082
083 March 14, 2019
“Little
Political Sense” “Crossing Kansas with
Jim
Morrison” “The Land of Sky and Blue Waters”
by Dr. Lindsey
Martin-Bowen
084 March 15, 2019
“A Tune To
Remember”
by Anna Evans
085 March 19, 2019
“At the
End of Time (Wish You Were Here)
by Jeannine Hall Gailey
086 March 20, 2019
“Garden of
Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill
087 March 21, 2019
“Letters
From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman
088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman
089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for
the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois
#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks
#091 April 2, 2019
“Last
Night at the Wursthaus”
by Doug Holder
#092 April 4, 2019
“Original
Sin”
by Diane Lockward
#093 April 5, 2019
“A Father
Calls to his child on liveleak”
by Stephen Byrne
#094 April 8, 2019
“XX”
by Marc Zegans
#095 April 12, 2019
“Landscape
and Still Life”
by Marjorie Maddox
#096 April 16, 2019
“Strawberries
Have Been Growing Here for Hundreds of
Years”
by Mary Ellen Lough
#097 April 17, 2019
“The New
Science of Slippery Surfaces”
by Donna Spruijt-Metz
#098 April 19, 2019
“Tennessee
Epithalamium”
by Alyse Knorr
#099 April 20, 2019
“Mermaid,
1969”
by Tameca L. Coleman
#100 April 21, 2019
“How Do
You Know?”
by Stephanie
#101 April 23, 2019
“Rare Book
and Reader”
by Ned Balbo
