ENVOI
Go litel myn book
and blow her head off
maker her retch and weep
and ache in the gut
make her regret everything about her life
that doesn't include me
--Maureen McClane
April is the cruelest month, which is why they decided to make April National Poetry Month! Telling the world about my favorite poets is a perfect reason to continue with the “Good in Bed” library, and one of my favorite poets is Maureen McLane, who can make me laugh in the smallest number of words. Her poems mostly look lyric, but they only look lyric. There are entire landscapes in her short lines, discursive conversations with herself and others, and then there’s a poem like “Envoi” that is like an ancient curse long thought lost, and now, found in some corner of the witch library and incanted aloud, its power has returned: Go litel myn book! Fly, my monkeys, fly!
She’s just like that in life, too, and I’ll never forget our talking one day about Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle, “One Art”:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster….
Exasperated, she said, “when my students glibly paraphrase that devastating poem like it’s a cheerleader for loss ("The art of losing really isn't that hard to master, HOORAY!"), I just want to scream at them, “When are you going to grow some damn receptors for quiet desperate irony?!” It’s clear, you see, that McLane’s desperation is often not quiet.
At some dinner a few years ago, I have it written in my journal, her friend and my colleague Susannah Gottlieb, leaned in after yet another one of her hilarious observations and whispered: "Admit it Brian, Maureen McLane is funnier than you, and at this moment she's scarier than you, because we don't know where her "off" switch is."
Maureen, I’m spending the day with your litel book, and as usual, it may be litel, but it’s not the size of the ship so much as the motion in the ocean—you are great in bed. “The sea’s in the dolphin, the sun’s/in the rose…” Smooch.
!