I know a man who used to teach English Lit at a local university, and in fact, I worked for him for a couple of years at a publishing company loosely attached to the same institution. Anyway, he is quite well known and connected within the broad network of medieval lit scholars, and though many consider him to be quite intelligent, he displays a serious handicap in that he seems unable to read and understand some of the most engaging contemporary poetry.
At one point while I worked at the press, he suffered the wrath of another academic in Britain concerning a book of hers he had verbally agreed to publish. I think she was putting together some kind of annotated
Euphues for students, but I really don’t remember all the details. Anyway, he was trying to back out of the deal since the press had no money for a book project unless it could be expected to sell, and this book wasn’t. She, on the other hand, was freaking out because her reputation and career were on the line. She was worried about being destroyed by academia (which probably wasn’t unrealistic), and she’d gambled everything on this book promise which was suddenly turning sour after years of work. So my boss was feeling low about it all but had to answer to a board of directors and felt for the sake of the press that he needed to blow this project off.
I was aware of all this and so decided to amuse him with the following poem by
Ron Padgett which I copied and placed on his desk one morning along with a pile of other correspondence (pause) (now I am forced to find the book in my precariously leaning stacks) (okay, here it is - I also found
Technicians of the Sacred - yippee!):
Euphues
I dunno about this
Euphues.
Lyly’s language is gorgeous,
of course, occasionally irritating,
too, so you feel satisfied
to have the experience just
behind you. You get up and go outside
and have a hot dog in the sunlight and
think about the conjunctions,
those pinions
that allow our sentences to rotate in mid-course:
“The afternoon was mild, although not yet over,”
placing the dependent clause in direct opposition
to the main clause, like a woman who suddenly
turns to face you and it takes
your breath away—there is a moment
of silence and intensity—the boats
are frozen in the bay and no little doggie barks.
“I’ve been meaning to say something to you...,”
she begins. And your heart
sinks: something massive
is about to happen,
you will be joined to this woman
by a tremendous force, something like
gravity, in which
hats float down onto our heads and we smile.
We smile toward this countess of Pembroke
with her delicate lips and translation
of
The Psalms with her brother Sir Philip Sydney,
the great poet and of the great tradition of
fine comportment. His conjunctions
were in perfect order
and he exuded a harmony,
a tone actually heard in the air.
My mistake was in forgetting that he was a medievalist and enamored of British poetry and formal essays, so this poem just pissed him off. He asked if I gave it to him and when I said yes, he threw it in the trash in disgust accompanied by derogatory comments to the effect that although the poem started out strongly, the author didn’t know how to stay on topic.
Well, I was taken aback. (I’ve never before admitted to being “taken aback” in these specific terms, but “aback” is a fine word even without the addition of “taken” to which it usually seems to be yoked.)
I might taken that aback, but I won’t.
But, to get aback on topic, after the unpleasant response my gesture elicited, I read the poem again, and again I found it wonderful. While I may have aggravated an annoyance best forgotten by reminding my employer of his own violation of an agreement which meant so much to another author/editor, it wasn’t the poem which was at fault.
The off topic accusation is in fact entirely mistaken. Rather, Padgett stays on topic while miraculously ranging huge distances in the process. And he does all this with a delightful sense of humor.
The first line, “I dunno about this
Euphues,” is funny precisely in how it captures what must be a common reaction of almost anybody on first encounter with Lyly’s text. This emotional response is the very essence of why my boss felt compelled to back out of the publishing deal, and Padgett captures this effect with his rapid shift to 2nd person.
Even today, the more I look at Padgett’s poem, the more I am astounded that a literature professor would miss Padgett’s playful and subtle irony revolving around the idea of euphony and classic lyricism as found not only in Sydney, whose
Astrophel and Stella is also quite humorous, but found as well in a poem just such as this, the final line of which thoroughly reverberates while containing all that precedes it.
