April 1: Wild Bob, Lazarus, Appreciating Loss

There were pictures of castles and lakes and pretty girls on the walls.  This was the rolling home of the railroad guards, men whose business it was to be forever guarding freight rolling from here to there.  The four guards went inside and closed the door.

A little while later they came out smoking cigars, talking contentedly in the mellow lower register of the German language.  One of them saw Billy's face at the ventilator.  He wagged a finger at him in affectionate warning, telling him to be a good boy.

The Americans across the way told the guards again about the dead man on their car.  The guards got a stretcher out of their own cozy car, opened the dead man's car and went inside.  The dead man's car wasn't crowded at all.  There were just six live colonels in there--and one dead one.

The Germans carried the corpse out.  The corpse was Wild Bob.  So it goes.

Vonnegut treats death very matter-of-factly in Slaughterhouse.  A lot of people die.  Billy's wife dies.  Wild Bob dies.  Later in the book, Dresden is firebombed.  Lots of people shuffle off this mortal coil in the book.  And Vonnegut's response is simple:  So it goes.  Death happens.

I went to church tonight.  The Gospel reading was the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life.  Of course, this passage contains the shortest sentence in the Bible:  "Jesus wept."  I always find that line really moving.  Jesus, the Son of God, who has the power to bring His friend back to life, reacts in a very human way to the death of Lazarus.  He cries.  Allows Himself to be overcome with grief.

I find great comfort in Jesus' tears.  In becoming flesh and blood, Jesus understands loss.  When my sister died, I read the story of Lazarus quite a few times.  I almost chose it as a reading for her funeral.  Eventually, I decided against it.  I don't know why.  I think it was because it was too personal to me.  Every time I reread the story of Lazarus in the days following my sister's death, I would burst into tears when I came to "Jesus wept."  I didn't want to share that response in public.  Not then.

Now, approaching the two year anniversary of my sister's death, I'm still moved by Jesus weeping at Lazarus' tomb, but it's not quite so . . . present.  I'm able to control my emotions better.  I am not Kurt Vonnegut or Billy Pilgrim.  I can't just say "So it goes" and move on with my narrative.  However, I understand the beauty of a life well-lived.  I can be grateful for loss because it makes me appreciate my friends and family members even more.

Saint Marty is thankful for everyone in his life, even the people who drive him a little crazy.

March 28: Wild Bob, Poetic Equations, Dickinson's Advice

There was another long silence, with the colonel dying and dying, drowning where he stood.  And then he dried out wetly, "It's me, boys!  It's Wild Bob!"  That is what he had always wanted his troops to call him:  "Wild Bob."

None of the people who could hear him were actually from his regiment, except for Roland Weary, and Weary wasn't listening.  All Weary could think of was the agony in his own feet.

But the colonel imagined that he was addressing his beloved troops for the last time, and he told them that they had nothing to be ashamed of, that there were dead Germans all over the battlefield who wished to God that they had never heard of the Four-fifty-first.  He said that after the war he was going to have a regimental reunion in his home town, which was Cody, Wyoming.  He was going to barbecue whole steers.

He said all the while staring into Billy's eyes.  He made the inside of poor Billy's skull echo with balderdash.  "God be with you, boys!: he said, and that echoed and echoed.  And then he said, "If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!"

I was there.  So was my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare.

This passage is a strange combination of fiction and fact.  Billy Pilgrim is there.  Roland Weary is there.  Wild Bob is there.  And so is Vonnegut and his war buddy, Bernard.  That means that at least part of this passage is fact.  Wild Bob probably was at this railroad yard, calling out, "God be with you boys!"  Vonnegut heard him, decided to put him in his book about the war.

In anything I write, there is always a measure of truth.  Poetry is all about getting to the heart of an experience.  I have written poems about diabetes and adultery, mental illness and spiritual crisis.  There's an inclination for readers of poetry to automatically assume that a poem is 100% true.  The equations in most people's heads go something like this:

Speaker in Poem = Poet

Therefore, if

Speaker in Poem is cutting himself

then

Poet is a cutter

All of those statements may be true.  The poet may be writing from personal experience.  Or, the poet's wife may be a cutter.  Or daughter.  Or son.  Or sister.  There is real truth, and there is poetic truth.  Walt Whitman probably did take the Brooklyn ferry home from Manhattan, but he may not have.  Robert Frost may have stopped by some woods on a winter night, or he may not have.  Dickinson probably heard a fly buzz at some point in her life.

It's all a matter of taking real experience (a ferry ride, an insect on a windowsill, a horse-drawn sleigh ride) and transforming it into universal experience.  That's the poet's job.  At least, that's my job as a poet.  I want to my readers to recognize themselves.  So, I guess that I would prefer the poetic equations to go something like this:

Speaker in Poem = Reader of Poem

Therefore, if 

Speaker in Poem is cutting himself

then

Reader of Poem understands the experience of cutting

So, if I write a poem about having an alcoholic father, that doesn't mean my father is or was an alcoholic.  Likewise, if I write a poem about seeing my father beat my mother, that doesn't mean that I was raised in a house filled with domestic violence.  I am telling all the truth, but I am following Emily Dickinson's advice:  I am telling it slant.  Just like Kurt Vonnegut.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the truth of a warm late March evening.