POETS Day! Mrs. Browning’s Husband

Thomas Buchanan Read, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I want a marquee. I’m thinking neon lights with that necessary curve that connects one letter to the next so heat infused gasses get to light up the next hieroglyph. It would be simple and just say “POET’S Day!” and maybe “Hurrah!” I don’t mean to invade your mental space or question the workings of your mind but I’m reading my aspirational sign in an unrehearsed out loud Martin Short voice and I recommend it.

Welcome to POETS Day. Piss off early, tomorrow’s Saturday. This week’s scam to get out of work is brought to you by your genitals. That’s right. It’s time for an STD.

Before you worry about the stigma associated with sexually transmitted diseases you should consider the upside. You have to be moderately popular or at least glancingly appealing in order to get one. These things don’t just hop from crotch to crotch. You need a bon mot and a martini or something to keep the wheels turning. It’s a choice. Good on you. You can look down on the itchy or you can congratulate those charming enough to get herpes.

I knew a girl who was awesome because she sang for a damn good band. She could play pool and her first name was what most people would assume was a last name so she had all the boxes checked. She was so cool.

A friend of mine, one of her bandmates, caught my arm at the end of a particularly clever onslaught of me in her direction and whispered “herpes” as I was wandering toward assumed bliss. The road towards her bed was paved, but suddenly I had a something that was an excuse me toward the next day and that needed my attention. I think about this on occasion. Had I gotten an STD that night I wouldn’t be married. I wouldn’t have my children. I would have a great story about this seriously hot chick that played pool and led a band, but that’s not important. A whisper from a bass player changed my life.

Now how is this funny?

Well, there’s the crotch aspect. Crotches are always funny. Tell your boss that you are having issues and do your absolute best to paint a picture without filling in the blanks. No one wants to question a below the belt situation which means that no one has admitted to a below the belt situation. Done well and this is a non-situation situation. The boss will back away as you say nothing consequential. There will be no recriminations because there is no crimination to start with. Neither you nor your boss wants to talk about this. Done perfectly and there will be disapproving glances at Nancy from HR. Either way your boss remits and you get to go. You are out of work and sitting at the bar in time to watch “Jeopardy!” at the three o’clock time slot and God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

Today’s poet is Robert Browning. Of Browning, the immeasurable Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote as like “a man bouncing up from a table with his mouth full of bread and cheese and saying that he meant to stand no blasted nonsense.” I’ve read that repeatedly and I’m a Hopkins fan but it makes no sense whatsoever.

I picked that quote up from an essay on Browning and at best I can say that Hopkins was referring to the energy of the Victorian poets. They certainly had that. Browning certainly had that.

In “Meeting at Night,” Browning flexes his muscles. It’s moving and energetic and, and, and. Five of the twelve lines start with “And.” There’s a “Then” in there too along with an “As.” It’s a keep going poem with an exclamation point at the end.

He hops from eight to nine syllables and runs an a/b/c/c/b/a rhyme scheme over two stanzas. I’ve decried netless poetry on these electronic pages and made a hypocrite of myself last week with adoration of cummings and this is my retreat to the other side. I love poetic structure, but he’s too much a slave to form in this piece. I admire meter and such, but this is a bit for a man known to play with words and tease the reader.

On paper, it works. But read it aloud and you’ll find yourself stuck in sing-song. The words are wonderful, but the cadence is predictable and safe. In his lifetime he was known as Mrs. Browning’s Husband. That’s not fair to him considering the talent Mrs. Browning possessed, but you can see it here. He tends toward process and injudicious semi-colons when giving talent reign might have been prudent. He’s also got a thing for water when he goes to short form. I don’t claim to be a Browning scholar, but the short works I’ve come across all feature the sea.

For all my criticism, he made Norton’s Anthology and I have not, so hat’s off to you Mr. Mrs. Browning.

Meeting at Night

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!