Fall Poetry Fest: On Reading Barbara Pym

When reading Barbara Pym,

the sets are like a scrim;

you see right through the characters,

be it a her or him.

To all the English preachers,

(of whom she cannot say enough),

and all the English teachers,

those learned folk who read her stuff-

I wish that I could write like Pym

of life’s peculiar lots,

I think like Twain but so far sound

like Stephen Dowling Bots.

Twain is to be studied,

Shakespeare is revered,

but when I want to just relax,

to Barbary Pym I’m geared.

The Adventures. . . Cont'd., Chapter Eight: The Sigh

Nootchie has learned to sit up- by herself! She’s so ecstatic about this feat, yet another wonderful and newfound vicissitude of her tiny existence, that all she can do is shake, rattle and roll, mainly her rattle that is, but with marked brio. Alas, she still does not have the complete know how yet as to how to form discernible and real words like Wow! Wowee! This is so cool!!! But she has figured out how to emit this long, soulful sigh.

The sigh is somewhat deceptive and at first seems to carry the weight of the world on her diminutive shoulders. It emanates from way down in her essence and is low and plaintive, a kind of soft growl. It trills. If she were in glee club she definitely would be singing harmony, if in jazz she’d be scatting. But there’s also a distinct “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” aspect to this quietly forceful though subtly spirited ribbon of sound. It is quite moving.

Upon first hearing the sigh I imagined she had channeled all the philosophers of the world and settled finally on the existentialists, or maybe  the nihilists. I began to see Nootchie as a weary octogenarian who had just hobbled to the supermarket and was in the arduous process of shlepping her bags home, or perhaps a young public school teacher at the end of a long day and more than a few unruly students. A surgeon following a difficult transplant, or an exercise nut who had finally overdone it. A member of the clergy saddened and disillusioned by the flock. Shades of a favorite poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins poignantly immortal “Spring and Fall to a Young Child,” suddenly came into mind: Margaret are you grieving over goldengrove unleaving.. . .  All the cares of the universe seemed ineluctably captured and encased in that one weary exhalation of tension freeing yoga breath.

But then I realized that somehow I had gotten it all wrong, and as usual it was just a matter of perception. This clearly was a sigh of pure exhilaration. I can sit and almost turn over, twice she thinks, and soon I will be able to get across that room on hands and knees without being carried like a warm, smiley, happy lump- exceedingly cute and cared for, but still a curious bundle of dependent adorableness with limited free will. Si-i-i-gggghhh! This is so completely Wowee- on steroids baby- and frankly, I can’t wait. But first, a nap.