My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [96]
“Just do me a favor, after lunch, go home and Google ‘famous poets.’ A lot of their stuff is online. Read through some of it. I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t find something you like, I won’t harass you about learning more.”
“What do I get if I do find something I like? Then what do I get?”
Stacey purses her lips and pulls her brows together. “You get the pleasure of reading something amazing.”
“Pfft, that sucks.” Stacey gives me her thousand-yard death glare and I relent. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
But I won’t like it.
When I get home, I dutifully sit down at my computer and Google “famous poets.”
Okay, fine. It’s actually three days later when I finally work up the motivation to input this particular search string. And then I make a typo and accidentally search for “famous pets.”
I’m surprised at how many presidential dogs I know. There’s Millie, Barney, Buddy, Checkers, Manchu, and Sailor Boy. I wasn’t sure of LBJ’s dogs’ names, but I did know he used to pick them up by the ears.184 What’s funny is I’m not sure I could name all their respective vice presidents.
I’m interested to read that Winston Churchill had a cat named Mar-gate. I find this curious; I never pictured him as a cat person. I see him more as someone who’d have had dogs, like maybe English bulldogs. That seems so veddy, veddy British, doesn’t it? Personally, I want a pair of bulldogs someday, and coincidentally, I’d like to name them Winston and Churchill, but I’d probably call them Winnie and Chilly for short and—
Ahem.
Famous poets.
I decide the fairest way to do this is to research what people consider to be the top one hundred poems of all time. I run across a good list, and luckily, it links to everything I need to read.
I plow through work by Ezra Pound and Oscar Wilde. Nothing they have to say speaks to me much. Neither Stephen Crane nor William Butler Yeats does it for me, either. I hit a string of Robert Frost work, and I like all of it, but it doesn’t count because I already admitted an affinity for him. Robert Burns does not write in a language I even remotely recognize, so he’s out. Sylvia Plath makes me want to stick my own head in the oven, and Allen Ginsberg needs to set down the bong, man.
I’m completely confident in my poetry-hating stance until I read “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. I know many lines from this one because of that “Treehouse of Horror” episode on The Simpsons, so I’m giggling to myself as I picture Bart as the raven. I finish The poem fairly quickly and figure this is as good as any stopping point.
I feel as though this poem has no effect on me, yet while I’m walking down the hall to throw a load of laundry in the dryer, I notice a pigeon staring at me from my neighbor’s window ledge.
And I almost have a frigging heart attack.
“How’s it going? Anything speak to you yet?” Stacey and I are in the car, on our way to our weekly Whole Foods shopping expedition.
“Other than ‘The Raven’185 scaring the bejesus out of me, no,” I reply.
“You can’t hate what you’re doing, or you’d have quit by now.”
“I’d admit to being intrigued, but that’s it. I’m not yet fond of any work, but the observations are interesting to me. First, who knew how much poetry had worked its way into pop culture? Like the speech the president gives in Independence Day that always makes me tear up? Bill Pullman uses a line from a Dylan Thomas poem when he talks about not going quietly into that good night. Cool, right?”
“Cool that you recognize it now,” Stacey adds.
“Also, how come Shel Silverstein’s considered one of the greatest poets of all time, yet no one’s said shit about Dr. Seuss? Not only did he rhyme, but he drew! I mean, come on, let’s give credit where it’s due. And, wow, did Sylvia Plath have daddy issues or what? And Emily Dickinson? Jesus Christ, she makes me want to stab myself in the eyes and then shove handfuls of Prozac in the empty sockets.” I slump back into my seat, exhausted at my own diatribe.
Stacey’s nodding after I finish. “I never loved Dickinson. But want to hear something that might make