The Secret Life of This Life Now #13
13th in a series of brief essays about the coming and going of a book.
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I recently came into possession of the last 100 or so copies of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), my Lammy-finalist first book of poems. I thought this series of essays might be a good way to persuade 100 or so people to make those copies disappear. And it’s turning out to be a good teaser for my as yet unwritten memoir.
This is post #13 in the series. We are in the second section of the book, called “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Sodomite.” These are poems about my childhood. The second poem in this section, and the 13th poem in the book, is “Supermarionation.” Take a look at the first two stanzas of the poem, and I’ll tell you about Supermarionation on the other side.
In our bedroom chop shop
my big brother and I
scoured through NASCAR colorful cardboard boxes,
reliquaries of polyurethane remnants,
spare tires and hub caps,
demolished chassis and bodies stripped from last year’s
car models...The essays corresponding to this section of the book give me an opportunity to tell you a bit about how I grew up. In the last installment of Secret Life, my parents had just—as my mom used to say—”lost the Levitt house” and moved from Hempstead, in Nassau County on the south shore of Long Island, to Luna Park, a subsidized housing development for middle-income (mostly White) folks in Coney Island (which my dad used to call “the asshole of Brooklyn”).
My brother Victor (third in birth order of my mother’s four live-born sons, all of us siblings of the seven still-born sons my mom delivered during her seven pregnancies between 1946 and 1961, when I became—as she liked to say—“the last of the Mohicans”) and I used to build plastic car models. That was a popular boys’ pastime in the 1960s. From my occasional forays into toy stores today, I don’t think it really exists anymore.
Our car models had a shelf life—literally: They were displayed on pine shelves that our dad mounted on a wall of the bedroom we shared. When their shelf-life was over—perhaps a car model was damaged in a fall, or perhaps one of us simply grew tired of it and was ready to move on—we did not throw away the pieces; rather, we stored them in the boxes in which unconstructed car models came from the toy store—or in our case, usually the stationery store in the Trump Village shopping center, back when stationery stores were also toy stores and also—very importantly—sold comic books (another central focus of our childhood).
From the “polyurethane remnants” in those “NASCAR colorful cardboard boxes,” Victor and I built new things, usually futuristic, space adventurous flying things. All you really needed was a car engine, a bucket seat, and a little airplane glue, and you were off to Mars or to Alpha Centauri. One or more tires might make for some good landing gear, and a hubcap might serve as docking probe.
To some extent, our inspiration was live-action TV shows like Lost in Space and Star Trek (the original series). But the primary fodder for our flights of outer space fantasy was Supermarionation. The term itself is a portmanteau of “super,” “marionette,” and “animation.” It refers to the animation technique used to produce a number of science fiction TV shows in the 1960s, including Supercar (1961–1962), Thunderbirds (1965–1966), and Captain Scarlet (1967–1968). The characters were all marionettes with cool costumes, awesome vehicles, and exciting adventures. And that is all you need to know before you read the poem “Supermarionation” in its entirety (i.e. buy the book).
I’m thinking about how much detail I should go into about my 1960s, with its hysterectomies, heart attacks, allergies, chronic bronchitis, family feuds, political assassinations, civil rights marches, antiwar marches, doctors who made house calls, and much, much more. I can’t decide what to bring in and what to leave out. So instead, I’m going to share with you a poem called “Years (1961–1970)” that is not in This Life Now. In fact, it is unpublished. This, however, counts as publication, so this poor poem of which I am so fond will never find its way into a journal. Nevertheless, for you my loyal readers, here it is.
The form of “Years” is Sapphic stanzas (often called simply “Sapphics”). The meter is associated with the Greek lyric poet Sappho. She, like other Greek and Roman poets who composed Sapphics in Greek or Latin, used syllable length (long vs. short) rather than syllable stress (stressed vs. unstressed) as the basis of their poetic meters. The more sesquipedalian terms for this distinction are quantitative meter (syllable length; long vs. short) and qualitative meter (syllable stress; stressed vs. unstressed), Adapted for qualitative (stress-based) English poetry, the Sapphic stanza goes something like the diagram below, with the dashes representing stressed syllables, and the “u”s representing unstressed syllables. The “x”s refer to a length-or-stress status called anceps, Latin for “two-headed” and by extension “uncertain” or “unfixed,” meaning the metrical rules allowed either possible option at that position—long or short for Greek or Latin quantitative meter, and stressed or unstressed for English qualitative meter.
– u – x – u u – u – – – u – x – u u – u – – – u – x – u u – u – – – u u – –
That being said, in this poem, I do not adhere very strictly to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables shown in the diagram. In the first three lines of the stanza, my main deference to Sappho is in the count of eleven syllables. The rhythm is somewhat variable in those lines. Where I am more faithful is in the last line of each stanza, which is based on an Ancient Greek metrical patten called an Adonic, and has the rhythm of the English phrase “shave and a haircut”—bump buh-duh bump bump. I’m very careful about my bump buh-duh bump bumps, because in my book, that’s what makes a Sapphic stanza a Sapphic stanza.
YEARS (1961-1970) Dad behind the wheel of his new Ford Falcon, driving home from Freeport Hospital, south shore; Mom and Vic and newborn Mike in the back seat— that’s when he tells her. No job, four kids, new baby; money low, they sell the Levitt house and we move to Coney Island, brand new, towering housing project named for the burned-down Luna Park amusement park. On black-and-white Motorola, Mom watches the procession, cries when he salutes the cold coffin, me the same age as John-John. Dad, forty-four, mends from a heart attack and makes the switch from sales to commercial art, the doctors having said he could neither smoke nor carry his sample cases any longer. In sixty-five my brother Henry works at the butcher shop, saves up and buys a first generation hi-fi, microphone built in. Kindergarten. I wanna hold your hand. We take a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to attend Dad’s twenty-year (since World War II) army reunion. Dad’s behind the wheel of another new Ford— this a pale yellow Galaxy 500. The Six Day War plays on the car radio— Israel is winning. Teachers go on strike, year of two more murders; we sing protest songs in assembly Tuesday mornings like a tree planted by the water— white shirts and red ties. June of sixty-nine on a ghostly blue screen, Armstrong fluffs his line as he leaves the module, ghostly figures leaping in clumsy space suits— Eagle has landed. Beatles break up post Let It Be. My first loves— in my playpen twisting and shouting. That was a childhood ago. Now at nine I get my first pair of glasses.
Uh! Such a long post now!! Back with more portraiture of the artist (poet) as a young sodomite (sodomite in waiting, at least) next time. À la prochaine.
Get your copy of This Life Now, well...NOW! The bargain-basement fireside-sale price of $10.00 includes SHIPPING in the US.
Scheduling Note: I am going to publish posts in this series on Mondays and Thursdays at about noon eastern time. Second Coming posts seven days a week at 6:30 a.m. eastern time.
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I needed some sapphics today. Thank you, Michael. Much appreciated.