The Night the Bat Got In

How's everyone holding up?

Last week I read an article about the pandemic giving people vivid dreams. Well, this morning I had a doozie.

I guess because today would normally be our weekly meeting day, I dreamed I was in a meeting with some of my co-workers. However, because of the pandemic, the meeting was being held at a co-worker's house, and for some reason it happened to be the same house where my family lived when I was in middle school (or, as we called it then, "junior high").

Before I go any further with the story, I need to tell you a little bit about the house and especially about my bedroom. It was a big two-story house, about a hundred years old, with four bedrooms, a front and back stairway, and a small enclosed foyer between the front door and the living room. My bedroom was at the back of the house. It was by no means the biggest bedroom, but it was definitely the coolest, because it had access to a small second-floor porch and to the attic. And mind you, this wasn't one of those cramped attics where you have to get to it by climbing a ladder, you can't stand up without hitting your head on a rafter, and you have to be careful where you walk or you'll fall through the ceiling. This was a big, old-fashioned attic, fully-floored and accessed by an actual stairway behind a door next to my bed.

In my dream, my co-worker had turned my bedroom and the adjoining attic into a spacious, tastefully-decorated office suite. It bore little resemblance to the room I once occupied, but being there reminded me of something that happened to me over fifty years ago. I told my co-workers the following story, which is absolutely true.

---

One night when I was about thirteen, I was awakened by the sound of something flying around my bedroom, something much bigger than the usual fly or mosquito. I had seen bats flying around our neighborhood, so I immediately knew what had happened: somehow, either from the attic or the porch, one had gotten into my room.

My dream audience hung on every word as I described my dilemma: I couldn't stay in the room, but I was terrified to get out of bed. They laughed when I told them how I slowly slid out of my bed and onto the floor, then crawled to the door, reached up and opened it, then quickly exited, quietly shutting the door behind me. I told them how I spent the rest of the night dozing in my father's recliner, how I sneaked back into my room the next day and left the porch door ajar, hoping the bat would be gone by the time I went to bed.

However, the bat must have exited the room when I did, because the following evening it showed up in our living room.

My memory is a little vague about what followed; as I said, this was over fifty years ago. I seem to remember standing on the landing of the front stairs, wielding a broom. I seem to remember the bat flying straight at me. I seem to remember looking directly into its face—and it wasn't one of those cute bat faces; it was horrifying, with lots of teeth. I seem to remember someone screaming, and I'm pretty sure it was me.

I remember that somehow we were able to herd the bat into the foyer and close the inside door on it. Then all I had to do was go out the back door and around to the front of the house, open the front door, and let it fly away.

---

Because my dream audience enjoyed the story so much, I woke up thinking I had to write it down. I also thought it would be nice to tie it to National Poetry Month, this being the last day—and didn't Emily Dickinson write a poem about bats?

Of course she did.

THE BAT is dun with wrinkled wings
Like fallow article,
And not a song pervades his lips,
Or none perceptible.

His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
Describing in the air
An arc alike inscrutable,—
Elate philosopher!

Deputed from what firmament
Of what astute abode,
Empowered with what malevolence
Auspiciously withheld.

To his adroit Creator
Ascribe no less the praise;
Beneficent, believe me,
His eccentricities.

Absolute Reality and Poetry

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."―Shirley Jackson

How's everyone holding up?

I have to admit the "absolute reality" of our situation sank in this week, and I went a little stir-crazy. I don't think I'm the only one, judging by the number of neighbors I see wandering restlessly up and down our street.

I've had trouble sleeping at night and concentrating on my work during the day. I've been spending far too much time on the Internet, tracking local COVID-19 stats and reading grim tales of death ships, body bags, and mobile morgues.

April being National Poetry Month, I naturally tried to distract myself with poetry. But I kept coming up with poems about death and pestilence, like this one:

Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss;
This world uncertain is;
Fond are life's lustful joys;
Death proves them all but toys;
None from his darts can fly;
I am sick, I must die.
    Lord, have mercy on us!

Thomas Nashe, have mercy on us! His "A Litany in Time of Plague" goes on like that for five more stanzas, but I'll spare you the rest. Right now, we're all better off reading Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Poetry can be very be soothing, when it's not about the plague. So can nature, as Wordsworth and his fellow romantics knew. Looking out my window, in addition to our restless neighbors, I can see flowers, trees, birds, lizards, butterflies—even the occasional rabbit. And when I see such things my heart, like Wordsworth's, "with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils." (Or, to be more accurate, "dances with the California poppies." Our daffodils have come and gone.)

Look, I realize how lucky Loretta and I are. Not everyone can look out their windows right now and see the things we can see. (I'm so grateful we no longer live in a townhouse, where the view from our front window was the dumpster enclosure behind a supermarket.)

The point is, in this terrible time of absolute crap reality, I hope everyone can find something to fill their heart with pleasure and make it dance.

Nothing Is Forever

It's National Poetry Month, and I have spent the week racking (or is it "wracking?") my brain and the internet for a poem to express my feelings about these "interesting times" we live in. I finally thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias," but when I searched for the poem, I discovered that there are, in fact, two "Ozymandiases" ("Ozymandii?")—one written by Shelley, the other by his friend and fellow poet, Horace Smith. Here are both poems:

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias (aka "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below"*)
by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

According to Wikipedia, both poems were likely inspired by "the announcement of the British Museum's acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II..." You may remember Ramesses (or "Ramses") as the pharaoh of Exodus, portrayed by Yul Brynner in "The Ten Commandments." "Ozymandias" is what the Greeks called him, and if the Greeks wrote about him—well, in those days, that pretty much meant he was world famous. He was the most powerful and longest-reigning pharaoh in Egypt's history—not to mention the most egotistical. He ordered the construction of numerous temples and palaces bearing his name, and the erection of enormous statues bearing his image.

Statue Fragment in British Museum

You know how some people think they are "God's Gift?" Well, this guy thought he was a god—literally. Yes, I know the word "literally" is used far too frequently and generally incorrectly, but as an English major, I know the time and place to use it, and this is one of those times and places. Ramesses believed himself to be literally immortal.

He was wrong, of course, and that's what both "Ozymandias" poems are about.

Nothing is forever.

And these days, that's a very comforting thought.


*Smith changed his poem's title to avoid confusion with Shelley's, which may have something to do with it's having been all but forgotten. "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below," does not exactly roll off the tongue, nor is it an easy title to remember.

The Golden Apples of the Sun

For some time now, I have been patiently waiting for The Golden Apples of the Sun to be released on Kindle. It contains some of my favorite Ray Bradbury short stories, including "The Fog Horn" and "A Sound of Thunder." I have the paperback, of course, but I find reading books on Kindle to be so much easier. As I get older I especially appreciate the ability to enlarge the print. (I took a glance at my 1970 Bantam paperback before writing this. It's hard to believe my eyes were ever good enough to read such tiny print. And without glasses!)

Last week I discovered that The Golden Apples of the Sun is available for Kindle now, and probably has been for years. The reason I couldn't find it was that the publisher had changed the title to A Sound of Thunder.

I won't dispute the fact that "A Sound of Thunder" is a better story than "The Golden Apples of the Sun," the story from which the book takes its title. The former is about time travel and dinosaurs; the latter is about a rocket trip to the surface of the sun. Time travel? Yes! Dinosaurs? Absolutely! The surface of the sun? Are you kidding me?! (Well, there is that old joke about going at night.) "A Sound of Thunder" is generally considered to be one of Ray Bradbury's finest stories, but I'm pretty sure that's not why the publisher changed the title.

In 2005, a film version of "A Sound of Thunder," was released. The late Roger Ebert said of it: "[T]here is something almost endearing about the clunky special effects and clumsy construction.... The movie is made with a gee-whiz spirit, and although I cannot endorse it I can appreciate it." (Sounds like a perfect movie for the new Mystery Science 3000 crew, doesn't it?)

The publisher obviously changed the title of the book to the title of the movie in order to boost sales. In the corporate world, this is what's known as "synergy."

I was outraged by this callous act of corporate greed. Well, maybe not exactly outraged, but at least mildly vexed. I'm sure Ray Bradbury would have been more than mildly vexed. He did not choose his title randomly; he chose it because he was a poet. He loved poetry, wrote poetry, and breathed poetry into his prose. Consider this passage from "The Fog Horn," first story in The Golden Apples of the Sun and basis for the 1953 sci-fi film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms:

I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.

He also borrowed some of his story titles, including "The Golden Apples of the Sun," from poetry—a different sort of synergy, motivated by artistic choice rather than profit. Decades after I became a Ray Bradbury fan, I became a William Butler Yeats fan, and I discovered the poem that was the source of Bradbury's title:

The Song of Wandering Aengus
W. B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Lovely, isn't it? Especially those last few lines. Bradbury put them at the beginning of the book, just beneath the dedication to his beloved Aunt Neva—a lover of books who introduced him to some of his greatest influences: L. Frank Baum, Edgar Allan Poe, and, I'd be willing to bet, William Butler Yeats.

...And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Happy National Poetry Month!

1970 Bantam Paperback Cover

"This Book Changed My Life"

A woman called out with a frown,
When surprised by some callers from town,
"In a minute or less,
I'll slip on a dress—"
But she slipped on the stairs and came down.

The above limerick popped into my head yesterday. It was one of my favorites from the Arrow Book of Funny Poems, a book I purchased nearly half a century ago through the Scholastic Book Club. Remember the Scholastic Book Club? Nothing but Christmas could equal the anticipation of waiting for ordered books and the thrill when they finally came—delivered right to your desk by your teacher, your order form tucked neatly between the pristine, brand-new-book-scented pages.

I looked up the Arrow Book of Funny Poems on the Internet. It's out of print, but you can buy it used on Amazon.com for—get this—$0.01. No, I didn't misplace a decimal. That's one cent. A penny. One one-hundredth of a dollar. I don't think I've ever seen anything for sale on Amazon.com for a penny—or anywhere else, for that matter (at least not since the price of a gumball soared to a nickel). Of course, shipping costs $3.99, which makes the actual cost of the book $4.00—probably about eight times what I paid for it when I was a kid.

Still, it's worth it.

There was only one customer review, with the heading: "This book changed my life." This bit of hyperbole made me laugh—until I thought about it. The Arrow Book of Funny Poems and other books I ordered from Scholastic Books when I was a kid turned me on to reading and, eventually, writing.

By golly, this book did change my life.

And guess what? Kids can still experience the thrill of ordering books like this at school. That's right, the Scholastic Book Club still exists. Not only that, but Scholastic holds the American publishing rights to the Harry Potter series.

Well done, Scholastic!

ACCIO BOOKS!

Beauty Tinged with Darkness

My first-ever book of poetry was John Ciardi's You Read to Me, I'll Read to You, illustrated by Edward Gorey. Like most of my favorite children's books, it was a gift from my Aunt Vonna. Amazingly, it's still in print. Here's one of my favorite poems from the book:

ABOUT THE TEETH OF SHARKS

The thing about a shark is—teeth,
One row above, one row beneath.

Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?

Still closer—here, I'll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?

Now look in and... Look out! Oh my,
I'll NEVER know now! Well, goodbye.

This served as my introduction to poetry, and it may explain why my taste in poems still runs to the dark side. Here's a favorite passage from what might be my favorite poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot—who, when he wasn't writing charming children's poems about cats, could be very dark indeed:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

It seems to me that the most beautiful works of art, like the most beautiful lives, are tinged with darkness. Without darkness, you can't see the stars shine.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Poetry, Cruelty and April

April is National Poetry Month. I enjoy reading poetry year-round (I get a poem in my inbox every day, thanks to Poets.org), but this time of year I especially enjoy revisiting some of my favorites. One that comes to mind every April is T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It famously begins...

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

From there, it goes on for another 430 lines, plus several pages of footnotes. I have read it many times. Once, years ago, I thought I understood it. Now, I'm not so sure. I get confused by all of the characters. Is the archduke's cousin Marie the same as the hyacinth girl? Is she also the woman who "smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone?" And what about Madame Sosostris, Albert and Lil, Mrs. Porter and her daughter...?

Whether I understand it or not, I still enjoy reading The Waste Land. It reminds me of the first time I read it, years ago in Professor Novak's modern poetry class. If Professor Novak ever explained its meaning, I don't remember it. Come to think of it, I don't remember Professor Novak ever explaining the meaning of a poem. "A poem should not mean but be," he would often say, quoting Archibald MacLeish.

Professor Novak's method of teaching poetry was to read a poem aloud or have a student read it, give it a few moments to sink in, then start asking lots of "why" questions, like, "Why is April the cruelest month?" (I had no idea. As someone who grew up experiencing northern Indiana winters, I would have gone with January or February—maybe March.)

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent

"Why 'Shakespeherian'?" Novak asked. None of us had an answer. Then he sang the words in a jazzy, syncopated rhythm. Suddenly, "Shakespeherian" made sense. The lines were meant to parody a popular song of the era. By making us look at the lines in a slightly different way—as a song—Professor Novak helped us better understand them.

I guess poems like The Waste Land are the reason that some people don't like poetry. They find it too difficult. That's unfortunate. Poetry is like life. ("Life distilled," Gwendolyn Brooks called it.) Like life, poetry can be difficult. It can also be beautiful, challenging, enlightening, and sometimes—like April—it can be cruel.

Sometimes, it can even seem meaningless.

But there is meaning. Try looking at it in a slightly different way, and maybe—just maybe—it will make sense.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water

 Happy National Poetry Month!