Ringing in Bellville

What a night! I attended a poetry reading in Bellville at Pumpkin Hollow Antiques this evening. It was a difficult choice, as the excellent T. M. Gottl and Kate Westfall were reading over in Marion, which I have been encouraged to visit. But Mansfield poet Mark Hersman talked me into hitting Pumpkin Hollow and I'm glad I did.

Poet and poetry professor David Baker (Dennison U) accompanied a group of his students which Hersman had invited to read. This was the second time I've heard some of them, and they were even better than previously, more assured. And, happily, Baker read a new work of his, which was powerfully good. Having him in the room and not reading one of his works would be like having Itzhak Perlman in the room and not getting him to play his violin.

As for me, I had trouble deciding what to read for open mic. I finally settled on "Invoking Christopher Marlowe," a seasoned piece I wrote 18 years ago but have never read in public. I thought that with a bunch of students on hand who were sure to get the references to Marlowe's scandal-worthy behavior and appreciate both the humor and the seriousness of the poem. Well, you know, you don't always know what a performance is going to be like, at least not until those last moments before you start. As my reading slot approached, I felt my heart rate picking up, and as Hersman was introducing me, I got this extraordinary tingling feeling... and then...

WOW! I don't know that I've ever been as ON as I was reading that poem tonight. I felt like I was pouring energy out of me like a force of nature-- I couldn't even keep my voice steady. But I knew I piqued their interest when I described the piece as part exercise in iambic pentameter, part scientific experiment to see if I could conjure up a dead poet's soul from the devil. I didn't even suspect just how much humor I would be able to wring out of that piece in the first few stanzas... Yes, they are sassy and swaggering, but they are also witty as hell, and this crowd was eating it up with a spoon, especially the students, who were sitting up in front. And when the flip over to seriousness came toward the end, they were 100% with me-- you could have heard a speck of dust drop in that room. And the ovation was big and boisterous. I had no idea just what I tapped into in that piece. I can tell now, that one's going to be one of my "greatest hits," along with "Orpheus Hell," "Agnus Dei," and "The History Waltz."

And, even more happily, I got a featured gig at a reading in Wooster, Met a fan who begged me to never leave Knox County, and a woman who said she was going to suggest me as a speaker to the Wayne County Public Library. Not bad for reading one poem, eh?

So, for what it's worth, here is the poem. But don't forget to hear me read it sometime, too!

Invoking Christopher Marlowe

Christopher?

Christopher?

You were, say men, dark, bawdy, demon love,

So, true to conjure you, I’ll prey upon

Your olden Nickname: “Kit.” A sullen glee

Should flicker in the atmosphere you slew.

Kit?

Elizabethan punk all drunk with wine,

Reflecting God in vampire image, and

In dalliance with young men giving lips,

In secret suntide shadow privy world

You somehow flowered brutally for near

To thirty years in pious England Old.

To those who know you flamed against the sky,

Called Moses juggler, Christ an undevine,

And Satan just a bugbear of Mankind,

You were Beelzebub in playwright’s clothes.

Well, Kit?

How do you respond?

You knew each beast desired all the world--

The universe was your consuming lust.

If tasting Truth could come from fausting Lent,

You would have given up your soul to Know.

Well?

Did it happen?

I want to know, to breathe your Marlowe breaths,

Sing lyric and hysteric of a world

So gray to all my fury surging red--

I want to clear the colored glass of God,

So sunshine true can flood the minds of all.

A hell of Heaven for eternity

Is not the boring fate the whispers rasp:

A sensual, foreboding love to pass

Is all the heaven Humankind shall grasp.

The gleam I want from you, dear Christopher,

Is Hellfire bright to light the way of doom.

Christopher?

And if I feel no swell of youthful chest,

Shall I assume no Devil calls on you

To wrap in smoke inside my arms, my mind,

To be my rebel lover, shocking boy?

Christopher?

Kit?

Then now I know your savage heart is mine.

No demon grappled hooks into your life--

Your poetry was all the soul you left.

Yes, I can hold it dear to me, and know:

Divinity’s in us, but we’ve all slept.

by Mark S. Jordan,
copyright 1992, 2010