Free The Little Death by Michael Nava Page B

— and had once been mentioned by T.S. Eliot who found her
work elliptical. Nothing about a crazy husband and a homosexual son;
apparently, that information was private.
    I
struggled with about a dozen of her poems before I saw Eliot’s point. Her work
was indeed elliptical, she left out everything that was essential, including
logic and meaning. Her words neither described nor observed things. They were
just words scattered across the page. This was braininess of the highest
order, the verbal equivalent of the white canvas passed off as a painting; so
abstract that to have expected some sense from it would have insulted the
artist. As my attention wandered from the poems, it seemed to me that I was
being watched. I closed the book and looked around. The boy standing next to me
quickly directed his attention to his feet.
    He
wore a baggy pair of khaki shorts rolled up at the bottom over a long sinewy
pair of legs. He had on a white sweatshirt with a red paisley bandana tied
around his neck and a small button with the lambda — the symbol of gay
liberation — on it. He had a round cherubic face, short hair of an
indeterminate dark color. He looked about twenty. He raised his eyes at me and
I realized that I was being cruised, not spied on.
    “Hello,”
I said, pleasantly.
    Pointing
at the book in my hand he said, “I took a creative writing course from her last
quarter.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “My name is Danny.”
    “Henry,”
I said. “Did you like the course?”
    “Actually,”
he confided, pushing his hair with slender fingers, “she’s a good poet but a
very neurotic woman.”
    “Don’t
the two go together?”
    “No,”
he said, “I reject the notion of the doomed artist. I mean, look at Stevens, he
sold insurance and Williams was a doctor.”
    “Sorry,”
I said, “It’s been a long time since I read poetry. Who are Stevens and
Williams?”
    He
looked slightly shocked. “Wallace Stevens? William Carlos Williams?” I shook my
head. Looking at me intently he said, “Aren’t you a student? A grad student
maybe?” “I’m a lawyer and my interest in Katherine Paris is professional, not
literary.”
    “A
lawyer,” he repeated as though describing a virus. “Don’t lawyers wear suits
when they’re working?” I was wearing a pair of jeans and a black polo shirt.
    “Not
on house calls,” I replied. “Where can I find Mrs. Paris?”
    “Third
floor, English department in the Old Quad. I’ll walk you there if you like,
okay?”
    “Sure,
just let me pay for the book.”
    Between
the bookstores and the Old Quad I learned quite a bit about Danny’s tastes in
poetry, his life and his plans as well as receiving a couple of gently veiled
passes. I steered the conversation around to Katherine Paris.
    “She
had this great lady persona,” he was saying, “but don’t cross her.”
    “You
did?”
    “Anyone
with any integrity does sooner or later. Her opinions are set in stone.”
    “Not
writ in water?”
    “That’s
Shelley. That was pretty good. Anyway, she doesn’t let you forget who has the
power.” We had reached the English department. He smiled at me, sunnily. “What
do you want with her anyway?”
    “Her
son was killed on campus a couple of days ago. He was a friend of mine. I want
to ask her some questions.”
    “You
mean the guy that they found in the creek?” I nodded. “That’s too bad. Was he a
good friend?”
    I
reached out and touched the button on his chest. “We were good friends.”
    His
look said, “And here I’ve been cruising you.” Aloud, he said, “You must think I’m
a real jerk.”
    “How
could you have known?” I asked, reasonably. “And thanks for the help.’’ We
shook hands, he a little awkwardly and I remembered how rare the gesture was
among students. “The poem with the phrase writ in water, that was about Keats,
wasn’t it?”
    “Yes,”
he said. “Shelley wrote it when Keats died. He called it ‘Adonais.’” He started
to