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Lately the Steiny Road Poet has been thinking about reality disconnects since United States president 45 seems lost in a spray of knee-jerk tweets
that his handlers call alternative facts.
Writers also inhabit such a world. Gertrude Stein had her dustups with people whom she thought weren’t good enough writers.
Steiny offers this poem as an exceptional burst of energy that exceeded reality both in its truth and fantasy. Here the young Paul Bowles learns
that his poem has been published along with all the great Modernist writers of that time.
BEFORE THIS SPACE TRAVELER COULD SETTLE
When the envelope came—
brown, the return reading
Paris France my name
Paul Frederick Bowles
prominently scripted
as addressee a magazine
couched inside—surprise:
my name on the cover
in the company of
Andre Breton,
James Joyce,
Gertrude Stein
just to name a few,
the elite avant-garde,
my poem “Spire Song”
in six parts there in
transition with the best.
My feet left the floor.
I leaped, no law of gravity
could limit my joy. I hollered
and before this space traveler
could settle again on natal ground
I had written a prophecy: P. F. Bowles,
degrees from every American college,
appointed poet laureate in the royal
court of King Edward. Why? Because
I swam the Atlantic under water,
emerged triumphant and wet on British
soil where I recited my poem unfaltering
in a loud and sonorous voice.
by Karren L. Alenier
from The Anima of Paul Bowles
What’s interesting is that Gertrude Stein thought that Paul Bowles poem “Spire Song” had been written by an elderly man and when
she met the young Bowles, she was taken aback. She told Bowles whom she nicknamed Freddy (his middle name was Frederick) that he didn’t write great poetry and that he should
quit trying to write poems. Bowles listened to her and for years he didn’t write creative words, only music and music criticism. It was only after helping his wife Jane
Bowles with her novel Two Serious Ladies that he picked up a pen and started writing fiction.
BIRTH OF A NOVEL
Paul Bowles Confesses
The sky was not sheltering
in the desert even a rock
could mean a little more life
from the incendiary sun
my mentor should I call him
that once said work when
you are 20 nobody will love
you at 30 nearly 40 when
my art switched hands
from music to words
came the reviews
I traveled from the light
of music to the merciless
shade of stories that would
redeem me but not my characters.
by Karren L. Alenier
from The Anima of Paul Bowles
Now all of this leads to this koan—to arrive at the bigger truth, storytellers lie.
STORIES: ON THE NATURE OF POETRY
If I Paul Frederick Bowles tell you
Gertrude Stein wrote to my mother
to say Rena’s son Freddy — that’s what the great
Buddha called me — was a self-indulgent savage
who augured the end of civilization
and Mother cheerfully sent “poor old
Sophie and Alice B. Luckless”
family recipes...
If I tell you
the Mama of Dada dressed me
in lederhosen so her great white
poodle Basket, wet from his daily
sulphur bath — the French countryside
vermin otherwise crawling into the dog’s
curls to suck his skin red — could chase
me and scrape his sharp long nails
into my bare legs while his master
shouted from the second story
window, “Faster, Freddy, faster...”
If I tell you
transition — a Paris magazine
that published Ezra Pound — printed
“Spire Song” by Paul Frederick Bowles…
I was only seventeen. When I was twenty,
the iconic Miss Stein said, “Freddy,
you don’t write great poetry.” I believed
her and left the City of Light
for the filth of Tangier.
If I tell you I traded the truth
of poetry for the invention
of prose. If I tell you I lived
loving a wife who filled
my dry pen while hers
spurted blood
like a shotgun wound.
If I tell you my stories,
greater than the lives
of people I knew…
if I tell you my stories,
how many times
would you say I lied?
by Karren L. Alenier
from The Anima of Paul Bowles
So maybe Americans should be relieved that what 45 says is called alternative facts. After all, why mix him up with storytellers?
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Writings
