WEBVTT

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So I'm going to end
with a few poems that

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are part of a series called
"The Caleb and Zanna Letters."

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And the trigger for the
series is a line from a letter

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that Whitman wrote to John
Addington Symonds in 1890.

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Symonds had praised
Whitman for what Symonds

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took to be the rather
candid admission

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of a homoerotic impulse
driving Whitman's poetry,

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and Whitman in one of his
more disingenuous moments

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wrote back saying, "No.

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No, that's not what
I meant at all."

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Even trying to pass himself off
as something of a ladies' man.

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The line that serves as
an epigraph for the series

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goes, this is Whitman--

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"Though always unmarried
I have had six children--

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two are dead, one living
southern grandchild, fine boy,

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who writes to me occasionally."

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It's such a weird thing
for Whitman to say.

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I'll read it again.

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"Though always unmarried
I have had six children--

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two are dead, one living
southern grandchild, fine boy,

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who writes to me occasionally."

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So I've written
a number of poems

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in the voice of that living
southern grandchild whom

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I called Caleb.

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And Caleb is kind
of a lost soul.

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He travels for three years
between 1889 and 1892

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around the US with his
girlfriend, Susanna whom he

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calls Zanna, and his dog Smoke.

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They begin in Hephzibah,
Georgia, which is Zanna's home,

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and make their way through
the South and Midwest,

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finally arriving at
Camden or at least,

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Caleb and Smoke
arrive in Camden,

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three months after Whitman dies.

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Missed connections are the rule.

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I'll read two early
ones and two late ones.

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This first one is called
"Hephzibah Cemetery,

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April 1889."

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I felt obligated to read it
because it's-- the flyers take

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a little chunk from it.

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"Hephzibah Cemetery,
April 1889."

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Hephzibah means my delight is
in thee, but delight is gone,

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Walt, the light's been
snuffed by the rain clouds.

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The headstones warp open,
they're plundered by snakes.

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Zanna half-saves them
with chalk rubbings.

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Why come to Hephzibah?
the magnolias

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moan, with their sickly sweet
blossoms I taste in my sleep.

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Why spread dumbstruck ashes
at the creek's fat mouth?

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Why do anything, Walt?

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It's a direct question.

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Zanna sends you love she
doesn't have to spare,

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and decorates our
tent with epitaphs.

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Dead forever, reads
her grandmom's.

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Sadly, I'm lying.

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Write me some way
to recast this sky,

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rub the clouds to blue slate,
wring pulp from the sun.

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Let jackdows be mourning
doves, let mourning be delight,

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let ashes be snow, dust
sweet enough to eat.

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Make me take back the
comment, no love despair.

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Zanna is a copperhead angel,
a sage-mouthed blossom,

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something to press
against in the rain.

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Wrecked, moored
in Georgia, Caleb.

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"Natchez, December 1889."

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We've camped for a week
under a black cottonwood.

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Colors are unraveling,
Walt, growing

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phantom deep like the river,
which is raw silver, icy silt,

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a boy died in it.

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We got here the day
the sternwheeler sank,

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we saw the flag officer frantic,
we saw mud-skinned men drop

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nets as the sun set over
the staggered bluffs--

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there was nothing to
do, we turned away.

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All week, Smoke's lolled in
the cottonwood's gloom, a river

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god guarding Zanna
from the rip current.

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Or I'm wishing this, Walt,
because the nights are

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the same, because Zanna pours
the water of the drowned boy

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down her shoulders and
I lick it off her body

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in the bone-white moonlight.

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Adrift in Mississippi, Caleb.

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You know, a whole
lot of stuff happens,

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and it becomes
Chicago, June 1891.

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So a year and a half passes
between these two poems.

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Things are not going well.

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Caleb has taken a job with the
World's Columbian Exposition,

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which is better remembered
as the Chicago World's Fair.

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A few notes about this
poem-- the White City

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was the nickname for
The Fairgrounds because

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of all the bizarre architecture
at The Fairgrounds center.

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The Exposition saw
the construction

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of the first Ferris wheel,
that shows up in the poem.

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A masher is a guy you
wouldn't want hanging around

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your girlfriend, and
forty-rod whiskey

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is whiskey powerful enough to
throw a man forty rods, which

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I take it as a waste.

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So, "Chicago, June 1891."

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I wrote you a long
letter last week,

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then threw it in the lake.

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It ended, Your optimism is
wrong, it alone sustains me.

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We're sharing a Van Buren
shanty with a masher named

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Carl, who fingers forty-rod
whiskey and scones

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from wholesale houses.

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Zanna went with him
and stole a ham--

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a seven pound ham, Walt,
stuffed in her coat.

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Each morning, I tramp
to Jackson Park.

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lug girders with six
thousand workers.

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A wheel's going up--

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it'll eat the sky,
it'll laugh and spit

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corpses on the lakefront.

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I come home at night
and find Zanna drunk.

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Carl is eating
codfish in a corner.

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The Exposition lamps
leave our eyes burning--

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I clutch smoke, I know
that wheel with crash.

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Bedraggled in the
White City, Caleb.

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This is "Camden, June
1892," and this is

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the final poem in the series.

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Whitman died in March of
1892 in his Camden row

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house on Mickle Street.

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When Caleb and Smoke
arrive in June,

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one of Whitman's
caretakers would still

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have been there with
a dog named Watch.

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What else.

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This poem borrows liberally
from the last chant

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of "Song of Myself"--

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look for me under your
boot-soles, things like that.

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"Camden, June 1892."

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This is the letter
no one will see.

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This is me in your house, Walt--

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thirty blocks from your grave.

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This is six in the evening,
Mickle Street light, Smoke

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and Watch raving like
syphilitics in the yard.

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This is my heartbreak
coda, my withered Why?,

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my stormy yawp, my
deluge off the Delaware.

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I can tell you two things--

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one, Zanna gone isn't
Zanna canceled, and two,

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I have no boots.

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I've worn them through.

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You understand the problem.

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In a dream, you, Zanna, Smoke,
and I floated over this city.

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You read us poems.

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I've never properly told
you what a great poet

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I think you are.

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Beneath us, men fixed
bicycles and drank steam beer.

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Women brought the sun up.

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We watched this, Walt,
in untranslatable wonder.

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Packing my bags before the
appraisers come, Caleb.

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