The
Dissidents
by William Orem
I realized my mistake at hello. She was there, at the orientation
lecture for new candidates, because she had been accepted into the
doctoral program in English. I had been accepted into the MFA program,
a wholly different prospect; the orientation for young would-be writers
was in a separate building at a separate time. Not wanting to trumpet
my error, though, I folded my legs seriously and remained in the
lecture hall chair by her side.
The accidental briefing I witnessed that morning surprised me.
Most striking was the lack of any reverence for books; indeed,
quite a different sensibility was suggested. The dark, coolly ventilated
room full of faces was admonished to leave behind that puerile
affection for the written word so irresponsibly planted in undergraduate
minds. We would be vying, in time, for an absurdly limited number
of professional positions. There was no room for sentiment. Our
efforts were to be bent toward political analysis, dismantling
the canon, decoding oppression. "The academy is not about literary
appreciation," the speaker intoned, weighing heavily the tainted
words.
At this startling proclamation the woman beside me
gave a quick roll of the eyes. I was taken immediately
by that gesture: having known nothing better in my
life than the deep, hours-long solace of an excellent
book, having drawn from literature nurture and companionship
since I was a child — having had that kind
of a relationship with books, I found it difficult
to believe this professor was quite serious in his
words. To regard the great works in the pale light
of suspicion, or as objects merely of cultural inquiry,
or as forms of statist control; these sentiments were
alien to my thinking. And the rolled eyes, in a moment,
had shown that beside me sat a hidden compatriot. Don't
tell anyone, those eyes seemed to say. I love them
too.
Afterward I asked her to lunch. We whispered over
salads about why we were so drawn to classics — sheepish
at first, like dissidents. Hours passed on this theme,
and then more. We had dinner. Her openness grew, as
did mine. We enthused over Austen and Dickens, over
Faulkner and Lawrence. Did I feel Farewell
to Arms was less finished than The
Good Soldier? Did Finnegans
Wake even try to succeed? At sunset we were still
wandering the small Midwestern town, as animated as
if it were noon.
"You don't know that poem?" she cried, stopping me
with a hand on my arm. I remember the clock tower on
the hill read nearly midnight. "Honestly, you've never
read that poem? I have to show you. Right now.
You're never going to forget it."
At her apartment we kissed for the first time. Then
she read to me: all the wonderful pieces I had somehow
missed, the treasures that slip past no matter how
much of our lives we spend wandering in books. She
read "Tender Buttons" and "Thirteen Ways of Looking
at a Blackbird." She read "The Silken Tent" and "Fern
Hill." And she read me the one poem that still astonishes
me, to this day; a poem whose intensity and loveliness
have never diminished.
This is just to say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Of all that I heard that afternoon, of all that we read
to each other until nearly dawn, nothing else stays with
such clarity, such humility and warmth. William
Carlos Williams is at his greatness in this haiku-like
paean to domestic emotion. He sings the praises of a
house shared by two, of the quick note left taped to
the stove or the refrigerator, of the moments of sudden
intimacy that exist between two people forever hurrying
through each other's routines. It was a vision that,
for me, rose like a promise of future life.
That was my most memorable reading experience, the
thirty seconds it took to hear Williams's "This Is
Just to Say," stretched out to include the dozens of
times since when I have returned to its safe, quiet
spaces. I love that poem immensely, as I have loved
the woman I met that day immensely. I married her,
and live with her now in a cluttered apartment: each
of us struggling off to jobs, needing to mop the kitchen,
leaving little love notes to each other in the midst
of our beautiful, busy days.
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