YPSILANTI, Michigan. Edith-Marie Boskins is a rarity in the field of belle lettres: she makes a living writing poetry, but she feels guilty about her success even though she’s living her childhood dream. “I suppose I should be satisfied, considering all the poets who scrape by with dead-end, minimum wages jobs,” she says. “Or what is almost worse, high-pressure white collar careers that leave them no time to write.”
But Boskins was left unfulfilled by her work for Quixotic Novelties, for whom she writes sentimental verse that goes into greeting cards, always printed in fancy script and centered in the middle of the page. “We try to touch the heart,” she says, ” but that’s not what the editors of the classiest poetry journals want–unless you’re plunging a knife into it.”
So today finds the 36-year-old taking a break from her husband–“He’s off hunting moose in the Upper Peninsula,” she says–while she attends the Dismal Vistas Poetry Retreat, a weekend-long seminar designed to break participants’ impulse for cheerfulness through a sort of versifier’s boot camp. Sponsors of the intensive program say they can turn even the happiest amateur poet into reliable producers of the sort of depressing verse that will earn them small compensation (usually just a free copy) but high prestige of making it into the pages of prestigious “litmags.”
“Depressing enough for you?”
The seminar is scheduled for late autumn when leaves have fallen off trees in the area so that there’s no fall foliage to brighten poets’ moods, but there is also as yet no snowfall to lend the charm of winter to the views that participants see when they step outside for a break.
“Okay, everybody, let’s get started,” says instructor Mimi Fragincourt, an adjunct professor in a “low-residency” M.F.A. program at Kalamazoo State College. “How is everybody this morning?”
“Fine,” Boskins says, anticipating the customary response she hears from all involved at her company’s off-site “professional development” seminars.
“You’re wrong,” Fragincourt says.
“But–how can I be wrong about my feelings?” Boskins says. “It’s nice to get away from . . .”
“Stop right there,” Fragincourt interjects abruptly. “Anybody want to help . . . uh . . . Edith-Marie out here?”
“I don’t think you’re in touch with your inner misery.”
“She’s . . . miserable?” a young man whose name tag says only “Todd” offers hesitantly.
“Bingo, that’s the spirit,” Fragincourt says. “If you’re not willing to be unhappy, you’ll never hit the big time.”
Boskins dutifully begins to write in the notebook she’s brought with her, jotting down “Must . . . be . . . unhappy,” then drawing a “frowny-face” next to it to drive home the point.
“Would anyone like to start us off by reading their work?” Fragincourt asks. There is only silence, as the participants have been cowed into pangs of self-criticism by the instructor’s harsh tone. “All right, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way–alphabetical order. Monica Aase–stand and deliver.”
A young woman rises, then begins to read of her love for her late cat Trudy, which she had to “put down” due to a kidney infection.
Trudy–it was my duty,
I didn’t want to do it.
You were in such pain,
and I didn’t want to have
to watch you again
as you upchucked on my rug.
“Okay, let’s work with that,” Fragincourt says. “Do you like cat vomit?”
“No.”
“And didn’t the kidney infection make ‘Trudy’ pee on your carpets?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then shouldn’t we revise your poem to something more–realistic?”
“But . . . I loved Trudy.”
“Sure you did, sure you did,” Fragincourt says with a mirthless laugh, like a cop giving a reluctant suspect the “third degree.” “I was thinking it would be . . . more honest if it read something like this,” she snaps, then grabs the paper from the woman’s hand and begins to improvise on the same rhyme scheme:
Trudy–I’m not fruity,
I had to help you through it.
You became a pain,
So I took you to the vets
and I’d do it again.
Who’s going to clean my rug?
The owner of the deceased pet is in tears, but Fragincourt is undeterred. “You want to be the next Sylvia Plath, you’re going to have to suck it up and hurt some feelings, okay? Who’s next? Boskins–you’re up. Have you got something for us?”
Boskins gingerly says “Yes,” and Fragincourt welcomes her participation. “Great–a fresh, unused victim. Fire away!”
After clearing her throat, Boskins starts to read:
You gave me hope, when all seemed lost,
and I was moping around a lot.
I love you so much, you’re everything to me,
I’m your queen, please be a king for me.
“Well, well,” Fragincourt says with a hint of contempt in her voice. “This is a fine example of the ‘dutiful-little-housewife’ school of poetry.”
“But I do miss my husband, so that’s what came to mind.”
“You know what happens to female poets who marry male poets–don’t you?” Fragincourt snaps.
“No–what?”
“Sorry about that affair. Or three.”
“The husband dumps the wife for a twenty-something bimbo he met in his freshman English class.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yep. The first step is an ‘independent study’ where he gets the young chick alone in his office,” Fragincourt says bitterly, leading some to think she may be speaking from personal experience.
“Oh dear–that’s sad.”
“So maybe we rewrite your little ditty thusly,” Fragincourt says. She looks off into the distance to collect her thoughts, then begins.
You sit and smoke dope, or slurp down the sauce,
you lay on the couch, eat whatever we’ve got.
I hate you so much, you philandering dink,
I need to go get a drink for me.
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