In The Wake Of Huck Finn

Michael Waters

Among those younger poets whose work is firmly rooted in the American Romantic Tradition -I think, for example, of William Heyen and Mary Oliver -Frank Stanford tramped the largest territory, the broadest range, to measure the rifts in the new world's broken promise. If Heyen's spiritual forefather is the Walt Whitman of Long Island and Oliver's the Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond, Frank Stanford's remains the Mark Twain of the failing riverboat towns along the Mississippi. No wonder his poems are populated with, even spoken by, so many damaged children -mostly orphans and accident victims, "a one-legged boy," "lame girls," the blind. These are the country cousins of Huckleberry Finn who will no longer inherit the burgeoning legacy of America, to whom "drifting on a raft with a sleepy Negro" is less an adventure than a yearning for tranquility. These children are burnt-out archetypes, what remain of the mythic figure who embodies the nostalgia for innocence and the fantasy of the flight from maturity that are said to be so characteristic of the American soul.

These children are the staple of an ephebic literature which Frank Stanford has fashioned from the folktales and blues of the South. Like Mark Twain, he often relies upon the techniques of backwoods story-tellers. His tribe of lost boys -Baby Gauge, Jimmy, O.Z., Ray Baby, Melvin, Six Toes, among others never named- inhabits these poems, performing rituals of violence -shooting weathercocks, knifing watermelons, burning carcasses- while retaining a borderline innocence, lengthening those days -soon to be lost- "When they were young and unfucked/And old friends with the moon/ Spreading its cream over their lips/As they slept."

So many of Frank Stanford's poems focus on this moment before the awakening from innocence, before the slow decline toward adulthood begins. Many of these poems, despite their grotesqueries, suggest a tenderness, an awkward, abiding love for our slow- blooming natures. "Getting To Sleep" is one of my favorite Stanford poems, so typical of his best work, yet distinctive in its numinous gentleness.

Getting To Sleep

The two sisters come home for the holidays.
There is grace, the meal, and a lot to drink.
The youngest boy goes up to change clothes.
They are all going out to visit in the next county,
All but the two sisters.
They curl up near the fire, sipping coffee.
The boy comes down the stairs, a towel around him,
Drying off in front of the fire.
He is fourteen years old now
The one sister says to the other.
After the family leaves, the two sisters
Climb the stairs to their old room.
They undress and climb into the cold feathers
Of the two iron beds.
It is a good moon out, and snow.
They lie there in the dark,
Thinking about their girlhood friend
The other farmer's wife; and the farmer,
His dark hair, his gloves, the smoke
In his clothes, and the rabbit blood under his nails.
Under their beds, holding them level and steady,
Are a few of the books they read long ago.
The two sisters lie there in the dark, thinking
This night, a pianist whose hands they can't see.
And the past, in white gloves, like the snow,
What they're hearing now,
Like a man with long sideburns
Climbing the pine stairs in sock feet,
A man the both of them are in love with.

Reprinted from Ladies From Hell (Mill Mountain Press, 1974) with permission. First appeared in Ironwood 4.

The poem begins with a simple statement: "The two sisters come home for the holidays." Since there is no mention of husbands, perhaps these sisters are young and have been away at school. They bring a certain "grace" into the house -that word referring not only to the prayer before dinner. The sisters are treated as grown-ups - there is "a lot to drink," then they sip coffee. Also, they do not have to accompany the family on the visit. Instead, they prefer to stay at home, at first for no apparent reason.

When "The boy comes down the stairs" to towel off near the fire, an undercurrent of sexuality begins to flow through the poem. "He is fourteen years old now/The one sister says to the other," aware of the boy's growth, the lack of self-consciousness that will soon be lost. This scene, so well-handled, begins to suggest why the sisters remain at home.

"After the familv leaves," rather than stay up late, the sisters immediately "undress and climb into the cold feathers." This image suggests flight, the setting into motion of their semi-erotic fantasies triggered, in part, by the boy. The women have been anticipating this moment: lying again in their childhood beds, in the safety of their home, in the dark, exciting themselves with vaguely sexual imaginings. For these sisters, "Getting To Sleep" is perhaps the best part of their visit home.

Thinking about the dark farmer who married their girlfriend, they focus on his smoldering sensuality: the "smoke/In his clothes, and the rabbit blood under his nails." It is as if they are on a raft now, "level and steady," transported by their reveries. "Under their beds" are "a few of the books they read long ago," surely Little Women, a volume of fairy-tales by the Brothers Grimm, several courtly romances, including Ivanhoe. Their romantic musings -the night as "a pianist," the past "in white gloves" -are encouraged by the presence of these books and climax in the final image of a man, perhaps an imaginary lover, certainly a father-figure, climbing the stairs toward their room.

This man is gentle, "Climbing the pine stairs in sock feet," an image suggested by the snow in the trees outside their window. He is their hero, someone who will reveal to them the mysteries (still unsolved, although they have been to school) that have been revealed to their married and perhaps unschooled girlfriend. This "man the both of them are in love with," a combination lover-father, suggests their sure and anticipatory movement toward the future, while at the same time mirroring the security of their childhood, their reluctance to undertake the journey. So the sisters will fall asleep before this ephemeral lover reaches their room. "Getting To Sleep," then, serves these women as a means of preserving their innocence while bearing them toward maturity -another day passing on the drawn-out journey.

I know there are several other ways of approaching this poem: perhaps these women are older and attempt to regain "the past, in white gloves," by sleeping again in their childhood beds. Perhaps the man they are in love with, this man of their adolescent fantasies, is not the man -can never be the man- they've married. Perhaps the "youngest boy" is the son of one of them. But I prefer to think otherwise. Like the women in so many fairy-tales -"The Goose Girl," "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White"- these "young and unfucked" sisters are physically mature, yet still emotionally unprepared to leave home, to marry. Their beds bear them in both directions at once.

Frank Stanford has fashioned a lovely poem from those moments that halt the inexorable process of time. His children remain children here, at least for one more night, still friends with the "good moon," still tasting "its cream over their lips/As they slept."


from Ironwood 17
reprinted with permission.