Pastiche (Past Itch)

When in another time we meet again
as lovers naked in a golden dawn,
pretending friendship's something we can't feign,
like Selene and young Endymion
asleep amongst the hills of Arcady,
their passion slaked, so empty that they dream
that cool companionship was meant to be
their fate - becoming then what now we seem.
Then did he say, on opening his eyes
To gaze upon her lovely smiling face,
"What visions have I seen-  fragile cities
of gleaming glass, a teeming, lonely place
where fleetingly we met as passers-by,
as on a crowded street, you caught  my eye?"

What was all this about? I posted it on 10th of December 2001, so I must have been working on it in November. In late October we'd spent a family holiday in Crete, the first time any of us had been to Greece, that might explain the  mythological references. We'd also spent the previous Summer camped amongst trees by a river in Northern Corsica. Waking-up in the golden morning light of the Mediteranean next to the love of your life has to count as one of the most sensual experiences of my life, and buried beneath all the poetic posturing I suspect there' s a grain of real life experience somewhere.

I'd also been immersed for the previous year or so in the Sonnet Central  on-line archive.  The Sonnet Board workshop itself was an off-shoot of Eric Blomquist's brilliant late 90's on-line sonnet collection. It was through reading sonnets by 'the greats' on the main site that I'd first been drawn to the workshop site within it. So for some reason I must have decided to try to write a sonnet in the 'grand mode'. At least I had the sense to recognise it as a pastiche - and not a very good one, the central conceit, if you try to make sense of it, does not stack up at all.

Anyway, it did attract a bit of attention, not least from one of the other regulars who went by the 'handle' of 'Dutch Crispin'. He put me right about the difference between Artemis and Selene amongst other things. Now 'Dutch' to me is an enigma. He claimed to be a Dutch teenager, around 16 years of age when he started posting. He posted prolifically - over 70 sonnets in a period of four months alone in archive 2; in total the board records well over 4000 posts. His sonnets were like little postcards, slices of everyday life, sometimes oddly phrased as you might expect in someone writing in a second language. Yet his general knowledge seemed far too sophisticated for a teenager, and what is more the tenor of his critical responses on the whole seemed much more like those of a well educated native speaker.

His persistence divided the board which at times seemed to be dominated by his posts. The moderators prided themselves - rightly - on the board's inclusivity and defended Dutch's right to participate. Like all blazing family rows it was an apparently trivial issue that sparked it off. Dutch posted a silly little sonnet called 'Sissy Knickers' which eluded to his younger sister's underwear. Micheal Juster, who quite clearly was competely fed up with Dutch and regarded his presence as something which was wrecking a serious site, objected to the content of the sonnet accusing it of containing inappropriate connotations of incest and paedophilia. Most of the board leapt to Dutch's defence and there ensued a somewhat hysterical exchange between all concerned which was only brought to a conclusion when Mike Alexander, one of the Board's moderators locked the string.

Some years later Dutch announced he had decided to move on; Michael Juster too moved on, becoming an internationally famous translator of Roman poetry and in real life a top flight US Government official.

On reflection, there were some very odd aspects of internet poetry boards back then. As well as serious participants (not all of whom were straight about their actual identities, me included) the sites also attracted a motely crew of vandals and trolls who having been banned in one guise, would re-appear in another to cause mayhem and disarray. C.M. Townsend, Monsieur Literary Lifter, Bernard Quarterman to name but three...or one. A few of us suspected Dutch Crispin was the most prolific and cleverest troll of the lot, but if he was, what possibly could have motivated him to spend as much time as he did bombarding the board with flawed and slightly awkward sonnets, If his sister Erica, who occassionally made intercessions on Dutch's behalf as an 'unregistered user' were all part of the same elaborate hoax, then in some ways the Trolls seem almost as interesting as the 'serious' writers on the boards - strange by-products of the internet's early frontier mentality.

As for 'Pastiche',  if I'd had the time and inclination to re-invent myself as a troll, then maybe it's this form of grandiose utterance which I would have chosen as my style. Maybe I did, maybe I am Monseiur Literary Lifter, or Dutch's imaginary sister Erica...who could know?