Amid The Stars
I
A book with a wonderful title: A DARK DREAMBOX OF ANOTHER KIND (The Song Cave, 2013). Inside: poems of odd and unrequited longing, oblique but ardent searching. Also, crisp and tactful accounts of what little is known of the author’s life. And on the cover, the author, Alfred Starr Hamilton, stands a little hunched before a half-open window and a stained table with a hotplate and kettle. He himself, in a dark sweater, rumpled shirt with collar, necktie, balding, protruding ears seems tentative, but he looks into the camera with shy tenacity. He might be smiling. There is a slight but defended look of hopefulness. When I first saw the cover, I realized I had seen him before, many years ago.
When I was 8, 9, 10, I went to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Montclair, NJ, where my family lived. And always, when we entered the church, in the shadows of the rear lurked a shy old bachelor in a dark baggy suit. He had a faintly odd smell, a little like wet wool, and he hovered smiling shyly, waiting to pass the plate. I found out that he lived in my neighborhood and once had a room in a house next door to my uncle and aunt. Montclair is densely forested. There are maples, elms, oaks, tulip trees everywhere, and in the summer it is fragrant, muggy, oppressive. Alfred Star Hamilton, a self-described tramp, found his home here and wrote thousands and thousands of poems, most of which are lost. He submitted his poems to all kinds of magazines and journals, almost entirely without success. Writing poems was his ground, his path and perhaps his fulfillment. As he said: “Poetry is the story of the search for freedom.”¹
But in the course of writing and writing, he also entered into often combative, often plaintive correspondence with the Montclair Police Department. He petitioned to stage an anti-war protest. He complained about St. Luke’s Church, which he then left. He complained about air raid sirens. And finally, he sent poems to the police. This was perhaps the only way he could be assured of being read.
These letters and poems now appear in a self-consciously goofy-looking book called SEND THIS TO THE IMMUNE OFFICER. It is well written and researched but is published in a series called Weird NJ Presents, so both the poet and his work are given a dismissive context.
Here are two poems from this book in his later manner. They’ll be followed by the two last poems in the Dark Dreambox book.
NIGHT SKIES
Supposing you were lost amongst the stars
Supposing you were lost amongst those beams of light
Supposing you were the other
Supposing you never sought light
Supposing you were a criminal
Supposing you sought cover
Supposing you were affrighted
Supposing you escaped enlightenment
Supposing you ran from the light of day
Supposing there were so many stars
Supposing you didn’t know which way to turn
Supposing you went stumbling around in the darkness
Supposing you were lost in these night skies²
ENLIGHTENMENT
I wondered of the stars
I wondered of the moon
I wondered of the night skies
I wondered of the sunbeams for stars
I wondered of the sun’s lands
I wondered of historical events
I wondered of enlightenment
I wondered of the candlelights
I wondered of happiness
I wondered of the people who lied about the sunlight
I wondered of the people who lied about the light of day.³
SUNBURST
I was urged
I couldn’t say no
I didn’t say no
It was stronger than myself
I was going to do what girls do
I was going to be a beautiful nurse
I flowed with the sunburst on the classroom window
I tied a ribbon in my long brown hair
I began my life’s ambition
I began my soul.⁴
FREE
I dared
I dared to go further
I dared to go fuller
I dared to go everywhere
I dared the four winds
I dared to do what the girls do
I dared to wear my long hair all over the place
I dared joy
I dared happiness
I dared to be free
I dared my own soul⁵
II
These poems are not concerned with craft or skill or restraint. They do not seek to inhabit a context responsive to such things. These poems are not self-expression. They are not records of a journey. They are not a way of making the raw material of private experience into a socially recognizable product. These poems are Hamilton’s journey itself. In language, inner and outer, past and present are always inseparable; in writing, solitude and society are always joined. Writing was his vessel and his voyage across a boundaryless and desolate landscape filled with near-remote moments that were utterly fulfilled. His heroism and candor are frightening. “Supposing you were lost in these night skies.”
Hamilton submitted poem after poem, hoping for… for… what? He accepted his loneliness, his poverty along with the hard demands of his journey, but even so, it must have been difficult to bear.
When submitting things you have written, you are often asked who you are writing for, who is your intended audience? But what if you are not aiming for this kind of transaction? What if writing is a venture in an uncertain space, part of whose momentum comes from the wish to find fellow voyagers? He had amazing tenacity and stamina. “I didn’t say no/It was stronger than myself.” He is not telling us about himself or asking us to share something he discovered. His poems are isolate, but he didn’t want to hide. Perhaps he wanted to make an offering, but perhaps he accepted that this is simply something language makes inevitable.
“I dared to be free
I dared my own soul”
Writing, this happened to him; reading, though distant now in space and time, we stop in our tracks.
_________________________
1. A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind — Alfred Starr Hamilton, ed. Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal — The Song Cave, 2013 endpaper).
2. Send This To The Immune Officer- ed Lisa Borinsky- Weird NT Inc. 2010 p. 37)
3. supra. p. 36
4. A Dark Dreambox ibid p. 194
5. A Dark Dreambox ibid. p. 195
Douglas Penick’s work appeared in Tricycle, Descant, New England Review, Parabola, Chicago Quarterly, Publishers Weekly, Agni, Kyoto Journal, Berfrois, 3AM, The Utne Reader, and Consequences, among others. He has written texts for operas (Munich Biennale, Santa Fe Opera), and, on a grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation, three separate episodes from the Gesar of Ling epic. His novel, Following The North Star was published by Publerati. Wakefield Press published his and Charles Ré’s translation of Pascal Quignard’s A Terrace In Rome. His book of essays, The Age of Waiting, which engages the atmospheres of ecological collapse, will be published in 2020 by Arrowsmith Press.