From the Archives - UP Road Trip, Part IV

“I can see by the look on your face, my faux-Gallic friend, that you are nonplused by my accent”

“Well, uh, yeah, Bill, I…”

"Doctor Bill, please!”

“…Doctor Bill. I was under the impression that you were from the Black Hills of South Dakota – indeed I’m pretty certain that you’ve claimed as much - yet you sound like Henry Miller”

“Ah, CI,

In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning. Better to hug close…”

“Bi…Doctor Bill, I don’t mean to be rude and interrupt, but how about an explanation that doesn’t rely on warmed over Roethke of dubious relevance?”

“You don’t like Roethke?”

“I like Roethke fine, that’s not…”

“…Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones, The upland of alder and birchtrees…”

“Doctor Bill!”

“Sorry! As Wallace Stevens said…”

“Bill!!”

“Doctor Bill!!!”

“Doctor Bill!! Stop it!!!”

“OK, OK. Jeez, you’re as testy in person as you are on the forum, aren’t you? Ah well, no matter.

I was indeed born in the town of Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota, but at the age of five we pulled up stakes and headed east to NY where my father had been offered a position as a fish-scaler at the Fulton Market. This promised to be a significant step upward economically for the family, as in Deadwood my father was a self-ordained minister and we were dependent on the charity of the local Lutherans who – in common with Lutherans everywhere - did not have a charitable bone in their respective bodies.

We settled in Brooklyn, in East New York, and as I grew up I assumed a position of leadership on the streets, due as much to my quick fists as my nimble wits. My pals and I became known as “The Black Hills Bunch”, partly in homage to the place of my birth, but also due to the slightly higher elevation of East New York relative to our rivals in neighboring Brownsville. We were a wild crew, we were; feared and admired in equal measure.

Although my father and mother half-heartedly tried to rein me in, at this point I had become the primary source of support for the family which had grown to include my thirteen brothers and sisters as well as my great uncle, Black Hills Paul, a notorious drunk and ne’er-do-well.

I was surely headed for prison or worse, when in my nineteenth year a serendipitous occurrence led to an epiphany that changed my life.

Having mugged a local burgher and stolen, among other things, his brief case, I was ensconced behind a building housing a kosher slaughterhouse perusing its contents which consisted primarily of papers of neither interest nor value. I was about to toss the whole thing aside when I came upon a small leather-bound volume entitled “The Collected Poetry of William Morris”. Desultorily flipping the pages, my attention was arrested by the following:

Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great bannersHigh
over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.Still strain the banner-poles

Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.

I was stunned! Clearly this was the voice of providence speaking directly to me! Eagerly I began to read another poem:

I am the handmaid of the earth,
I broider fair her glorious gown,
And deck her on her days of mirth
With many a garland of renown.

And while Earth's little ones are fain
And play about the
Mother's hem,
I scatter every gift I gain
From sun and wind to gladden them.


I had never read such beautiful words in my life! There and then I vowed to put aside my life of crime and wantonness and devote myself to courting the muse of poetry - and such I did."

"That’s quite a story, B…Doctor Bill (although the Morris poetry is worse than three-day old tripe) -- is any of it true?”

“Weeeeelllll, CI, I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘true’. As Plato said, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history”.

“In other words it’s bullshit?”

“Every word of it, my friend…every word”.