NPPF - Canto Two Synopsis

[David Morris]

*Some miscelaneous notes will follow tomorrow.  Canto Two is hereby open for
all contributions*

Canto Two Synopsis:

Shade begins with a confession of his youth’s dementia: Paranoia.  And he then
proceeds to question humanity’s sanity because of its ability to continue
without knowing whether or if consciousness survives after death.

Finally “one sleepless night” (at an unspecified age) he reaches a turning
point deciding to devote all his “twisted life” to “explore and fight / The
foul, inadmissible abyss.”

Just following this dramatic announcement Shade abruptly (at line 181!) breaks
the poem’s tone and time.  He ZOOMS to the present and to the mundane task of
trimming his nails.  His observations as he proceeds with this task take on a
macabre tone.  “Flinching likenesses” of people emerge as he snips away what
Aunt Maud called “scarf skin:”

1.	Thumb: “our grocer’s son.”
2.	Index:  “College astronomer Starover Blue”
3.	Middle:  “a tall priest I knew”
4.	“Feminine fourth:”  “on old flirt”
5.	“little pinky clinging to her skirt”

Maud’s stroke, decline and death are described.  He then reasons about death
and resurrection to reach logical absurdities.  And he reaches a wonderful
conclusion via a big “if”:  The hereafter, if it exists, is most likely beyond
our imaginations ability to perceive.  Therefore he decides not to join in the
“vulgar laughter” (note the use of that word again) and lists a few hereafters
that those vulgarians laugh at, and concludes that these possibilities seem
silly only because “we do not make it seem sufficiently unlikely,” a thought
related to his conclusion that imagining the hereafter is likely beyond our
ability.

Next he exclaims against his inability to perform and the ludicrous nature of
his task: “to translate / Into one’s private tongue a public fate.”  Following
this lament he begins (line 235) the story of Hazel’s suicide beginning with a
message carved into a tree he and Sybil read the day Hazel died. This
“graffiti” on the tree is about graffiti:  “Life is a message scribbled in the
dark.”

Again he jumps back to the present task of trimming his nails, but now hears
Sybil’s steps upstairs, “and all is right, my dear.”  This introduction of
Sybil launches his account of their love, marriage, and Hazel’s birth (nine
months after their honeymoon).   He begins by worshipping Sybil as his “dark
Vanessa,” in beautiful and erotic images, and he humiliates himself by
reproaching her for letting him “Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder
blade,” on Lilac Lane, time unspecified.

Back to the present he notes “We have been married forty years, and lists what
he loves about her from mind picture, the last one of her greeting hazel’s
ghost via an old toy or postcard.  He then describes lovingly their triptych
conversation across three rooms.

Line 383 stands alone:  “I think she always nursed a small mad hope.”  And
inaugurates the tale of Hazel’s last date and her suicide.  Jane Dean (or
Provost), Shade’s then-typist, suggests a double date: she and her fiancé, and
a blind date for Hazel and her cousin Pete.  When Pete sees Hazel at the
Hawaiian bar some miles away from New Wye, he bolts, leaving the threesome. 
Hazel decides to take the bus home, but stops at Lochanhead instead, and ends
up dead.  Contrapuntally with this story is the simultaneous evening at home of
Sybil and Shade, again in their different rooms, incorporating TV sounds and
images of Sybil’s “network roulette with parental nervousness awaiting Hazel’s
return.  Just as the two decide to go to bed, “suddenly a festive blaze was
flung / Across five cedar trunks.”  And lastly we see Hazel’s descent into the
swamp.


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