11 August 2000, 888 words
The following story is dedicated to all aspiring poets, living or dead, with dandruff.
The death of reclusive poet, Carter Umber, has brought responses in from far and wide, mostly from people to whom he owed money. Umber was hailed by the American Library of Poets as "one of the great poets of the 20th century", an accolade that cost him only $50 (US).
A talented and anaemic poet, Umber initially had problems getting his subject to agree with his verbs. The situation improved, however, when he was able to persuade his dictionary to go with him for counselling. Several professors at the University of the West Indies considered him a leading metaphysician, and called on him whenever they needed treatment for painful bunions.
Umber's reputation was established with his very first poetry collection, The Ocean's Nose, which broke new ground by containing only one poem and twenty-two blank pages. "Poetry is a conversation between the poet and the reader," he explained in the Introduction. "The empty pages are for the reader to write their own verse in response the author's Art. Rhyming pens specially engraved for this purpose are available at a very reasonable price."
Umber was more successful than most West Indian poets since, although his book did not sell well, he made a good profit from refills. Nor can it be denied that his work brought forth strong reactions, with Rohler saying, "The paper has silverworms."
Who can forget the opening lines of The Ocean's Nose? "Let us go then, you and I,/Where the green-gray waves/Plunge to shore like a tunneled booger/Sneezing forth snot-like onto the sands." It is reported that some people got head colds from reading the text, although nobody died. Umber took this zero mortality rate as a personal criticism, and would often give away signed copies of his book to persons with chronic asthma.
Umber felt a reader's death was the only truly sincere expression of artistic appreciation (although he did not disdain cheques or a backrub). A work of Art, in his opinion, should strive to be so erudite, profound and incomprehensible that the reader could die of boredom or at least nod off and severely lacerate his forehead on the desk.
Yet Umber did not really believe in death. As much philosopher as poet, he argued that if the unexamined life was not worth living, it logically followed that the unexamined death was not worth dying. Ramchand reports that Umber avoided all thoughts of mortality, and on seeing dead dogs on the highway would often remark, "Look at that nice doggy sleeping in the sun."
(Umber later developed a scientific basis for this position, and in his collection of essays, Imaginary Shoelaces, argued that time passed so slowly for an astronaut caught in the event horizon of a black hole that death never occurred. It was, in fact, his greatest ambition to die near a black hole and, when he realized NASA would not grant his request, he instead requested in his will that Dr. Morgan Job come and inhale over his deathbed. He also spent his last years reading Wilson Harris. "His prose makes time draw out interminably," he wrote in the flyleaf of the Carnival Trilogy "until one is convinced that death would be a welcome release. A great writer.")
Yet it cannot be denied that Umber was essentially a misanthrope. He felt the human race was an experiment gone horribly wrong, especially Michael Jackson. He also frequently bemoaned the lack of intelligence in the world, although he felt his own existence did much to restore the balance.
Aiyejina does remark that Umber could be a cheerful companion, especially when taking nitrous oxide. It was not his humanity, but his Art which made Umber neurotic. His commitment to Poetry led him to make great personal sacrifices, such as never having his cornflakes with milk. Yet, as his poem "I love cornflakes and milk" so eloquently testifies, Umber loved milk with his cornflakes.
But his only real passion was for poetry, and he was once incarcerated at the St. Ann's Mental Hospital for six months for making love to a plaster bust of Wordsworth. (Umber always argued that he never suffered from mental illness, saying that the resident psychiatrist had a clear bias for Keats.) He was also put in jail for two years for punching out Walcott, whom he was convinced had bribed the Nobel Prize Committee with free arrowroot. "When the Poet's wordy eloquence/ Under injustice haplessly buckles,/Let thy tongue be belted/And belt instead with fisted knuckles," he wrote in The ballad of Frederick St. Gaol.
Umber came out of prison a changed man: more sober, more thoughtful, more bowlegged. It was then that he truly established himself as an intellectual, writing articles on History, Culture, Politics, and other nouns with capital letters. His frequent use of words like "interregnum", "entelechy", and "semiotic", as well as his habit of never crediting the authors whose theories he quoted, gained him respect in West Indian intellectual circles, where people were usually dizzy from going round and round.
His death has only enhanced his reputation for, as Lalla put it, 'The less he writes, the better for us all."
Copyright ©2000 Kevin Baldeosingh