Getting Into my Head

So lately I've been trying to get some horror into my head.  While never fully immersing myself in it, it's always held sort of a resonant fascination within my mind.  I've always loved the works of Poe, Lovecraft, King- and lately I've been trying to throw more of that into the pot of my mind.  I figure the more I put in, the more likely interesting things are to come out.

I just finished up Salem's Lot, which was absolutely delightful- and strangely reminded me of Neil Gaiman's American Gods.  Now, generally, I like Neil Gaiman, but I've found most of his stuff lacking, personally.  Not so with American Gods.  There's something about the way it addresses a fundamental "Americanness" that somehow really resonates with me, on a horror-type level.  Not that there really is an emptiness at the heart of American life, but maybe that much of American culture is obsessed with the idea that behind the sleepy windows of those quaint American houses lurks something better left unmentioned; that at the center, if you walk far enough and dig deep enough, there really is a barren emptiness that America is trying its best to fill and, failing that, cover up.

Other cultures seem to have some pretty weird stuff if you dig deep enough- the stuff of fairy tales and folklore, of ancient gods of forests, elf-kings kidnapping children, the old man of Winter who will send your kind daughter back with jewels and furs, but leave your cruel daughters to die alone in the snow.  It's fertile ground for the collective unconscious, but I suppose a blank slate can be fertile ground as well.  Empty and blank, much of the fear at the heart of American culture seems rooted in the idea that there's a gaping maw just behind the facade, waiting to devour.

I've never been one for poetry, but just very recently some poems have been striking my fancy, just for the sound of their words:


William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
           THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- I first read this in 7th or 8th grade, with the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  The only lines included, as I recall, were:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

Reading now the full extent of the poem it's really quite the different creation than I originally imagined- and full of striking (disturbing?) imagery.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

           THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

- Quoted in full in Salem's Lot, and a strange poem to be sure.  I do like the language and the sound of the words, though.