“Good. I reply, verse is ‘made.’ But the word ‘make’ is unsufficient for a true poem. ‘Create’ is unsufficient. All words are insufficient. Because of this. The poem exists before it is written.” That, I didn’t get. “Where?” “T. S. Eliot expresses it so—the poem is a raid on the inarticulate. I, Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, agree with him. Poems

“Always pour so the label is visible! If the wine is good, your drinker should know so. If the wine is bad, you deserve shame.

“The sextet of Robert Frobisher.

“So. Translate the first chapter of Alain-Fournier from French to English, or do not return next Saturday. The author needs no parochial schoolchildren to disfigure his truth, but I need you to proof you do not waste my time. Go.

School corridors’re sort of sinister during classtime. The noisiest spaces’re now the silentest. Like a neutron bomb’s vaporized human life but left all the buildings standing. These drowned voices you hear aren’t coming from classrooms, but through the partitions between life and death.

“You said you’d ‘washed your hands of the whole affair,’ Michael.” “I did, yes.” Dad can’t hide satisfaction to save his life. “But I didn’t count on not being able to park my own car on my own drive. That’s all I wanted to say.” Something silent smashed without being dropped. Mum left the table. Not angry, and not tearful, but worse. Like none of

Madame Crommelynck did a tobaccoey croon to show her delight. “You are a polite thirteen-year boy who is too timid to cut his umbilical cords! Except”—she gave the page a nasty poke—“here. Here in your poems you do what you do not dare to do”—she jabbed at the window—“here. In reality. To express what is here.” She jabbed my heart. It hurt.

“Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. I am right?” “Sort of.” “Your ‘sort of’ is annoying. A yes, or a no, or a qualification, please. ‘Sort of’ is an idle loubard, an ignorant

“Damn. I’ll post you this collection of essays, Inside the Whale.” “Thanks.” I fluked an 8, a 9, a 10, and acted like it was nothing special.