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PARTISAN REVIEW
the next day she was there as if nothing had happened, rapt and some–
how satisfied as she stared at me from the first row, without taking
notes or smiling or really listening at all; while all around her the
gossip and admiration rippled in excited whispers, and I could feel the
class purr under my hand, more flatteringly than ever.
In the context of their approval, I began to consider my relationship
with Judith as a rather gallant adventure. To have moved her to such
abandon (a girl whom everyone found beautiful), under the eyes of
her large, threatening husband, did this not require, after all, courage
and aplomb. And to be giving her up now for the sake of that husband,
did that not show an even greater courage, a real maturity? For the
first time in my life, I loved myself that summer; I truly loved myself!
I knew that those silly old women had seen behind my mask of fear
and insecurity the true self I had never given its due.
But the real climax of my summer came only with my public lec–
ture on the last night of the Conference. Walking through the lobby
of the auditorium, unrecognized, before I was due to begin, I could
hear the easy wisecracks and snickers over the title of my talk, "The
Poet, the Oyster and the Sensitive Plant"; and I was pleased.
I was almost sorry that I had not worn my double-breasted palm
beach suit and the hand-painted tie with the naked girls. I had hesitated
for a long time before choosing the Oxford gray flannel outfit, which
with the thinnest of knitted black ties and my brand new crew cut
gave me the air of an up and coming young mortician. The most im–
portant thing, after all, was to look as little like Edgar Allan Poe as
possible!
"I would not be here tonight," I began, "if I did not also hate
poetry, as the patient on the operating table hates his cancer, or a
man his wife on their Golden Anniversary." I could feel the unwilling
hush of the crowd, the reluctance with which they abandoned all hope
of being bored. "Which is why I have taken the title of my talk from
Thomas Hood, a buffoon, an antipoet-but, alas, the greatest writer of
English verse in the second half of the nineteenth century, a man among
the oysters and sensitive plants. 'Oh, flesh, flesh, how thou art fishified!' "
At this point, Fleetwood Demby, who was sitting in the front row,
shrieked in real delight, clapping his hands together impulsively; thus
giving the signal to everyone that I was only being funny (I was, as
always, not sure) and they began to laugh with relief and gratitude.
The speech was pure exhibitionism, compounded in equal parts of vanity
and malice, a poet's revenge; but by the time I had reached the con–
clusion, reading excerpts from "Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg,"
I was almost convinced that Hood was a truly great poet, and I knew
