Scarritt Poem

each is a syllabus of the other
unaccustomed vagary turns them on
to edges: emotional horses
are to be ridden for the sake
of circling the track
they have some dozen pages
listing fears, licenses, appropriations
at the meadow
they burn their pages
for the sake of writing others

This piece is one of those secret pieces. It is about my relationship with Pat Smith. We both spent those years writing novels. She really didn't like my books but it took me a long time to realize that. Her books were kind of really formal. The sentences were beautiful. In certain ways I did like her books, but I did not know what she was up to, writing them. When I write I am trying to find something out about myself. I think there was some element of jealousy/competition in Pat's books. But by and large I always found myself fascinated. Until she was writing a book clearly based on the fact that she had had an affair with her across the street neighbor, John Knoll, in the two years before I came to Springfield. The fact that John was her husband's colleague and friend didn't seem to bother her at all, even after John turned into a kind of weird, nixonian maniac. The ironic end to this is that she is married to John Knoll, now and lives in St. Louis with him. And he has taken care of her through her bout with breast cancer. Good for him. He was pretty much a complete asshole when I knew him. In any case, the object of the work, at the time, was to achieve some sort of understanding. I don't know that either of us ever got there.