For one thing, there is a weekly reading going on of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, hosted by one of my book’s editors. For another, I had never read it! For a third, this strange little novel is nothing like what I expected. It is not: long, difficult, Frankenstein-fraught or Incredible Hulk-infused. It is: short, dark, and psychological, with a protagonist who is neither of the titular characters. A heavy dose of foggy London fireside mystery. Roger Chillingworth’s picture of Dorian Gray a very buried lede. In short, I recommend it for December reading.
I’m thinking in fragments because the fourth thing is that my publisher, who will be producing a print version of the story, complete with illustrations and verse, has issued a poetry call to companion the read-along. I am obsessed with found poetry these days. (I am also eschewing commas lately in my verse.) This is my contribution, which demanded to heavily borrow Emily Dickinson’s em dash:
Blacking out the Death of Mr. Carew
The startled startling living –
a fog small and cloudless –
never more at peace
with the kindly world
but (beautiful and accosted) –
pleased to watch to
breathe wander never listen –
To brandish to hurt.
A storm lay in the middle of
the lane the deed
– I shall say nothing.
God help us over
heaven with its muddy ways
this mournful invasion of darkness –
assails – ragged in the doorways –
Yes, at home in strange habits –
often absent I had better tell
you of joy. Ah!
Trouble! don’t seem the whole
extent – ransacked
as the end of delight found
to be complete. (You
may depend up on it.) I have
lost all burned the life
to nothing – but wait –
this last accomplishment
differed widely they agreed –
the haunting beholders.