4
All in Good Company By Eve Anthony Hanninen, Editor
A
few years ago I wrote and had published a poem, “Oregon Medley,‖ about a camping trip in Oregon State that finished out its last days in a campground visited with morning magpies. If you’ve ever heard these birds’ voices, you know how loud they can squawk. In chorus. Such as when they’re gathered in competition for a shady tree branch or a scattering of campers’ breadcrumbs. At 5 a.m.
And you may know that magpies are also reputed to be thieves — particularly of colorful, shiny things — rather like the famous packrat gang, and the lesser-known kitten-nabbers, who will abscond with many of your tiny, personal items and horde them in dark, human-unfrequented corners. I’m a bit of a magpie. Okay, so most writers are. Not the stealing-plagiarizing kind, but the muse-swapping, shiny-concept-borrowing, what-if-evolutionizing kind. Now and then I read something by another author or poet that gets me to thinking about things that take me over and under the original postulation, and next I know, I’ve grabbed the glistening core — tucked in arm like a football — and I’m running doggedly along a new length of green, intent on grandstanding at my own goalpost. Grandstanding’s still allowed in literature, especially if it’s all in one’s head. That’s exactly the sort of scenario that occurred before I came up with the theme for The Centrifugal Eye’s current issue. I’m sorry that I can’t credit the actual poem that generated the Unbidden Visitors theme, but when I first read it, I had no
idea how it would stay with me, an uninvited guest with no departure date. So I didn’t jot down its title or author (lesson for me — but how can I possibly write down the name of everything I read? With a note pertaining to something I don’t yet know will be pertinent? Must save that string, button, nail, dried petal, decorative wrapper, empty box . . .). In the unidentified troublemaker-ofa-poem, the subject arrives at the home of her terminally-ill ex-lover, at his request, and must endure the jealous resentment of the past lover’s wife in order to spend time with him. Imagine being in that situation as each of the main characters. I did try to imagine it. I put myself in each of their places. I was both the welcome visitor and the intruder. I was the put-upon wife, and the wistful, grateful, guilty, declining husband/lover. And that got me to thinking about all the various instances in which a person might find himself either the unbidden visitor or the unexpectedly visited-upon. And let us not ignore the permutations that may occur when these visitations might include creatures or abstract concepts.