EUREKA! I Found the Ronald Johnson Elegy for Lady Di!

Okay, since I referenced that elegy on Lady Diana, I was a bit rabid to find the poem, and Google didn't help at all. I knew it was in a good poetry magazine and could roughly visualize what it looked like, but the book had migrated from its former bookcase (where I visualized it, where it had been before we bought this house).

Anyway, after glancing at a few thousand poetry spines, I located it! It was in one of my vertical skyscrapers of books that were built after all the bookshelves were filled, and was being the meat in an Ouspensky-Merrill sandwich. His next door neighbors included Nathaniel Tarn and the Japanese novelist Togawa.

This poem appeared in a very good journal that I imagine is long-defunct, Facture, in the debut issue, which has a GREAT feature on Ronald Johnson. It was edited by Lindsay Hill & Paul Naylor, whose names strike me as blasts from the past. I remember Lindsay writing a very sci-fi type poetry and I can't place Naylor at all. Maybe I saw something by him in Talisman back in the day? I want to say he's English which is probably completely wrong. CURIOUS ASIDE HERE: I once wrote a series of small essays which were readings of individual poems by five female poets. I think I called the essay "Sisters of Techne," or some pretentious twaddle like that. One of the poems was one I had enjoyed by this same Lindsay Hill. There was only one problem with this. I later found out Lindsay is a man. I briefly considered asking the poet to change his sex, thought about sending him a brochure from Johns Hopkins showing how simple it could all be, but someone less idealistic talked me out of it. They suggested changing the name of the essay to "Four Sisters of Techne and One Brother," but that didn't really fly with me. I still think the sex change would have been a cleaner and more honest solution. Anyhoo...and I say that about as often as Tracy Ullman's Ruby Romayne and usually in her voice....

If you're a Ronald Johnson fan, you should find this on A.B.E and buy it. Good excerpts from The Shrubberies and the Notebooks, and good scholarship on Johnson by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Jed Rasula, Mark Scroggins and others.

I have a signed copy of one of Johnson's cookbooks that always makes me feel sad and happy and warm when I pick it up. Someday I will actually make the recipes. Or cozen Lee into doing it. I make brownies all the time and every single time I have to read the box. I'm that bad in the kitchen.

Here's the poem. The year was 2000. Why does that sound like it's so long ago already?

OKAY I WENT TO FIND THE POEM, SURE THAT IT WAS IN HERE AND IT IS NOT...THIS WAS ALL A RED HERRING...AND MENTALLY I COULD EVEN SEE IT IN THIS TYPEFACE THEY USED, WHICH IS SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL...SO WHERE IS THIS DAMN POEM...NOW I'M THINKING AN ANTHOLOGY THAT INCLUDED HIM...LET ME CHECK A FEW OF THOSE...BRB....

NOW I'M THINKING MAYBE IT WAS IN SULFUR...LET ME LOOKSEE...

SUCCESS!!

I finally found it. It was in Word of Mouth, this excellent anthology of Gay American Poetry edited by Timothy Liu and published by Talisman House (God bless you, Ed Foster!)

As Fred Schnieder says "Here tis..."

     August 31st - September 5th


doomed princess
pursued by paparazzi
smashed flashbulbed
into infinity

candle in the wind
buried bright day
all London lines
polite the streets

lie softly, ghost
aghast at the actual
limbs dumb as trees
slippered in lead

round earth no more
would Saturn's rings
each proximity pull
to pale the whole

interred Isle du Lac
but for helicopters
safe in autumn sod
England's green hills

Diana, huntress
brought down herself
relentless chase
turned into marble


En face this moving poem is Beam 18 of his Ark which is Johnson's handprint in ink, so moving....and then realizing he wrote this poem when he surely knew his own leavestaking was imminent...