Self-Concealment Poem by gershon hepner

Rather than talking about what is wrong
with me, I involute and hide
in poems, where the things for which I long
are washed by words. Though time and tide
will wait for no one, words once they’ve been put
onto a hard disk in a folder
can’t be ignored or trodden underfoot.
There they express in ways far bolder
than conversations that are tête-à-tête,
my weaknesses that if revealed
when face-to-face are likely to upset
a listener who is not concealed.
My poems live within a house of wits,
and placed within a cyberbasket,
use words like freshest fruit surrounding pits,
while I lie buried in a casket.
Inspired by the concept of being hidden, as in the pen name of Der Nister, used by Pinchus Kahanovich (Berdichev, Ukraine in 1884– 1950) , author of “The Family Masber, ” and Charles McGrath’s review of “House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family, ” by Faul Fisher” (“James Clan, A Family With a Load of Baggage, ” NYT, July 30,2008) :
“House of Basket Cases” might be a better title for Paul Fisher’s big, sweeping biography of the James family. Henry Sr., the patriarch, was an alcoholic, the author reminds us, and so was his son Bob, who in addition suffered from erectile problems. Henry Jr., or Harry, as the book refers to him, the great novelist, was a closeted, repressed homosexual, and he too liked to take a drink. The late-blooming William, the groundbreaking philosopher and psychologist, was a neurasthenic, a depressive and a compulsive flirt who deserted his family for long stretches; he also worried about being inadequate in the bedroom. Alice, the youngest, the sole daughter and the only one of the Jameses who could truly be called a “wit, ” was possibly a lesbian, as well as a lifelong invalid who suffered from devastating breakdowns. And Wilkie, the third son, was a lost soul who failed at business and at marriage….The Jameses are a huge and complicated story, and to tell it Mr. Fisher goes in for a certain amount of novelization, mind reading and needlessly perky writing. But he keeps all the balls juggling, gives fair and sympathetic time to everyone, and along the way provides a lively and detailed social history of the period and its houses, museums, steamships, restaurants, department stores and hotels. Even the invention of the Hershey’s Kiss gets a mention. And in evoking this rich context Mr. Fisher drops a clue that helps explain the Jameses as well as any other. In the end they were less a contemporary family than creatures of their time, propelled into the modern world while still carrying a load of Victorian baggage. There was a lot they simply could not say, even to one another. Mr. Fisher makes too much of Henry’s famous late style as a symptom of concealment and involution. But it’s true that unlike us, Henry had no language for what was wrong with him, so rather than spend a lot of time talking about it, he made art instead.

7/31/08