She's Ruined Mah Play! Poem by gershon hepner

“She’s ruined mah play! ” cried Tennessee,
from the balcony at Geraldine,
who’d taken it from him, to be
her own. That’s why the playwright made a scene,
as all of us do when our lovers break
away from paths that we had designated
for them. We must, for heaven’s sake,
not make a scene when we have been ablated,
and when sweet birds of youth fly off
to winter, summer, in far distant climes
we must let go. When ancient scripts die off
we too can fly with fresher rhymes.


Inspired by a scene that involved Tennessee Williams, described by Christopher Plummer in his book “In Spite of Myself, ” reviewed by Alex Witchel in his Book Review of the NYT on December 21,2008 (“What a Night! ”) :

As it is in his report of attending the final run-through of Tennessee Williams’s “Sweet Bird of Youth, ” starring Geraldine Page, whom Plummer describes as “transcendent”: “When it was over you could hear a pin drop.... Just then from the balcony in that rasping voice of his, Tennessee started shouting.... ‘She’s ruined mah play! She’s ruined mah play! ’... No one seemed to take much notice, or pretended not to.” Plummer asks Elia Kazan, the director, what’s wrong. “ ‘Oh, don’t worry, ’ ¬Gadge replied, ‘she’s just taken his play away from him. It’s hers now — it doesn’t belong to him anymore and he knows it.’ ”

12/25/08