“Phantom,” A Creative Exploration of Leithauser’s “The Haunted”

PHANTOM 

A laughing black lamp

   Strikes in shuttered bursts 

Where the weeping floor 

   Thunders and drifts like a hearse—

Out of which, 

   She rises here without call, 

Out of which, 

   She rises here for us all,

Who tremble and try to shut our eyes, 

   Only to consummate her haunted gaze— 

Together, a face, an image,

   like cliffside mirrors, 

Falling, further and further 

   Through the days—until

A strange shattering, she disappears, 

   And there’s only the silence of light

And its remains.  

I found the New Formalist poets to lend themselves perfectly for a creative response because of their focus on the poem as forming a unity. In writing through them in a way, one understands the parts or tensions which allow a poem to attain a unity between opposing forces. I find that I am constantly battling between a poetics of harmony (think of the paintings of Matisse) and a poetry of collapse/distortion (think of the paintings of Picasso) in my own writing. Yvor Winters said something along the lines that a poet does not write a poem with a disintegrated form because life itself is already disintegrating—that a poet is supposed to arrest forms and give them a shape. While I think this is true, I also hate saying poetry is supposed to be done in one way; I mean, I love the poetry of many of the Dadaists.  Some of it is definitely unreadable, but a lot of it is genius too. But beyond what I think is true, lies something interesting, and I feel poets are always after what is interesting; there has to be room for revolt. 

In our reading this week, I really enjoyed the amount of texture going on in these poems, and thought that Leithauser’s ( interestingly he is the uncle of the lead singer of The Walkmen, I knew the name was familiar!)”The Haunted” was such a perfect example of a highly textured work that also didn’t overdue it. Also its October and I’m in a spooky mood. The poem seems to be from the point of view of ghosts who are surrounding a woman as she is brushing her hair by a lit candle. The ghosts seem to both love and fear her, and all of this tension is building as the ghosts are drawing nearer to her, until the woman blows out the candle, which is described like a kiss.

In my poem I wanted to change the point of view from the ghost to the point of view of a group of people, to give it more of a Poe like terror to it, where at one point the ghosts and the people are joined together in some sort of fall, which feels like it goes on for days, and is then suddenly broken off. Leithhauser’s poem is pushing towards this unity between the ghosts and the woman, but the scene evaporates too soon with the blowing of the candle. It is not clear whether the ghosts in Leithhauser’s are malicious or not so I wanted to add some maliciousness I suppose. Leithauser’s poem begins with anthropomorphizing a candle burning with “A crying white candle.” In my imitation, I decided to go with a ” A laughing black lamp.” I felt like the theme of anthropomorphizing could have been utilized more in Leithhauser’s poem though. The crying of the candle is the burning of the candle, the melting of the candle. With my line the laughing of the lamp is the flickering on and off of the light which is described in the next line: ” Strikes in shuttered bursts.” This flickering light on the floor gives a certain undulating effect. This movement is then seen by the speaker of the group as moving like a hearse, from which the phantom emerges.

Now my ghost arrives without being conjured up. I was thinking of a Carl Jung quote, where he said the God comes without being summoned. I was always terrified a bit by that idea. So my ghost arrives and cannot be ignored: “She rises here for us all,/ Who tremble and try to shut our eyes,/ Only to consummate her haunted gaze—” This consummation is what Leithauser seems to be teasing at, so here I gave it to readers. Now this consummation certainly lends itself to more abstract thought with the cliffside mirrors. But I wanted something to create a dreamy effect that also captured something like falling off of a cliff. The tension is then suddenly resolved relating how the connection or mirroring between the two figures has shattered, perhaps due to the silence of the light, which refers back to the laughing black lamp. 

My poem could improve more if we knew a specific relationship the group may have with the ghost, perhaps a family member who has passed; it would make the tone more interesting. Also I could describe the ghost more before the two are sort of merged. But I feel my rhymes were pretty good here; I was particularly fond of mirrors/disappears, consummate/ gaze/days/remains.