Little-Michael:
I believe it was Big Dan who said we should start our own school of poetry. He was an instigator. If there wasn’t something he wanted already in place, then Big Dan would create it. It was Dan who really formed our circle of writers, small though it was, and it was Dan who placed Sister Clara as our guiding patron. We were four and I suppose we fully expected there would be more in time. Essentially, anyone who has been taught by Sister Clara or follows her principles of poetry is a metaphysical comedian whether they may call themselves or not. However, the four of us were the first or core group. There was Big Dan, Sister Clara, Little-Michael, and Sheridan.
One afternoon, sitting around in our cramped quarters, four desks in a tight circle and the fall gray sun seeping through the window, it was Big Dan who said we should all have poet names. He said I reminded him of a family of traveling circus performers. The Flying Staples, trapeze artists extraordinaire, featuring little Michael and their signature brand of high-flying excitement. Watch as the Staples pass little Michael from arm to leg to leg to arm with somersaults in between. You’ll be awed by the Staples family’s daring dance with death in defiance of gravity high above the Big Top. I was known as Little- Michael for a long time after and in some circles I still am.
However, I also had another side to my personality, a darker side. Sister Clara called me the Witch Poet and lovingly Witchipoo, homage to H.R. Puffin Stuff, which didn’t hold up well in adulthood. I was openly into the occult and used it in my writing. I was not so openly practicing witchcraft with a coven on the west side, but that’s another story. Occult themes continue to influence my work today but the title of Witch Poet was never as strong as Little-Michael.
It was Sister Clara and I who came up with Big Dan. We tried for hours (many minutes) to think of something more inspired but sometimes the simplest is also the more profound. He’s big and he’s Dan. His bigness expresses itself in his personality, his writing, his physicality, his bold nature, and his indomitable spirit. There’s a lot to love about Big Dan. If it wasn’t for Big Dan, the metaphysical comedians would never have been. Nor would there have been our sprightly core group, the fabulous four, our glamorous names and backgrounds, or the ill-fated Bathos Journal. We owe a lot to Big Dan. Where is Big Dan anyway?
Sheridan was introspective, intellectual, and mysterious. She lived with a rare book collector who never read, nor allowed anyone else to read, his books. She had a pale complexion in a Parisian sort of way and shoulder length, light-blonde hair. Everything about Sheridan was light. She carried an illumination within. Sheridan had a keen sense for understanding the hidden depths of her fellow writers work. At times, when I used occult terms and ideas in my poems, it was Sheridan who most often knew what I was talking about. Sheridan had won the Lannan award the previous year, while I received it as a co-winner that year. We would often attend poetry readings sponsored by the college together, stopping first at the little Thai place across the street for the best Pad Thai I’d ever had. In many ways, Sheridan would go on to lead a rather eighteenth century life, caring for aging parents while remaining reclusive from everyone she once knew. A friend of mine once met her book collector boyfriend who refused to pass along a message to her from me. He said it wasn’t a good time for her and that was all.
I always felt close to Sister Clara but she was the hardest for me to retain a friendship with. Clara introduced me to poetry before I ever met Big Dan or Sheridan. She was very understated when it came to her own work. She had published a book at the time and would soon have another. She would go on to win the coveted Whiting Award but would come and go from poetry circles. Poetry was like a loose thread in her cassock that occasionally required mending. I always felt she had a rather enchanted life but I know she wrestled with demons too. Don’t we all? I believe she truly sought the solace of the convent but had no time for any of its tenets. She was married to a mad scientist who studied institutional alchemy, or was it biochemistry, supported her altruistic endeavors, and moved around a lot. I don’t remember ever having met the man but surely I must have once. When Big Dan and I visited her in DeKalb, I don’t believe the scientist was there, nor when we traveled out to New Hampshire. Maybe I haven’t met him, but Big Dan has, so he must be real.
Our poetry workshop was supposed to be a four-hour marathon of institutional creativeness, but we often felt tapped out by the end of the third hour. We would escape the collegiate confines and make our way to The Closet, an infamous watering hole in Boystown. However, Sheridan never came with us. I don’t recall if she was working at the time or had to attend to the book collector. Anyway, the three of us would spend the afternoon sipping cocktails, bloodymarys with beer chasers, while discussing everything under the sun. I believe it was in The Closet that Bathos Journal was born. Big Dan felt we needed our own poetry journal where metaphysical comedy could be freely expressed and enjoyed by the literary community. He would go on to publish two editions, almost entirely on his own and out of his own pocket. I co-edited the second edition and was very sad to witness the journal’s demise. At the end of our gatherings in The Closet, Big Dan and I would see Sister Clara to a cab and then go our separate ways. I really diddn’t see either of them, nor Sheridan, until we met the following week.
The Metaphysical Comedians would never become known outside its own circles and its members would drift off in separate directions soon after the close of the year. Sheridan was the first to go. She announced that she was leaving the college and moving out to Sycamore to attend, what amounted to, a cheaper school. Soon after Clara and the scientist moved to New Hampshire, while Big Dan and I were left to wrap up Bathos Journal II. For a while, Big Dan worked in pornography, writing reviews. I was actually just down the street at a gift shop. Later, I would get a low-level job at an educational publisher where I floundered for a few years. I recommended Big Dan for a position at the publisher, which he was soon hired for. He would later get his former boss from the porno place a position too. I had worked my way into an editorial contract that expired and left me without any new prospects. It was around this time that Big Dan and I lost touch.
I suppose none of us believed in the group enough to keep it real.
