A Poem for Popeye
by Jeet Heer
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Readers of E.C. Segar will know the characters Alice the Goon and George W. Geezil, who shared the stage of Thimble Theatre with stars like Popeye and Olive Oyl. In his collection Dove Legend (Porcupine’s Quill, 2001), the great Canadian poet Richard Outram wrote an unexpected love poem devoted to the pair. Here is Outram’s “Diapason in Thimble Theatre” (with commentary after the poem).
Some marriages, after Byzantine negotiations, are arranged.
Some poleaxed lovers swear their trothplight on the spot.
Some marriages, so we are informed, are made in Heaven.
And some marriages, rather evidently are not.
*
But surely one of the least congruous of nuptials
ever to have been solemnized under the blanched moon
was the decorous matrimony of George Weintraub Geezil
widower, to the sometime parish spinster, Alice the Goon.
*
History does not record the details of their courtship.
There are those who conjectre, that Geezil took off his hat
and knelt, when he proposed. On the other hand, many
are prepared to believe in bizarreries, but not that.
*
The ceremony itself is a matter of vestry record.
The bride was given away by Ludwig Wittgenstin.
A tearful Olive Oil was her bridesmaid. Rough-house hosted
the saturnalian reception. From Cana came the wine.
*
Fie! A plague upon you, who would, prurient, follow after
the radiant couple, beyond the closed bridal-chamber door!
Did Geezil cradle Alice, or Alice Geezil? O whatever rapture
connubial was theirs is privy, and secret evermore.
*
And was their union steadfast as the constellations?
Or fraught with discord? Again, history does not relate:
and not just because Elzie Crisler Segar put aside his pen
to give up the ghost, in nineteen thirty-eight.
*
Clio belaboured does not utter in these matters.
Inquire of Hymen, or Erato, as every schoolboy knows,
on love’s ingenious carnalities but none shall tell
the stricken mysteries of Souls that juxtapose.
A few notes:
1. Richard Outram (1930-2005) was arguably one of the greatest poet Canada has produced so if you like this poem, I’d suggest picking up his other books.
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein as far as I know never appeared in Thimble Theatre but otherwise the characters are all from Segar’s strip. I think the middle name given to Geezil (Weintraub) was an Outram invention. I haven’t read Segar in a few years, but I don’t think Geezil and Alice the Goon ever married in the strip, although Segar did like to create incongruous romances (Wimpy with the Sea Hag, or for that matter Popeye and Olive Oyl).
3. Hymen is the Greek God of weddings and the bridal hymn, although there is an obvious biological pun there. Erato is one of the muses.
4. There are many great poets of romance but relatively few poets of marriage. Married life, the stricken mystery of Souls that juxtapose, was Outram’s great subject, the theme he returned to again and again. As in this poem, he often reflected on how unevenly matched couple’s managed to build a life together and find happiness.
5. Outram was married to the painter and wood engraver Barbara Howard, who died in unexpectedly in 2002. After her death, Outram went into a state of profound depression. He killed himself in early 2005.
Labels: E.C. Segar, marriage, Richard Outram
What a lovely poem, Jeet. Thanks for posting it. There’s actually a decent number of Popeye poems out there. John Ashbery’s sestina “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape” came most immediately to mind. It’s quite a bit more po-mo than the poem above, as you might expect, but Wimpy, the Sea Hag, and Alice the Goon all make an appearance. And the poets Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel collaborated on a book called Oyl, an entire series of co-written poetic explorations with Olive as the focus.
An excerpt of Duhamel and Seaton can be found here: http://bostonreview.net/BR24.6/duhamel.html
Here’s the Ashbery:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16189
And thanks again for posting the Outram poem. I was unfamiliar with him until now.
That’s pretty good, but he’s no J. Wellington.
Wimpy’s Poem for the Sea Hag
by E. C. Segar
We slew our foes,
My sweetheart and me
And streams of Corpuscles
Flowed to the sea
All over the walls and on the floor
Were buckets and buckets and buckets of Gore
We stepped on their necks,
On those slippery decks,
As my sweety and me went aft.
And amid all this,
She gave me a kiss,
And amid all this we laughed!
For she was the Hag of the Seven Seas,
And I was her understudy,
And never a tremor ran through her knees,
Though decks were befouled and ruddy.
In the depth of her eyes
Was the Blue of the Skies
As well as the shadows of night.
And I’ll sing her love’s song
E’en though she’s all wrong
For I, too, am not in the right.
Perhaps a relevant comment from Carmine Starnino:
Can critical faculties show signs of wear and tear? Eliot thought so. “As one gets older,” he said in his 1959 Paris Review interview, when he was seventy-one, “one is not quite confident in one’s own ability to distinguish new genius among younger men. You’re always afraid that you are going as you have seen your elders go.” Helen Vendler admitted as much in her 2006 New York Times profile. Then seventy-three, Vendler said she avoided poets under fifty, citing new “frames of reference” that baffled her. “They’re writing about the television cartoons they saw when they were growing up. And that’s fine. It’s as good a resource of imagery as orchards,” she said. “Only I’ve seen orchards and I didn’t watch these cartoons . . . So I don’t feel I’m the best reader for most of the young ones.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238414
Somewhat related, I recommend
http://www.librarything.com/work/356116