One modern example of people outside of literature who feel “other” and also feel a connection to animals are the “furries.” Often people who draw anthropomorphic art featuring animals or writing stories featuring anthropomorphic animal characters, many who consider themselves or label themselves as “furry,” are tarred with the same brush as those who use the furry designation as a purely sexual identification. A writer known as Jekkal, on DeviantArt, explains that “An often-offered definition of the difference between Anthro and Furry is that Furry is a sexualized form of Anthro, whereas Anthro is simply drawing animals acting like humans and sipping tea; ergo, Anthro is the 'true' art and standard of civilization, while Furry is its mentally retarded drooly cousin, mostly consisting of cub porn and recolored Sonic OC's. This is the most widely accepted definition between Furry and Anthro. It's also dead wrong” (para 1). He compares the reason for this distinction to when the arbiters of society assumed all forms of manga and anime were pornography. Because of this, many people who are part of the furry community are careful to use terms such as “anthro” to describe their art, connection with animals, or other beliefs. In this way, the people with a strong connection to literary, artistic, and spiritual representations of animals, as well as the animals themselves, beyond a level that society might consider acceptable, are others to regular society as well as others among groups of outsiders. Because of a concern that general furries are psychologically imbalanced, the Anthropomorphic Research Project asked questions about self-esteem and anxiety in its Winter 2011 Survey. Although many self-proclaimed members of the furry community, however they define that community, had been bullied as children and teenagers, the survey coordinators encouraged readers to realize that the numbers were not more than the non-furry sample. However, this group of people have found another method to dealing with their otherness from society: they distance themselves from human society by connecting more closely with animal personae through various methods.
Different poets approach grief, depression, and tension in different ways to demonstrate that aspect of “otherness” in modern life. Where Bishop uses delaying tactics to traverse the mire of social niceties and delay the intensity of her internal personal meanings, Sylvia Plath chooses controversial terminology to be blatantly confrontational, and Louise Gluck's controlled style allows her to explore her personal pain, encouraging its analysis as a universal pain. Like Bishop, Gluck indicates a feeling of alienation, of isolation from social expectations. Her works not only reflect upon her life after her father's death, her mother's perceived increased affection for the younger sister, and her relationship to her sister, but also Gluck's own relationship with herself as shaped by these other interactions. In “Parados,” she indicates that interacting with others, even her closest family members, would end in “debating, arguing” (15). Not only does she have difficulty connecting with her family members, her mother and aunt do as well: in “Widows” (23), the aunt and mother have been trained by their mother to use the structure of the competitive card game, appropriately titled Spite and Malice, to interact (Wendy Forgy, personal communication, July 28). For Gluck, choice is integral in maintaining control of her surroundings or her internal environment. In “Confession,” she asserts that she has learned to hide her dreams “to protect myself from fulfillment” (25). She intentionally distances herself from opportunities for success, so she will not be hurt or disappointed or mocked for her dreams. Gluck indicates a desire for solitude beyond that capable of human attainment, similar to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's song “I am a Rock”:
I have my books
and my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armour
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock, I am an island
And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries
In “Parados,” Gluck wishes to be “Not inert: still. A piece of wood. A stone” (15). The difference between stillness and inertia suggests that Gluck wants to choose her stillness and reject interactions with others beyond merely viewing what a rock or piece of wood would view. She returns to her desire for choice in “Brown Circle,” where she says “What I hated was being a child, having no choice about what people I loved” (42). Similarly, the bus rider in Bishop's “The Moose” and the girl in “In the Waiting Room” are dependent upon others within their situations: they have a loss of control that amplifies their potential for otherness.
Gluck's works also explore truth and authenticity of identity and self-perception, none so thoroughly as “The Untrustworthy Speaker” (34-35). In this poem, Gluck addresses the universal fear of feeling like an impostor. She says “I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that's when I'm least to be trusted” (34). A product of the modern era, she knows psychological lingo. However, that knowledge fails to comfort her, as she either does not trust her own passions because they jostle her personal order and control, or she realizes that her passion is a way of fooling herself or of pretending an authenticity she can only imitate, not embody. Feeling out-of-sync from societal expectations emphasizes or enhances one's perceptions of feeling inauthentic or untrustworthy beneath the skin. The speaker may not be intentionally using her gifts of intellect and language to manipulate the reader or listener, but she realizes her perception is biased. She knows she should be content, but she is not, and that awareness of discontent enhances her sense of otherness: Her self-reflection merely heightens her feelings of isolation from others. Unlike a character in Hammett's Maltese Falcon who “adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling,” Gluck's speaker/Gluck never adjusts herself to lack of tragedy, so everything feels like a tragedy or recursively connects back to her early tragedies. Her emotional and mental wounds continue to affect her interactions with others, urging her to develop this poem-as-warning.
Ammon's works also contain warning of an underlying tension. Poetry often works to liberate readers or explore the mundane through the lens of the sacred by upholding or refuting a particular doctrine or belief. Instead, Ammons says, “I don't care whether anybody believes me or not: I don't know anything I want anybody to believe or in: but if you will sit with me in the light of speech, I will sit with you” (73). His warning is less a trap of manipulation or potential falsehood as an explanation of lack of prophetic manifesto, something that disconnects Ammons from his very avocation. He continues, “I have nothing to say: what I want to say is saying” (76). For Ammons, the act of speaking is his goal, his therapy. His work is also self-reflective, but his word choice indicates less concern that he might be believed or might mislead someone into believing his passion. The act of writing poetry is, for some poets, a compulsion as well as a way to fight darker imaginings. For example, in “To Be of Use,” Marge Piercy romanticizes the world of day-to-day work and those who throw themselves into the work as more than a job or service but as a compulsion or calling: “The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.” However, what if, for poets, the work “that is real” is writing poetry? Instead of using descriptive or delaying tactics, the poets use poetry itself to stave off the temptation of suicide? If one is always in the middle of creating a poem or editing poems, perhaps the poet will be less likely to commit suicide because of the compulsion to write.
Writing is filled with tension and anxiety: Ammons says that “one must write and write till one gets it right” (22) and calls the drive to write poetry “a brutal burning, a rich, raw urgency” (43), indicating the power behind the need to craft poetry. Wright indicates the difficulty behind getting the ideas into words and the words on paper in “The Winter Skyline Late”: “Eating fear, shitting fear, convulsed with disappointment and loathing every time I went to touch a pen to paper” (40). Attempting to craft the passions and words into poetry may be liberating, but it also agonizing. With these lines, Wright alternately connects with and fights against Gluck's desire to “protect myself against fulfillment” (25). The act of poetry is a compulsion, but it contains its own agonies. He elaborates on how, when he needs them most, the words are not there in “Words” (15). Poetry is not easy, nor are living and continuing to be present or involved or alive in the world, particularly if the feeling of otherness lurks sharply in every action or thought.
By struggling through the difficult art of poetry, perhaps poets try to get themselves to Ammons' mindset “where I can say I'm glad I was here, even if I must go: I want to believe that the possibility given me to be here was not a betrayal or trap or hoax but a trial of the possibility of a possibility” (88). However, Wright emphasizes the lure of suicide in “Certain Tall Buildings”: “I know if you contemplate suicide long enough, it begins to contemplate you—oh, it has plans for you” and “These thoughts, occurring once too often, are no longer your own. No, they think you” (19). In modern crime television programs, one of the first questions asked by investigators is whether or not the deceased had plans for the future. In the case of poets, always wrangling with poetic inspiration and compulsion may provide them with enough plans for the future to have a future, at least in little snippets at a time, and little snippets may be all some people can handle. That many poets grapple with anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies ranks them as other in light of the blissful world everyone is expected to have, the world where even Plath and Wright and Gluck are expected to answer “fine” to insincere questioning.
Although “First Memory” (68) indicates that Gluck has grown through her experiences, it also alludes to potentially subversive methods of catharsis more reminiscent of certain psycho-sexual readings of early Robert Lowell. Her idea that “in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved” (68) refers to metaphorical, emotional, or internal pain, and may seem to end the entire collection on a hopeful note. However, the line may also connect to some people's need for intensity, those who desire pain to demonstrate the experience of any emotion or connection to others, such as is indicated in the song “Pain” by Three Days Grace:
Pain, I can't get enough
Pain, I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all
You're sick of feeling numb
You're not the only one
I'll take you by the hand
And I'll show you a world that you can understand
This life is filled with hurt
When happiness doesn't work
Trust me and take my hand
When the lights go out you will understand
Like in Gluck's poem, the song indicates that feeling pain is better than feeling numbness or distance. In his “Herr Vogt,” Karl Marx noted, “The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.” In fact, Marx's theory connects to the science behind the production of endorphins, naturally occurring pain-killers produced by the body during physical pain. Some people take the philosophy to an extreme, using intensity and physical pain to thwart numbness of life. They may be viewed as other in regard to their sexuality or behaviors by their engagement in self-mutilation or BDSM-related activities, driven by the urge to not only distract themselves from their emotional turmoil with pain created by their choices, but also to seek an endorphin-high that can combat their emotional pain (“BDSM and Biochemistry”). Using the song “Pain,” Gluck's “First Memory,” and extreme sexual and personal practices as an interpretive lens encourages a new interpretation of the Dickinson poem previously mentioned:
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail --
Assent -- and you are sane --
Demur -- you're straightway dangerous --
And handled with a Chain -
In this case, the person feeling that pain “meant I loved” (Gluck 68), might seek to be “handled with a Chain” before the Majority can do so, in a way Dickinson probably never envisioned.
Section Three: If it Weren't Written With Vampires In Mind, It Should Have Been: A Vampiric Analysis of Wallace Stevens' 'Tea at the Palaz of Hoon.'
Wallace Steven’s poems confound as they attract; the juxtaposition of words, the unique punctuation choices, and the repetition of themes possess a quality that simultaneously evokes familiarity and strangeness. Thus, his works exemplify Freud’s concept of the unheimlich, the uncanny. His poems resist immediate interpretation, requiring meditation on various elements before one may reach a hesitant conclusion or several competing and contradictory conclusions. “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” (65) demonstrates how Steven’s works contain the fluidity of water or sand in one’s overeager grasp. While perhaps a treatise on religion, or a personal self-affirmation of identity, or to elucidate ideas in “The Snow Man” (9) by providing another perspective of the greater whole, “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” may also represent a method through which one may analyze another concept: vampire narcissism in literature. While doubtful that Stevens intended to encapsulate the experience of being a vampire within his poem, the work lends itself to a vampiric interpretation, and now is the moment for that vampiric interpretation because of the major vampire explorations in academia, as catalyzed by the current wave of vampiric tales in popular culture. As Dr. Flesch notes: “great and popular are in no way in contradiction to each other” (personal communication, 29 June, 2011). Interpreting “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” through the lens of vampire literary conventions allows the reader increased insight into what the poem suggests about vampires as the ultimate other.
On the surface, several of the word choices suggest vampiric conventions. For example, the title itself resonates with the atmosphere of “other” due to the regal nature of the word “Palaz” and the unfamiliarity of the word “Hoon.” A “Palaz” evokes the words palazzo, plaza, and palace simultaneously. Each of these indicates wealth, palatial grounds, and opulence, which align with the vampire as oft-portrayed as a nobleman (or woman) with access to a large ancestral fortune or vast accounts and homes gleaned either from careful savings over the centuries or other nefarious methods of procuring wealth. A word with an exotic reverberation, “Hoon” could be a far-off locale from which early vampires, such as the Wallachian Dracula, often originated, or it could be reminiscent of a surname that defied Anglicization, as not all vampires were created in 20th or 21st century America to have common or unexpected last names. Therefore, the word “Hoon,” as a name of a place or person, echoes with the common convention that vampires represent society’s others---the non-native, the unfamiliar, and the dangerous.
Although the phrase “in purple I descended” appears to indicate a royal, stately, or expensive garb of purple, more attention to the phrase “in purple I descended the western day through what you called the loneliest air” reveals that the narrator “descended” at the beginning of evening, when the sky is purple because of the sun setting in the West. Traditionally, vampires are not active or dangerous until the sun sets, and the West is the direction symbolically representing death or endings, states which the vampire rejects. In addition, one must question the “you” to whom the narrator is speaking. If one interprets the narrator as the vampire, who is hearing the vampire’s defense of his actions or existence? Because the vampiric experience of extended life, often through the deaths of humans, is other to mortals, and because of the tradition in vampire literature for vampires to simultaneously repel and attract a non-vampire companion who is not, initially, desired as prey, one might theorize that the reader/”you” represents a mortal companion, servant, or future victim to whom the vampire wants to explain himself.
The journey of the poem may represent the vampire’s self-awareness as he defends or justifies his existence as a vampire or his choice to become a vampire. Initially, the narrator says his experience of descending in purple, waking at dusk, did not diminish his sense of self. In many vampire stories, the vampire awakes or transforms into a creature with none of the recognizable attitudes, perceptions, or personality he or she had when human. In some cases, they rise as revenants or some other type of mindless monster that feasts on the villagers and indicate a need for the traditional torches and pitchforks, as seen in some instances within Dracula and Interview With the Vampire. Instead, the narrator attempts to soothe the listener by indicating “not less was I myself.” If the audience of “you” is someone who had known the vampire before his transformation, the vampire may be indicating that his personality is intact, so the listener need not fear him or start a new hobby of stake-sharpening. More common in modern vampire tales is the idea that the vampire retains aspects of his or her personality. The Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series demonstrates this most keenly with the only vampire Anita knew before he became a vampire, Willie McCoy. He is so newly turned that he still has the occasional twitches for which he was known when he was human, and he remained a lackey for the demimonde after he turned as well. Most telling is that Anita still has a gentle affection for Willie even after she has known him as a vampire for quite some time; his personality is still his own. In Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, Louis embodies the sentiments of his age: he is introspective and concerned with his actions as well as the morality of his condition as a vampire; becoming a vampire only intensified his personality, not diminished it.
The second and third stanzas of “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” seem to indicate a religious or celebratory rite, but they could also indicate the internal rituals one takes on a journey of self-awareness. In twentieth-century vampire tales, both filmic and literary, authors pay much attention to the act of transformation. In some works, the transformation from human to vampire consists of a certain number of vampire bites (usually three) to the victim; in others, an exchange of blood is necessary. In still others, magical phrases must also be repeated. In most works of vampire fiction, some sort of rite must occur before the victim becomes a vampire. For some vampires, the experience represents a willing and celebratory choice; for others, the experience is one of pain and horror. In Christine Feehan's Dark novels, the transformation occurs with one connecting to his or her Beloved, so it indicates salvation from darker, homicidal urges as well as finding one's true love for eternity. Attacks and accidents do occur in different works, as not every vampire practices “safe sucks,” but turning a human into a vampire almost always requires that specific criteria be met. Therefore, the second stanza about ointment, hymns, and the sea could be interpreted as the religious, magical, or ritual transformation of the narrator into a vampire. In addition, the “ointment on my beard” could actually refer to being cut, sliced, or bitten on the neck and blood soaking into his beard. The hymns might represent the sound of his blood rushing or pounding in his ears as he was drained before the transformation, or they could represent the loss of religious identity, as religious symbols are anathema to vampires in many older tales, such as Dracula, “Carmilla,” and “Christobel.” In more recent vampire tales, such Joey W. Hill's Vampire Queen series, vampires with faith may possess and wear religious items, so the hymns may indicate a continued devotion to one's faith despite the transformation. Finally, the sea “whose tide swept through me” could also represent the feeling of blood rushing from his veins or the return of blood to his veins, not only because of the liquid nature of blood, but also because of the symbolic connections between blood and the cycles of the tides.
The third and fourth stanzas could represent the vampire’s emergence as a newly-awakened vampire, but they could also reference the first time the vampire fed off of a human or some other aspect of self-reflection. In many works of vampire literature, for example Lord of the Dead and Interview With the Vampire, the first awakening as a vampire or the emergence as a new vampire defies adequate description: the vampire perceives sights, sounds, and situations differently than he or she did before. In Interview With the Vampire, Louis calls part of his experience looking with vampire eyes and becomes besotted by merely perceiving the night. Therefore, when the narrator talks about the ointment and hymns coming from himself, being the “compass of that sea” and being “the world in which I walked,” he could be referencing the absolute sea-change of perception from his initial existence as a human to his new vampire-state. Although the vampire's personality may not have changed or become lessened, his perceptions have altered or increased. Similarly, he could also be talking about his first kill or first feeding -as vampires kill their prey in some works, but others take blood without killing in other works- particularly with the line “I was myself the compass of that sea.” If the narrator refers to blood when he mentions the tide that “swept through me” in the second stanza, he may be referencing his control over the fate or blood of his victims when he calls himself “the compass of that sea.” His new abilities or situation have given him control over a sea that previously had “swept through” him out of his control. Particularly, if the vampire must kill to survive, like the vampires in Le Fanu's “Carmilla” and Lindqvist's Let the Right One In, he could be talking about controlling the destinies of human lives, as he chooses who will live or die.
The final stanza could continue to support “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” as a vampire’s justification or defense of his existence. His power is undeniable, as his new abilities-or his abilities after he has fed-come from himself and no other party; the narrator has complete agency. In addition, the final line could indicate his initial pleasure at his new perceptions of the world over which he now has so much control or even his pleasure at continuing to exist over the years. The line “And there I found myself more truly and more strange” indicates a depth of self-reflection in the honesty and juxtaposition of the words “truly” and “strange.” Obviously, the narrator was and is still pleased with being a vampire, recognizing it as his true identity, but he also admits the strangeness of the situation or of his continued existence. Whether or not he is a vampire who kills his prey, the narrator’s confident words indicate that his actions do not lessen him.
“Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” and “The Snow Man” can be viewed as companion pieces, each shedding light upon the other. When taken in conjunction with Stevens' “The Snow Man” (9), interpretations relevant to vampire literature emerge more distinctly. If one views “The Snow Man” as advice or a recommendation to “have a mind of winter” by staying aloof, distant, or cold to the plight of humanity or anyone's concerns beyond one's own, “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” could indicate the mental attitude necessary for long term vampiric survival. For example, in most works with long-lived vampire characters, the oldest are ruthless, predatory, and often parasitic on society or the people around them. Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, and Kim Harrison’s works all hark back to Dracula and older, seminal works when the authors describe vampires as manipulative and keen on their own survivals and solidification of their power bases over every other concern. In most vampire literature, the vampires do not suffer from Ruskin’s pathetic fallacy, as they function in a world of reality based on cause and effect; they have to distance themselves from everything in order to see the long-term cause and effects of actions unhindered by emotion to behold “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (10).
Different poets approach grief, depression, and tension in different ways to demonstrate that aspect of “otherness” in modern life. Where Bishop uses delaying tactics to traverse the mire of social niceties and delay the intensity of her internal personal meanings, Sylvia Plath chooses controversial terminology to be blatantly confrontational, and Louise Gluck's controlled style allows her to explore her personal pain, encouraging its analysis as a universal pain. Like Bishop, Gluck indicates a feeling of alienation, of isolation from social expectations. Her works not only reflect upon her life after her father's death, her mother's perceived increased affection for the younger sister, and her relationship to her sister, but also Gluck's own relationship with herself as shaped by these other interactions. In “Parados,” she indicates that interacting with others, even her closest family members, would end in “debating, arguing” (15). Not only does she have difficulty connecting with her family members, her mother and aunt do as well: in “Widows” (23), the aunt and mother have been trained by their mother to use the structure of the competitive card game, appropriately titled Spite and Malice, to interact (Wendy Forgy, personal communication, July 28). For Gluck, choice is integral in maintaining control of her surroundings or her internal environment. In “Confession,” she asserts that she has learned to hide her dreams “to protect myself from fulfillment” (25). She intentionally distances herself from opportunities for success, so she will not be hurt or disappointed or mocked for her dreams. Gluck indicates a desire for solitude beyond that capable of human attainment, similar to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's song “I am a Rock”:
I have my books
and my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armour
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock, I am an island
And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries
In “Parados,” Gluck wishes to be “Not inert: still. A piece of wood. A stone” (15). The difference between stillness and inertia suggests that Gluck wants to choose her stillness and reject interactions with others beyond merely viewing what a rock or piece of wood would view. She returns to her desire for choice in “Brown Circle,” where she says “What I hated was being a child, having no choice about what people I loved” (42). Similarly, the bus rider in Bishop's “The Moose” and the girl in “In the Waiting Room” are dependent upon others within their situations: they have a loss of control that amplifies their potential for otherness.
Gluck's works also explore truth and authenticity of identity and self-perception, none so thoroughly as “The Untrustworthy Speaker” (34-35). In this poem, Gluck addresses the universal fear of feeling like an impostor. She says “I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist. When I speak passionately, that's when I'm least to be trusted” (34). A product of the modern era, she knows psychological lingo. However, that knowledge fails to comfort her, as she either does not trust her own passions because they jostle her personal order and control, or she realizes that her passion is a way of fooling herself or of pretending an authenticity she can only imitate, not embody. Feeling out-of-sync from societal expectations emphasizes or enhances one's perceptions of feeling inauthentic or untrustworthy beneath the skin. The speaker may not be intentionally using her gifts of intellect and language to manipulate the reader or listener, but she realizes her perception is biased. She knows she should be content, but she is not, and that awareness of discontent enhances her sense of otherness: Her self-reflection merely heightens her feelings of isolation from others. Unlike a character in Hammett's Maltese Falcon who “adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling,” Gluck's speaker/Gluck never adjusts herself to lack of tragedy, so everything feels like a tragedy or recursively connects back to her early tragedies. Her emotional and mental wounds continue to affect her interactions with others, urging her to develop this poem-as-warning.
Ammon's works also contain warning of an underlying tension. Poetry often works to liberate readers or explore the mundane through the lens of the sacred by upholding or refuting a particular doctrine or belief. Instead, Ammons says, “I don't care whether anybody believes me or not: I don't know anything I want anybody to believe or in: but if you will sit with me in the light of speech, I will sit with you” (73). His warning is less a trap of manipulation or potential falsehood as an explanation of lack of prophetic manifesto, something that disconnects Ammons from his very avocation. He continues, “I have nothing to say: what I want to say is saying” (76). For Ammons, the act of speaking is his goal, his therapy. His work is also self-reflective, but his word choice indicates less concern that he might be believed or might mislead someone into believing his passion. The act of writing poetry is, for some poets, a compulsion as well as a way to fight darker imaginings. For example, in “To Be of Use,” Marge Piercy romanticizes the world of day-to-day work and those who throw themselves into the work as more than a job or service but as a compulsion or calling: “The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.” However, what if, for poets, the work “that is real” is writing poetry? Instead of using descriptive or delaying tactics, the poets use poetry itself to stave off the temptation of suicide? If one is always in the middle of creating a poem or editing poems, perhaps the poet will be less likely to commit suicide because of the compulsion to write.
Writing is filled with tension and anxiety: Ammons says that “one must write and write till one gets it right” (22) and calls the drive to write poetry “a brutal burning, a rich, raw urgency” (43), indicating the power behind the need to craft poetry. Wright indicates the difficulty behind getting the ideas into words and the words on paper in “The Winter Skyline Late”: “Eating fear, shitting fear, convulsed with disappointment and loathing every time I went to touch a pen to paper” (40). Attempting to craft the passions and words into poetry may be liberating, but it also agonizing. With these lines, Wright alternately connects with and fights against Gluck's desire to “protect myself against fulfillment” (25). The act of poetry is a compulsion, but it contains its own agonies. He elaborates on how, when he needs them most, the words are not there in “Words” (15). Poetry is not easy, nor are living and continuing to be present or involved or alive in the world, particularly if the feeling of otherness lurks sharply in every action or thought.
By struggling through the difficult art of poetry, perhaps poets try to get themselves to Ammons' mindset “where I can say I'm glad I was here, even if I must go: I want to believe that the possibility given me to be here was not a betrayal or trap or hoax but a trial of the possibility of a possibility” (88). However, Wright emphasizes the lure of suicide in “Certain Tall Buildings”: “I know if you contemplate suicide long enough, it begins to contemplate you—oh, it has plans for you” and “These thoughts, occurring once too often, are no longer your own. No, they think you” (19). In modern crime television programs, one of the first questions asked by investigators is whether or not the deceased had plans for the future. In the case of poets, always wrangling with poetic inspiration and compulsion may provide them with enough plans for the future to have a future, at least in little snippets at a time, and little snippets may be all some people can handle. That many poets grapple with anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies ranks them as other in light of the blissful world everyone is expected to have, the world where even Plath and Wright and Gluck are expected to answer “fine” to insincere questioning.
Although “First Memory” (68) indicates that Gluck has grown through her experiences, it also alludes to potentially subversive methods of catharsis more reminiscent of certain psycho-sexual readings of early Robert Lowell. Her idea that “in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved” (68) refers to metaphorical, emotional, or internal pain, and may seem to end the entire collection on a hopeful note. However, the line may also connect to some people's need for intensity, those who desire pain to demonstrate the experience of any emotion or connection to others, such as is indicated in the song “Pain” by Three Days Grace:
Pain, I can't get enough
Pain, I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all
You're sick of feeling numb
You're not the only one
I'll take you by the hand
And I'll show you a world that you can understand
This life is filled with hurt
When happiness doesn't work
Trust me and take my hand
When the lights go out you will understand
Like in Gluck's poem, the song indicates that feeling pain is better than feeling numbness or distance. In his “Herr Vogt,” Karl Marx noted, “The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.” In fact, Marx's theory connects to the science behind the production of endorphins, naturally occurring pain-killers produced by the body during physical pain. Some people take the philosophy to an extreme, using intensity and physical pain to thwart numbness of life. They may be viewed as other in regard to their sexuality or behaviors by their engagement in self-mutilation or BDSM-related activities, driven by the urge to not only distract themselves from their emotional turmoil with pain created by their choices, but also to seek an endorphin-high that can combat their emotional pain (“BDSM and Biochemistry”). Using the song “Pain,” Gluck's “First Memory,” and extreme sexual and personal practices as an interpretive lens encourages a new interpretation of the Dickinson poem previously mentioned:
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail --
Assent -- and you are sane --
Demur -- you're straightway dangerous --
And handled with a Chain -
In this case, the person feeling that pain “meant I loved” (Gluck 68), might seek to be “handled with a Chain” before the Majority can do so, in a way Dickinson probably never envisioned.
Section Three: If it Weren't Written With Vampires In Mind, It Should Have Been: A Vampiric Analysis of Wallace Stevens' 'Tea at the Palaz of Hoon.'
Wallace Steven’s poems confound as they attract; the juxtaposition of words, the unique punctuation choices, and the repetition of themes possess a quality that simultaneously evokes familiarity and strangeness. Thus, his works exemplify Freud’s concept of the unheimlich, the uncanny. His poems resist immediate interpretation, requiring meditation on various elements before one may reach a hesitant conclusion or several competing and contradictory conclusions. “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” (65) demonstrates how Steven’s works contain the fluidity of water or sand in one’s overeager grasp. While perhaps a treatise on religion, or a personal self-affirmation of identity, or to elucidate ideas in “The Snow Man” (9) by providing another perspective of the greater whole, “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” may also represent a method through which one may analyze another concept: vampire narcissism in literature. While doubtful that Stevens intended to encapsulate the experience of being a vampire within his poem, the work lends itself to a vampiric interpretation, and now is the moment for that vampiric interpretation because of the major vampire explorations in academia, as catalyzed by the current wave of vampiric tales in popular culture. As Dr. Flesch notes: “great and popular are in no way in contradiction to each other” (personal communication, 29 June, 2011). Interpreting “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” through the lens of vampire literary conventions allows the reader increased insight into what the poem suggests about vampires as the ultimate other.
On the surface, several of the word choices suggest vampiric conventions. For example, the title itself resonates with the atmosphere of “other” due to the regal nature of the word “Palaz” and the unfamiliarity of the word “Hoon.” A “Palaz” evokes the words palazzo, plaza, and palace simultaneously. Each of these indicates wealth, palatial grounds, and opulence, which align with the vampire as oft-portrayed as a nobleman (or woman) with access to a large ancestral fortune or vast accounts and homes gleaned either from careful savings over the centuries or other nefarious methods of procuring wealth. A word with an exotic reverberation, “Hoon” could be a far-off locale from which early vampires, such as the Wallachian Dracula, often originated, or it could be reminiscent of a surname that defied Anglicization, as not all vampires were created in 20th or 21st century America to have common or unexpected last names. Therefore, the word “Hoon,” as a name of a place or person, echoes with the common convention that vampires represent society’s others---the non-native, the unfamiliar, and the dangerous.
Although the phrase “in purple I descended” appears to indicate a royal, stately, or expensive garb of purple, more attention to the phrase “in purple I descended the western day through what you called the loneliest air” reveals that the narrator “descended” at the beginning of evening, when the sky is purple because of the sun setting in the West. Traditionally, vampires are not active or dangerous until the sun sets, and the West is the direction symbolically representing death or endings, states which the vampire rejects. In addition, one must question the “you” to whom the narrator is speaking. If one interprets the narrator as the vampire, who is hearing the vampire’s defense of his actions or existence? Because the vampiric experience of extended life, often through the deaths of humans, is other to mortals, and because of the tradition in vampire literature for vampires to simultaneously repel and attract a non-vampire companion who is not, initially, desired as prey, one might theorize that the reader/”you” represents a mortal companion, servant, or future victim to whom the vampire wants to explain himself.
The journey of the poem may represent the vampire’s self-awareness as he defends or justifies his existence as a vampire or his choice to become a vampire. Initially, the narrator says his experience of descending in purple, waking at dusk, did not diminish his sense of self. In many vampire stories, the vampire awakes or transforms into a creature with none of the recognizable attitudes, perceptions, or personality he or she had when human. In some cases, they rise as revenants or some other type of mindless monster that feasts on the villagers and indicate a need for the traditional torches and pitchforks, as seen in some instances within Dracula and Interview With the Vampire. Instead, the narrator attempts to soothe the listener by indicating “not less was I myself.” If the audience of “you” is someone who had known the vampire before his transformation, the vampire may be indicating that his personality is intact, so the listener need not fear him or start a new hobby of stake-sharpening. More common in modern vampire tales is the idea that the vampire retains aspects of his or her personality. The Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series demonstrates this most keenly with the only vampire Anita knew before he became a vampire, Willie McCoy. He is so newly turned that he still has the occasional twitches for which he was known when he was human, and he remained a lackey for the demimonde after he turned as well. Most telling is that Anita still has a gentle affection for Willie even after she has known him as a vampire for quite some time; his personality is still his own. In Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, Louis embodies the sentiments of his age: he is introspective and concerned with his actions as well as the morality of his condition as a vampire; becoming a vampire only intensified his personality, not diminished it.
The second and third stanzas of “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” seem to indicate a religious or celebratory rite, but they could also indicate the internal rituals one takes on a journey of self-awareness. In twentieth-century vampire tales, both filmic and literary, authors pay much attention to the act of transformation. In some works, the transformation from human to vampire consists of a certain number of vampire bites (usually three) to the victim; in others, an exchange of blood is necessary. In still others, magical phrases must also be repeated. In most works of vampire fiction, some sort of rite must occur before the victim becomes a vampire. For some vampires, the experience represents a willing and celebratory choice; for others, the experience is one of pain and horror. In Christine Feehan's Dark novels, the transformation occurs with one connecting to his or her Beloved, so it indicates salvation from darker, homicidal urges as well as finding one's true love for eternity. Attacks and accidents do occur in different works, as not every vampire practices “safe sucks,” but turning a human into a vampire almost always requires that specific criteria be met. Therefore, the second stanza about ointment, hymns, and the sea could be interpreted as the religious, magical, or ritual transformation of the narrator into a vampire. In addition, the “ointment on my beard” could actually refer to being cut, sliced, or bitten on the neck and blood soaking into his beard. The hymns might represent the sound of his blood rushing or pounding in his ears as he was drained before the transformation, or they could represent the loss of religious identity, as religious symbols are anathema to vampires in many older tales, such as Dracula, “Carmilla,” and “Christobel.” In more recent vampire tales, such Joey W. Hill's Vampire Queen series, vampires with faith may possess and wear religious items, so the hymns may indicate a continued devotion to one's faith despite the transformation. Finally, the sea “whose tide swept through me” could also represent the feeling of blood rushing from his veins or the return of blood to his veins, not only because of the liquid nature of blood, but also because of the symbolic connections between blood and the cycles of the tides.
The third and fourth stanzas could represent the vampire’s emergence as a newly-awakened vampire, but they could also reference the first time the vampire fed off of a human or some other aspect of self-reflection. In many works of vampire literature, for example Lord of the Dead and Interview With the Vampire, the first awakening as a vampire or the emergence as a new vampire defies adequate description: the vampire perceives sights, sounds, and situations differently than he or she did before. In Interview With the Vampire, Louis calls part of his experience looking with vampire eyes and becomes besotted by merely perceiving the night. Therefore, when the narrator talks about the ointment and hymns coming from himself, being the “compass of that sea” and being “the world in which I walked,” he could be referencing the absolute sea-change of perception from his initial existence as a human to his new vampire-state. Although the vampire's personality may not have changed or become lessened, his perceptions have altered or increased. Similarly, he could also be talking about his first kill or first feeding -as vampires kill their prey in some works, but others take blood without killing in other works- particularly with the line “I was myself the compass of that sea.” If the narrator refers to blood when he mentions the tide that “swept through me” in the second stanza, he may be referencing his control over the fate or blood of his victims when he calls himself “the compass of that sea.” His new abilities or situation have given him control over a sea that previously had “swept through” him out of his control. Particularly, if the vampire must kill to survive, like the vampires in Le Fanu's “Carmilla” and Lindqvist's Let the Right One In, he could be talking about controlling the destinies of human lives, as he chooses who will live or die.
The final stanza could continue to support “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” as a vampire’s justification or defense of his existence. His power is undeniable, as his new abilities-or his abilities after he has fed-come from himself and no other party; the narrator has complete agency. In addition, the final line could indicate his initial pleasure at his new perceptions of the world over which he now has so much control or even his pleasure at continuing to exist over the years. The line “And there I found myself more truly and more strange” indicates a depth of self-reflection in the honesty and juxtaposition of the words “truly” and “strange.” Obviously, the narrator was and is still pleased with being a vampire, recognizing it as his true identity, but he also admits the strangeness of the situation or of his continued existence. Whether or not he is a vampire who kills his prey, the narrator’s confident words indicate that his actions do not lessen him.
“Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” and “The Snow Man” can be viewed as companion pieces, each shedding light upon the other. When taken in conjunction with Stevens' “The Snow Man” (9), interpretations relevant to vampire literature emerge more distinctly. If one views “The Snow Man” as advice or a recommendation to “have a mind of winter” by staying aloof, distant, or cold to the plight of humanity or anyone's concerns beyond one's own, “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” could indicate the mental attitude necessary for long term vampiric survival. For example, in most works with long-lived vampire characters, the oldest are ruthless, predatory, and often parasitic on society or the people around them. Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, and Kim Harrison’s works all hark back to Dracula and older, seminal works when the authors describe vampires as manipulative and keen on their own survivals and solidification of their power bases over every other concern. In most vampire literature, the vampires do not suffer from Ruskin’s pathetic fallacy, as they function in a world of reality based on cause and effect; they have to distance themselves from everything in order to see the long-term cause and effects of actions unhindered by emotion to behold “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” (10).
