Patricia Keeney reading "Shakespeare in Space" York. U. April 7, 2012
What inspired the poem is contained in the little headnote under the title. That first (for me) conference in Houston with the Oxfordians was a revelation. Combined with our tour of the space centre, it gave me two whole sets of languages with which to express what I think is really a call to take risks in our thinking, especially in academia which should be all about discovery and exploration, intelligent adventure!As an editor, and theater and literary critic, Keeney publishes in Canadian and international journals. She is the author of nine books of poetry and a picaresque novel, The Incredible Shrinking Wife; her works have been translated into many languages including Hindi and Chinese. Her latest English book of poetry, First Woman, was published in 2011 by Inanna Publications.
Shakespeare in Space
(being the result of a
conference on the Shakespeare authorship question held in Houston, Texas)
Houston we have a problem.
There’s an alien in the galaxy
imposter on the cultural radar
pretender to the literary throne
an English
Renaissance upstart
cruising
around with the classicists
Gemini and
Apollo
sailing the
Sea of Tranquility
cresting an
Ocean of Storms
here and now
at the
authorship conference
literary
inquisition
star chamber,
torturing
the
question:
was
Shakespeare really Shakespeare?
or the Earl
of Oxford?
We circle in
space.
Did he sign
his name
hand write a
manuscript
(disputed
hand)
compose the
music
trumpet
fanfares and an aubade
this simple
man of Stratford?
Skylab
trainees
we ponder
his dance
with Don Juan of Austria
flamboyant
in Love’s Labours Lost and Othello
an intimate
of France and Spain.
Could our
untraveled bard step so lavishly
before the
conqueror at England’s gates
light a
Spanish fire in Elizabeth’s court?
Somersaulting through weightless space
we come
undone
froth at the
mouth when we brush our teeth
spray onto
walls a pointillist painting.
The shaker
of spears was any playwright
needing
anonymity in a dangerous time.
Stratford
kept Oxford
umbilically
tethered to earth.
Reading
Greek and Latin in the original
marking out
verses of his blue boar bible
David and
his harp, the artist at court
practicing
legalities in the sonnets
this
unlettered actor in his verse
sang songs
of strange birds
the phoenix
half-dreamer,
the siren,
all-seeming
this local
village man.
From mission
control
our brains
are bombarded
invisible
relays, the tapping of keys
sending
whispers through space
close as a
closet, farther
than freedom
or fear.
We’ve
practiced for this.
dangled in
partial gravity
spun in
neutral buoyancy
Snub-nosed
and charging
we’re riding
the rocket
not easy but
hard
to moonwalk
again
past an oak
grove of dead astronauts
and ideas
when
Stratford was a Roman road
and Oxford a
crossing for cows.
Patricia Keeney, 2009