Alcuin at Aa[X]en: Parts I & II

While I normally balk at expounding my poems, my latest work is so unusual for me that I believe it warrants something of an introduction. Several days ago, while scanning a number of articles on the New York Times online, I came across mention of one, Alcuin, who served as Charlemagne's puzzlist—and, of course, leading court scholar, poet, teacher, and theologian. Struck by the magnificent oddness of this historical fact, I, without premeditation, started to write a poem about Alcuin and Charlemagne. With neither plan nor design, the poem simply started to pour out of me. The tone is informal and conversational; the diction is at once colloquial and specialized; the form, especially in terms of lineation and stanzaic length, is organic. The content, moreover, is most uncharacteristic of my poetry: I weave together prior knowledge of the time and figures, facts and images about the time and figures casually gleaned from the internet and passed off as assumed knowledge, and my own imaginings of the characters, thoughts, and actions of and about Alcuin and Charlemagne. There is, upon reflection, a level of the poetics of John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara in the poem, albeit subconsciously. I give you the first two parts:

Alcuin at Aa[X]en

I.

When he tired of the evening news

King Charlemagne would call for a digestif.

Not that he wouldn't get it for himself, in fact, would so

prefer, but his servants insisted on it.

There was always the concern of

good form. That didn't govern him, we need to be sure,

but it seemed to put everyone else at ease. Plus, with the mess

of layoffs and questions about the definition of monarchy

and the economy, it was...easier.

So he gave in, for their peace of mind, really,

as when he settled on donning that cumbersome diadem only

when the French ambassadors showed up at court.

A few sips in, well, a few sips into his second,

Charlemagne would call for a third (let's be honest)

and a fourth—no, this one's not for him—

which, his veteran servants knew, and the really sharp

ones remembered to include in the training of the new hires,

meant that the King was really putting in a call

for Alcuin. Charlemagne pretended he didn't know

(he's the father of Europe, after all)

but in the buttery and bottlery

the servants joked that Old King Carol must be constipated

again. Constipated, we take it, because Alcuin had stumped

him again with one of his puzzles. And thus the...digestif.

Well, Alcuin humored Charlemagne by pretending not to know,

which, it must go without saying, Charlemagne himself was

aware. What is it, my Lord? A hearty laugh would ensue

and with a manly smack on the back, Charlemagne:

You know, you always were my greatest acquisition.

More laughter, and some wisecracks about heresy.

In these moments Alcuin didn't miss

the winters of York as much. Maybe the warmth

of the digestif loosened him up a little more but

Master Flaccus felt the King took after his own heart

because they both understood that poetry and theology

were really no different from puzzles.

II.

Alcuin, was, shall we say, fond of subtleties and

contradictions. In the marginalia of his parchments

of Vergil's Eclogues—it was difficult, indeed, to decipher,

through the oat bran and milk residue,

given how worked over they are in palimpsests.

For example, he was obsessed for a time with

lines 37-41, Eclogue 8. The mala and malus, particularly,

although from what we can make of his annotations

this passage he believed key to the whole of the work:

Once with your mother, in our orchard hedge,

I saw you, a little girl, plucking dewy apples—

I was your guide—I scarcely had entered

my twelfth year, barely could I reach

the fragile boughs. I looked, and I was lost.

The pun, see, is mala (neuter plural, very important)

"apples" and malus (masculine singular, also important) "evil,"

though the best translation of the latter must have tortured

him. The garden scene, 12 years of age, apples and evil:

for a man who wrote, for God's sake, De fide Trinitas,

these things simply must leap out at you.

Contemporary scholars spill more ink on the issue of

the palimpsests, though. The prevailing theory goes

that some sacerdotal disapprobation convinced Alcuin

to scratch out the apple musings, as if he was onto too much,

though more likely it undermined some minor footnote

in a certain archbishopric press release

against the Saxon paganism, especially in the wake

of the Basques' obliteration of the troops

in the Pass of Roncesvalles. It does deserve mention,

however, that there is a fairly novel hypothesis gaining some

currency: that Alcuin, a man keen on forms, viewed

the palimpsest, as form, namely, as puzzle. Thus wittingly

tampered with his commentaries—a puzzle

for posterity to decode. Or at least tinker with. Either way,

it's a genius tactic to land some kind of immortality.

John K., 10/21-10/23/2009