"Tuttle-MeetingTheMuse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

LISA TUTTLE

MEETING THE MUSE

It began, she fell in love, with the image of a man.

As a child she had seen his face for the first time in black and white, hardly
bigger than a postage stamp: young poet said a line below the grainy dots of
newsprint. So this was a poet, she thought, gazing at the shadowy representation
of dreamy eyes and shaggy hair, tinglingly aware that something had entered and
lodged in her heart, like the Snow Queen's love for little Kay.

Seven years later, in the poetry section of the college bookstore, she picked up
a book with the title The Memory of Trees. The author's name, Graham Storey,
seemed familiar; she glanced at the back cover for a clue, and saw his face
again.

Something turned over inside her as she stared at the picture of a poet no
longer so young.

Gone was the Beatles hairstyle; his hair was cropped now. The eyes that stared
out at something far beyond her had a dreaminess contradicted by the fierceness
of the rest of his face, the thin, tight-lipped mouth, the jut of nose and chin.
There was a ferocity in him, but she sensed it would be directed more at himself
than anyone else. She sensed enduring sadness, a pain held tightly within.

She bought the book, of course, although her budget did not allow it; she could
do without a few meals if she had to. She read it straight through for the first
time that night, alone in bed, with an intensity of concentration she seldom
brought to her studies. She read each poem many times, until it was part of her.

Previously a lazy, erratic student, although bright, now, driven by her heart,
she became a scholar. The university library had a copy of his first collection
of poetry, but she also discovered poems, letters, even essays and reviews he
had written by combing through every poetry-related publication of the past
decade that she could find in the stacks. She followed cross-references and
hunches until she had compiled an impressive dossier on him, not only his work
and influences, but his life, the man himself. She learned from a chance
reference in one book that he had been in correspondence with W.H. Auden -- and
that his letters, Graham Storey's actual letters, were in a collection in the
Humanities Research Center on the University of Texas campus -- and she, as a
student, had access to them.

She sat by herself in a small, cool, well-lighted room with a box-file open on
the table and picked up the typewritten pages in her hands, raised them to her
face, inhaling with eyes closed. What might be left, besides the words,
indentations and ink on paper, after so many years? Cell fragments from the skin
of his hands, a hair, a trace of cigarette smoke. . . .? She stared and stared