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A Word Of Thanks To Jason And PostPoems

I joined PostPoems twenty-one years and one week ago.  I came here from the (now defunct) Starlite Cafe---a site where only six poems could post per day, and typo corrections, or alterations of text, were required to be approved and personally implemented by the administrator.  Having faced the tyranny of editors before I came on to the internet---editors of small literary magazines; editors to much like the kind against which both Pop Stevens and Old Possum chafed and rebelled.  I had no grounds for complaint:  the site belonged to Albert Victor, who maintained a cordial friendship with me, but would not consider a request to change to any of the administrative policies.  


I found PostPoems through a search engine, and my first e-mail inquiry to Jason could not have returned more welcoming and cooperative conditions.  No posting limit; no permission needed to change typos or text; and I was free to implement my own changes at my convenience and volition.  The internet Poet Lucius Furius, and some of Albert Victor's first remarks to me, provided me the idea, the template, and the guide to what an internet Poet should be.  Albert Victor told me that the internet was like a frontier---and that nothing posted to the internet is ever lost, even if sites shut down (as the Starlite Cafe did).  As my membership continued here, I found that my confidence---in myself, and in others and their poems---changed radically.  The lack of confidence I felt at the Starlite, due entirely to my own personality flaws, was completely removed at Postpoems.  The nurturing I received at this site simply through its existence, and its encouraging aspects has made me a better Poet than I had, at first, hoped to be.  And the hundred poems that had been my original ambition has become over four thousand six hundred poems as of today.  Jason has made that possible with his courtesy, his foresight as to what PostPoems should be, and his careful administration---making changes only when the benefit the membership of his site.  I think of Jason as more than a webmaster or a site administrator; I think of him as my publisher.  The great Poet, Wallace Stevens, often bragged about his publisher, Alfred Knopf, and told Knopf that he (Stevens) was fully committed to keeping things always on the right side up with Knopf, although other publishers attempted to attract Stevens away from the Knopf family from time to time.  Knopf published Stevens Collected Poems; and gave him a venue for his last poems, and some writings published posthumously.  Before I began to write Poetry I was a very close reader of Stevens' poems, and of his letters.  I had always wondered what it felt like to have a publisher like Knopf, who made Stevens---a stern corporate executive and a very exacting lawyer (by the forties, Stevens was nationally recognized as the leader legal expert on all aspects of surety and performance bonds, and he was considered to be the crown jewel in the Hartford Insurance Company's senior management)---feel so very comfortable that some of his remarks to Knopf read like paeans to the publisher's courtesy.  In the eighties and nineties, I wondered what this would be like.  On December 5th, 2001, I began to find out.  My first internet poem was published in January, 2001, five months before I browsed into the Starlite, eleven months prior to my membership at Postpoems:  it was a theory, modeled upon Einstein's belief in a unified field theory that could explain the four cosmic forces, to explain the five anomalies surrounding the supposed murder of Mary Kelley, the fifth and last canonical victim of that most famous of serial killers known as Jack the Ripper.  Any one or two of the anomalies could be explained, singularly or dually; I had never seen three of them explained, and five seemed impossible.  A British, and very scholarly and sophisticated site called Casebook Jack the Ripper, accepted my theory---presented in the form of a rhymed poem (oh, how I sweated to find a rhyme for Mary's surname)---once it had passed the board of originality review (the board did not comment on a preference for any one theory; it simply made sure that the theory could be proven as original as possible).  For the three weeks between their meetings, I gnawed my fingernails so much that I probably have scars on my elbows:  but their very laconic reply arrived in the email of a person who worked with and for me at my corporate employment---"Your poem will be published within twenty-four hours."  At last, I had fulfilled the ambition I had entertained since 1974, and a promise I had made to a close friend that same year, to have something published about the Ripper, even if was only a footnote.  The poem, which is posted here, is entitled "Whitechapel Woman," and I hope it was able to capture some of her charming personality.  I was invited, in October 2001, by the then Chairman of the History Department of my college, to return and read the poem at a private luncheon, in the very presence of the historian who, as an American expert on British History of the nineteenth century, told me that the lives of five whores were not worth scholarly consideration or inquiry.  In the presence of the Department Chairman, this same professor declared that he believed my theory to be ironclad.


I have said all that to say this: though I am very glad for these past events---at the Casebook and at the Starlite; and my personal thrill to be able to read my poem about Mary Kelley before historians whose opinion, even when negative, mattered very much to me---none of it is nearly as satisfying, as salutary, as nurturing, and as encouraging as my membership at PostPoems.  I am grateful to the Casebook and to the now defunct Starlite for being able to participate; but I only felt like a member of a Poet's community when I joined PostPoems.  Every bit of this, every detail, every letter in every word, exists because Jason built PostPoems, and then allowed me to join as a member.  As long as I shall live---which, given my affliction, may not be a whole lot longer---gratitude to Jason and to PostPoems will thrive within my soul, right up there beside my Christian Faith.


Starward

    

  

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Should anyone care to know, the five anomalies in the supposed murder of Mary Kelley are:  1.  The murders and letters stopped dead (excuse the pun) after November 9th, 1888, the date of her supposed demise.  2.  The murder took place inside her apartment, and not in the open streets like the other four; the extent of mutilation on the corpse suggested several hours of the most frenzied hacking with a sharp instrument.  3.  On the day after she was supposedly murdered, Mary Kelley was seen by two witnesses officially interviewed; and three witnesses whom Scotland Yard declined to interview on tje alleged orders of the Cabinet's Home Secretary, Henry      Matthews, after Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren resigned on November 8th, 1888.  4.  The womb of the victim was found to have been without child, and had never contained a child, according to the coroner's autopsy; although Mary Kelley had told her friends at her preferred tavern, the Ten Bells Pub, that, as of August, she was pregnant, and intended to abandon the business of prostitution.  (Unlike the previous four victims, Mary Kelley was said to be strikingly beautiful, curvaceous, and was only twenty-five; and, unlike the others, she was not a streetwalker, waiting to be picked up, but what we would call, today, an "outcall" girl, who accepted appointments from her clients---one of whom was believed to be in the Cabinet---and was often in demand as an escort for fine dining and theater on the West End of London, although her home, 13 Miller Court in Whitechapel, was on the impoverished East End.  It has been suggested that Bram Stoker, manager of the Lyceum Theater and author of Dracula may have been one of her clients.  5.  When invesigators came to 13 Miller Court, they found the door locked from the outside; that is, locked by the last person to exit the apartment.  Jack The Ripper was an ostentatious braggart who loved the shock of horrific delay; this final murder would have made a display that would have catered to even the Ripper's colossal and pretentious ego:  so, why lock the door?  Why leave the corpse, and its various pieces dismembered, in a room to which the door was locked?


Only Mary Kelley's survival satisfies and explains all five anomalies.


From 1974 to early September 1976, I studied all five of the murders.  But, having read Tom Cullens' monumental monograph, When London Walked In Terror, in one sitting from dusk of Friday, September 10th, 1976, through the first light of dawn the next morning, I found that his characterization of Mary Kelley led me to concentrate my interest solely on her, rather than the other four.  Late on Friday night of December 22, 2000; while, in the beautiful light of a heavily decorated Christmas tree, my wife stiched buttons on to shirts while I studied one of the two photographs of the corpse found at 13 Miller Court, everything I had read and learned since 1974 suddenly fell into place---it literally felt like the tumblers of a combination lock being rotated into the open position---I said to my wife, "That is not Mary Kelley laying there."  She responded, with understandable doubt, "Then who is it?"  And I said, "That is the murderer known as Jack the Ripper."


I will close these notes with an admission which may cause the reader to think my mind came unhinged in January and February of 1981.  After my graduation from college, my first job had failed miserably; my college sweetheart had broken up with me, long distance, while I was out of state on business; and my entire world seemed poised on collapse.  Some close friends invited me to travel to Los Angeles, California, and to stay with them for as long as I needed to recover my balance.  One night, in their apartment while they were out of it, I experienced a trance-like state, in which I was unable to move, but distinctly saw a female whom I thought of as Mary Kelley, who told me, in a soft Irish accent, that she expected me to tell the truth about her someday.  This same event happened, almost to the exact detail, the next month---when, again my friends were absent from our residence.  In neither case had I ingested any alochol, or had taken any drug---even an aspirin.  At the end of each incident, my body broke into a sweat, my throat was dry, and the room seemed to spin around me.  I told only one person---of all people, the lady at the temp agency who placed me in jobs during my stay there---and she stated that she believed entirely that I had experienced some sort of literal and legitimate intersection with Mary Kelley.  I also remember being told that this would likely be published in England (although it was published in Englad by the Casebook, and in Pennsylvania in the small literary magazine to which I was then contributing monthly).


I was given the great privilege of being told, by the Chairman of the History Department, some days after the lunch presentation, that the voice of my Poetry had given voice to one who could no longer speak for herself or reveal her truth.  That, too me, was high praise indeed.


But none of it . . . and I mean NONE OF IT . . . compares to the privilege of membership at PostPoems.

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last updated 12 December 2022 - 4:58pm
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