A Portrait Of The Doctor As A Young Idiot

      Oh, it's a sad-- nay, horrifying!-- thing sometimes to stumble upon items from one's past, as I just did in discovering a number of old and natty papers. Among those yellowing files was a pastiche of a poem, written for a grad seminar as a lark many, many years ago. It's rather embarrassing to look at such a thing now, an embarrassment I will share with all of you here so it doesn't come back to haunt me when some pesky person threatens to use pieces of my juvenalia as evidence of a checkered history of competence. My poem was a response to one by the American (but Canadian-born) poet Mark Strand; Strand's poem is on the left, my ancient shame on the right. All I can say in my defence is this, that I was so much smarter then, I'm wiser than that now.

Poem He sneaks in the backdoor, tiptoes through the kitched, the living room, the hall, climbs the stairs and enters the bedroom. He leans over my bed and says he has come to kill me. The job will be done in stages. First, my toenails will by clipped, then my toes and so on until nothing is left of me. He takes a small instrument from his keychain and begins. I hear Swan Lake being played on a neighbor's hifi and start to hum. How much time passes, I cannot tell. But then I come to I hear him say he has reached my neck and will not be able to continue because he is tired. I tell him that he has done enough, that he should go home and rest. He thanks me and leaves. I am always amazed at how easily satisfied some people are. --- Mark Strand

Criticism He inches his way in, baby-stepping through the door, the hall and then bedroom, a bag of doctoring devices dangling from his hand. He hunches over me and vows he'll kill me. The job will be done in stages. He finds my feet and draws a scalpel from his bag. He scrapes the bottom flesh, strip by strip, through veins and nerves and blood and bone, up the leg and on and on. I'm stranded, mumbling O Sole Mio in rancour with the radio. I drift off for I don't know how long. When I return, he is paring my throat and getting quite impatient, his brows sweaty and fallen. I grimace and nod towards the door, offering recess until next week. He curses me and leaves. I am always amazed at how easily exasperated some graduate students are. --- Doctor J, in a previous incarnation

Yeah, yeah, yeah....     Get it all out of your systems, people.... Harrumph.