Well, strictly speaking, one is a collection of poetry. But first things first: What in the name of pants is “chuffed”? As is explained in This Book Is Not Called SQUID!!! (forthcoming)*, my imaginary author Halycon Sage was, “mistakenly raised as an East Coast intellectual in the heart of the Nevada desert,” and so was I. This included a bunch of British novels. Halycon Sage and I have a lot in common, since much of my book about him is from life–although we’re currently engaged in a friendly dispute as to who invented whom and which one of us is imaginary. So, “chuffed” is a Britishism. It means happily puffed up in a nice way, not a stuck up way, pleased with oneself and the universe because life is fun and things are going well. Chuffed.
And why exactly am I chuffed, you ask? Or maybe you don’t, I don’t know. I can’t read your mind, can I?
I’m chuffed because at the ripe old age of 50-plus-never-mind, having at last identified myself as a fiction writer, it would be nice if I had something more to show for it than one short novel and another one on the way.
But, because Halycon Sage is the inventor and major proponent of the Post-Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature — in which the books range roughly from one sentence to one page — I do have something more: seventeen novels and a book of poetry. Unless, of course, he really is writing them, in which case he also wrote my first and forthcoming books and I am his imaginary character. And if I’m imaginary, I have nothing to worry about anyway.
So, there you go. I hope you are chuffed too, and that your life is going well! (And if it isn’t, I hereby send you love, condolences, and encouragement.) If you’d like to read these eighteen short literary works, they can be found in The Life and Times of Halycon Sage: The Last Book Ever Published, in the forthcoming SQUID!!! (short form), and possibly on this blog, if you keep watching very, very closely. And maybe say pretty please.
*Working title. The real title will be revealed at the proper time.
This is a comment I, the author, am posting so that when I share to Facebook, it won’t say “0 Comments” at the top. Pretty clever, hmmm?
What was the poem?
Dear Reader, it’s not just one poem, it’s a complete, extended, entire book of poetry, and it includes a total of five — count them, five–poems! (Do you say “poim” or “poh-em”? I have been interculturally socialized so that both of them now sound stupid, so I can’t say the word at all.) Four of the five are included in SQUID!!, so cannot be disclosed here, but the eponymous one, “Meeting Glass”, goes like this:
Like a madman, I throw myself against the padded walls
Like a tiger, I throw myself against the bars of the cage.
Like a goldfish in a bowl, I go round and round
Meeting glass
Meeting glass
Invisible barriers all around . . .
“I will be free,” wrote Halycon Sage. “I will be free.” –from Meeting Glass: The Poetry of Halycon Sage
And while you may find it silly that Halycon Sage has written,” wrote Halycon Sage,” as part of his poem, you can see that without it, the poem does not scan nearly so nicely.