Color of Blood(44)

“Shit,” Dennis said. “That’s not how I wanted the conversation to go.”

“It’s OK, Dennis.”

“So just forget I called and—”

“I said I’d do it, Dennis. I’ve got to get going. Good-bye.”

Dennis drove through the New Hampshire countryside while the late-afternoon orange sun threw long, ugly shadows across the roadway.

Pissing off Judy was the last thing he intended, and he wondered if there was a better way he could have enlisted her help. Was he just using her? he wondered. Well, yes and no.

He reached over, turned up the radio, and brooded. Perhaps he could have been more delicate with Judy. He did care about her; that was not in doubt. But it had always been easier to give in to his obsessions at work than it was to pay attention to the niceties of interpersonal relationships. Even with people he cared deeply about, like Martha. Well, she had taught him a thing or two about that.

Driving to the airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, he began to feel very tired.





Chapter 19


“I appreciate you taking my call,” Dennis said.

“It’s a little unusual to have someone from a government agency call the university here looking for a poetry expert,” the man said. “The department secretary said you were looking for someone who knew something about the war poets.”

“Yes, I googled the subject, and your name came up, so I called George Washington’s English Department. I didn’t realize you were an expert on the war poets.”

“Forgive me for asking, but what is your name again?” the man said. “And what government branch do you work for?”

“Name’s Dennis Cunningham. I work for a US Government agency that I’m not at liberty to disclose.”

“Yes, that’s what our secretary said. It sounds very mysterious: cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

“Well, it’s hardly like that, but if you could just answer a few questions, you might be able to help us.” When Dennis was leveraging information from a civilian, he used the pronouns like “we” and “us,” rather than “I,” to infer there was a large team of agents waiting for a vital piece of information.

“I’ll try,” the man said, “but I’m just not sure what I could possibly tell you about the war poets that would be useful.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“OK, I’m willing to try. What do you want to know?”

“I only want to know about one of them,” Dennis said. “Wilfred Owen.”

“Wilfred Owen. All right. What do you want to know?”

“What kind of fellow would like the poetry of Wilfred Owen?”

The man laughed. “I’m an English professor, not a psychotherapist! I don’t even know how to answer that question!”

“OK,” Dennis said. “What kind of poet was Owen? What was special about him? Or was there anything special about him?”

“Ah, well, that’s a different question, and I can help with this one. Some would consider him the best of the war poets. I certainly would.”

“You mean he won a lot of awards? Stuff like that?”

“Heavens, no, Mr. Cunningham. There were not many awards given at the time. Most of the poets wrote for small literary magazines or newspapers. I’m reflecting what the critics would say about Owen today. I mean, it’s not a universal opinion, but it’s widely held that he was among the best, if not the best poet of that generation.”

“But what kind of person reads poetry these days?” Dennis asked. “Especially poetry written ninety-odd years ago? To me it seems a little odd.”

“A lot of young are exposed to poetry in college, and they just like it,” the man said. “But you are correct. It’s not very popular these days, certainly compared to pop music, rap, films, or even novels. And to be honest, in college, if it’s not Shakespeare, Yeats, and a little e. e. cummings, then it’s not even on the curriculum.”

“So who would follow the war poets, like Owen, these days?”

The man laughed again, this time out of exasperation.

“I can’t really answer that! All kinds of people are interested in poetry.”

Dennis pressed ahead anyway, feeling the conversation stumbling.

“What was unique about Owen?” Dennis asked. “What made him so great?”

The man sighed. “Well, I suppose you could say he had an extremely beautiful way of describing some of the worst traits of mankind.”

“What traits?”

There was a pause on the line. “Have you read any of his poems?” the man asked.

“I tried, but they’re too hard for me to understand.”

“Well, I suggest you read them again and slow down when you read,” the man said. “It’s really not that difficult. Read one line at a time. Slowly. Reread if you have to, but just read slowly. It’s not a novel or a film script. It’s more like a lyric to a song that’s painstakingly composed.”

“OK, I’ll try again,” Dennis said. “But you were mentioning something about the ‘worst traits of mankind.’ What did you mean?”

“Owen was furious about the slaughter during the war. He wasn’t alone, of course, with those feelings, but he had a unique way of describing the tragedy and horror of that war. You must understand the scale of the carnage. On July 1, 1916, for instance, Great Britain lost more than nineteen thousand men with thirty-eight thousand more wounded in a single battle in a single day. Toward the end of the war, young men like Owen grew increasingly outraged by the slaughter and wrote about it. I would think it’s an aspect of Owen’s poetry that is quite accessible, although in Owen’s case, it was quite tragic.”