Myself on High

Abstract

with sexual longing that he couldn't pray. The monk was me, and the poem, of course, was awful. But because I seemed to know something about formal poetry and because she herself was obsessed with God (the thing my speaker should have been obsessed with), she decided, I guess, to let me in. Soon I was in love. That her criticism was blunt only fueled in me a certain masochistic tendency. Her comments on poems included "Not fit for a dog's breakfast" and "Grossly sentimental. Try sharing it with your family." I'd walk out of class in a daze. Once, I failed to pause before crossing the street and was nearly workshopped by a bus. The more negative she was, the more determined I became, arranging my words like long-stemmed roses in a vase. The most stubborn of florists, I vowed to win not only her literary regard but also her theological heart. One day, she announced that she had bought the desk on which a famous twentieth-century poem had been written, and she needed a volunteer to help her husband retrieve it. My hand shot up, and though the word husband sounded an alarm, I pictured our future together. "Are you sure you're strong enough to lift it?" she asked in front of everyone. I would have marched to her house right then, but she told me to come the following Wednesday. When at last I set out, my heart was racing. To calm myself, I hummed the hymn I had sung in church the previous Sunday: