The Ice Tinkles in My Glass— Jane Morrel & Her Poems

Everyone I knew always thought Jane was a remarkable person. I believe Jane was 69 when I first met her in 1972. Janne Hanrahan and I always made it a point to try and see Jane when Janne would come to town. Janne had a definite relationship to Jane's work. Several times she wrote poems that were deliberately similar to Jane's work. And I always invited Jane to all the parties I threw in the 1970s and often she came. She came to my writing group many, many times.

I remember one time at the Friday night group (the Second Scarritt group), John Ranyard had been reading from a novel he was writing that was meant to be a satire of pornography (example, there was a chapter entitled "the 120 mph blowjob"), so Ross Hulvey and Gary Adkins brought in their porno project about a minor league baseball team and decided to read from it. And what was Jane's comment after they read these episodes of minutely described oral sex and orgy? "I guess some things never change." In that deadpan way of her's.

The first time I ever encountered Jane's poetry was in Knoepfle's first poetry class at SSU. I believe that was the fall of 1972. I was in that class with Janne Hanrahan and Sandy Riseman. Also Steve Dolgin. We all thought we were hotshit poetry people. We thought, Jane = old lady, hearts and flowers. In those days you'd read a poem and then Knoepfle would gently take it apart and make suggestions. He and I had some serious set to's there. He invited Jane to read at the second or third class and she pulled out "Open Heart Surgery," and pretty much everyone's mouths fell open. Ha!

And Knoepfle said, "Well, that was fine. (Pause) Do you have anything else?" He couldn't find any way to make that a better piece. He couldn't even really think of anything to say. It's so short and exquisite. It's profound. It's a metaphor, but its grounded in the physical world, yet it transcends so much. It's about survival, and romance, and the possibility of hope. That was a great moment. We all knew then we were with someone special.

Then she read "Lesson in Anatomy," and Knoepfle tried to wrap his head around that. Naturally Jane listened to him, but she kept that piece pretty much like it was. And with good reason, "A cochin ate their gritty heart..." "Too human, my mother said ..." So that was Jane's first round with that crew and after that we all waited expectantly for what she might pull out next.

In the early days of the women's writing group, Brainchild, when it was at first an all poetry performance group, they would get together at various people's houses and do some workshopping and some planning for their gigs. They did some mass readings in those days. This group had been started by Peggy Knoepfle because she was tired of living in John's shadow in St. Louis. When they moved to Springfield she set out to have her own impact. Steve Dolgin and myself and Knoepf attended some of those soirrees. One time, when Janne Hanrahan was living on South Seventh Street, in the upstairs apartment (with Mary Gael Cullen and John Large) she hosted one of these evenings.

I happen to be walking up the stairs to Janne's place, and Jane was behind me, carrying a great platter of something tasty, and behind her was Billie Sue Shiner (I believe) who was a fine poet herself and a very sweet woman. And Billie Sue asked Jane when we were going up the stairs if she could carry the platter for her and Jane said something to the effect of "You can carry it for me when I'm old."

That was so cool. Because all those nice liberal ladies had a tendency to make Jane into the old lady (she has a great poem about being perceived as old, being kissed at random), which she did not want at all. I was with her on that. I remember Brainchild kept making her read "Alberta Lived to Be Ninety Three" at their mass readings and finally Jane rebelled and insisted on not having to read Alberta anymore.

When I had known Jane for many years and was very familiar with her work, I grew to respect her process. She once left her small notebook at our house on Scarritt Street, and I looked through it, finding there as many as thirty or more versions of the same poem. I grew to respect the hard work that created those lines that seemed so effortless. Knoepfle and Jane had an interesting relationship. In most respects she was the better poet, and of course Knoepfle had a sense of that. But he also thought he could elevate her work and he often tried to impose changes on her. Jane appreciated his interest, but he was no Randall Jarrell, and, although she wouldn't say anything critical to John, she knew that.

They had a long term fight about this poem of her's, "The Center of Interest". It is set on a summer's day, reflecting on nature as a metaphor for being. But it has this chorus line, "the ice tinkles in my glass," that drove Knoepfle to distraction. Because of the word "tinkles", which Knoepf said could not help but bring up urination. The first few years of this argument I was on Knoepfle's side. But as time went on I changed my opinion on this. I started to feel the line rather than analyzing it. Although I would say that Jane was to some extent an intellectual writer, I believe that it is in line's like this that she is a true poet. Like Graves said, the words cause you to have an emotional reaction. The full couplet is "The ice tinkles in my glass/I stir my tea."

It causes you to stop, glass in hand, and hear the music of the glass and ice, and feel the chill, and taste the bittersweet brew. Time stops. You can see the sharp picture, understand the thought. Knoepfle was wrong about this one.

The last time I saw Jane, before she lost the memory of me, was at Jessica Weber's apartment on Spring just off South Grand. We had an event, featuring Mexican food. And I had just discovered martinis at the time, but I didn't understand how powerful they really are. I had made a martini in a twelve ounce glass and I was drinking it and had had about two thirds of it, and I was talking with Jane, and it suddenly hit me that I was so drunk I could scarcely speak. So I staggered out on the back steps and threw up a couple of times, finally ending up on the small square of grass that served as a backyard. I remember lying there in the night when Randy Frank and his friend Timmy rode up on their BMX bikes and started making fun of me. They were both about 15 at the time. "Osburn's shitfaced," is, I believe, an accurate quote. I never made it back upstairs, and never got to talk with Jane again. Talk about regrets, I've had a few, and that's one I'll mention.

The last time I saw her was at the Sangamon County Fair. She was there with Corlyss Disbrow, her daughter (and a fine writer in her own right) and Corlyss' friend and business partner, Henry, and Jane had no clue as to who I was. She had suffered profound memory loss. It marked me, that you could lose your access to your own information. The idea that you couldn't find it again, the words, the memories.

I read "Stops: On the Through Bus to El Paso" at her funeral. It's a poem that has spoken to me for all of these years. I pull out Jane's books (This Paradox Shadow, and Wordings Like Love) and look at them many times every year. She had a much greater effect on me, work-wise, than Knoepfle did. I can remember some of John's things, but they rarely hold the emotional power that Jane could get.

I miss her, very much. Like I miss my mom. Jane grew up in Oklahoma and my mom was born in rural Oklahoma in 1914 and grew up in Waukomis, and then Enid. Just a few years younger than Jane. She was also a good catholic woman, and she had a lot in common with Jane. I miss these women.

Red rocks, red road, red river/there were faults, there were chips,/but there were no breaks.