Ten Ways of Considering Wallace Stevens’ Secretary

“Wallace Stevens, on the other hand, dictated his poems to his secretary at the Hartford Insurance Company, where he worked.” –Roger Rosenblatt

i.

Did she realize as she pushed
e, p, q, r later
on the manual Underwood typewriter, that
she was a conduit
to literary greatness? Or was he just
a slightly musty scent of cigarette
and unwashed aftershave, a banker’s style suit
who reminded her “plenty of girls
would be glad to take your job”
when she asked off early
for a class in beginner’s photography?

ii.

Did she prefer to tuck
a red bow into her pageboy? Did he notice
her new gray pillbox hat with gold piping?
Just another day, another
tuna fish on wheat in her lunch pail Wednesday
and a tea break she prepared for him, then
brought in on a tray before he got fussy?

iii.

Patsy or Betty or Mildred or Margaret?
Edith or Helen or Myrtle or Phyllis?
Dolores or Doris or Esther-Sue or Alice?

iv.

Childless? A child herself? Grandmother? Mother
of more than a few of her own poems
once she got into it, once she saw how he didn’t
hesitate but picked the pulses of syllables
as if from thin air as her pencil, at first hovering there,
strove to affix each ticking t, each plosive p
to the steno pad for typing? Hey, anyone could
do this!

v.

Could she guess by his tone
when he buzzed her yet again from the front room
on the intercom? Ah, this will be another
invoice, a thank you note for Mr. and Mrs. Smith
who hosted yet another charity brunch fundraising
for such-and-such, another memo
meant for Corporate. Was there
a peculiar, fetching crackle of energy in
his prosody coming on, like a staticky broadcast
from RadioFree Europe—the war is over? Peace
begun.

vi.

Did she dare, while steeping
his afternoon Earl Gray or at the end of a Thursday
while slinking into her leather kid gloves
that had been a present from her parents
at her birthday, to suggest, “You know,
on the way in today, when I turned the corner
at Elm and Park, I saw the most mystifying thing…”
Did he nod and consider
each little scrap she brought with her?

vii.

With every stanza could she squint ahead
20, 45, 80 years to the bored high school, prep
school, college kids leaning on elbows, fidgeting
with pens and pagers and cellphones texting
while these same enjambments blended
into desktops, fell from ears awaiting
the freedom ring of an hourly bell? Who can tell

viii.

if she had her own concerns? If she had bigger
concerns than the matter of a dinner date next
Saturday, a hole in her workaday shoes
not meant to be peep-toe, a mother in hospital
doing less and less well? And who will care

ix.

for the written word? Who will deliver it
from scribe to audience? Is she the channel
of his every better thought, if not a better deed–
a copy of his book signed and left
on her blotter for Christmas instead of a bonus.
Just Thelma, 37, in need of a clip and curl
an appointment for tomorrow at three—
the every woman behind every great man?

x.

The way he said it, that’s
the way I wrote it. I didn’t really
think much of it.

~~~~~