Contributor’s Marginalia: John Wall Barger responding to George Green’s “Summer of ’72”

“Summer of ’72” begins in medias res, mid-conversation, as if the speaker has just been asked a question such as “What were you doing that summer?” or “Who did you meet that year?” which he proceeds to answer in a series of heartfelt anecdotes. As in a Frank O’Hara poem, I feel the empathy and candor of the speaker, who might very well be sitting across from me in a tattered armchair, having drunk numerous cups of coffee or perhaps whiskey, like an old friend on a surprise visit.

Long story short, in the summer of 1972 the speaker hitched to California and had adventures with all sorts of talented people. We hear the highlights of what seems to be a deliciously long answer. First there’s Darrell Gray: “sensitive and kind, / … but he drank himself / to death in 1985, and his landlord tossed / his papers and effects into the street.” Then Desmond Rogers: “dressed like Buffalo Bill and had the hair, / mustache, goatee, and total Wild West Show regalia …” They interrupted Desmond while he was chanting a poem, and he began to cry.

As this is 49 years ago, we can assume the speaker is older, reminiscing. These memories are palpably rich and full of meaning to him, and he transmits them with kindness, melancholy, and a certain acceptance. In each case he zeroes in on details which make us feel that we’ve met these people before.

He “hitched with Tom up to Big Sur / and camped out on Kim Novak’s property …” We don’t know Tom’s last name, but it might be Green’s friend Tom Gallo. Green’s poem, “Iowa City,” dedicated to Gallo, ends this way: “you were afraid of hurting anybody / and you were loyal to me / and now you are dead / from vodka and heroin, Tom.” I’ve never heard of Tom Gallo, Darrell Gray, or Desmond Rogers, but the details of “Summer of ’72” grow increasingly melancholy, and I’m piqued. I want to see where it goes.

Kim Novak (the film star), as the speaker tells us, lives on a property called “Nepenthe,” a word which—poetically speaking—can be thought of as a keyhole. Alicia Stallings, in a lecture at The 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, describes keyholes as unexpected words that broaden the scope of a poem. Stallings points out how Robert Francis’ poem “Sheep” uses standard diction throughout, then in the last line describes a sheep with a “Babylonian face.” “Babylonian” hooks us, and invites us to investigate further. How much we readers should investigate a keyhole depends, I think, on the poet and the poem. Certain poets, like T.S. Eliot, invite us to look hard into the keyhole. Eliot was clearly a scholar, and his references and allusions have deep reverberations in his poems. For example, while reading The Waste Land it’s helpful for us to translate, “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.”—from Hindu mythology, The Upanishads—into “Give. Be compassionate. Self-control.” Eliot, whose Waste Land has been pointing out ways that humankind lacks compassion, is very likely suggesting that we in the west could use more of it.

By contrast, I don’t think Green, in mentioning “Nepenthe,” is inviting us into a deep rabbit hole of scholarly investigation. The speaker tips us off that “Nepenthe” is the title of a poem by Romantic poet George Darley “who, afflicted with a dreadful stammer, / seldom socialized.” I looked up “Nepenthe” and found that Darley’s long, unfinished poem—a vision quest about a symbolic dream world—was dismissed at the time, but admired in the 20th century. “Nepenthe” is also opium, a drug described in Homer’s Odyssey as banishing grief or trouble from a person’s mind.

Darley seems like an underrated and slightly tragic poet, much like the list of talented artists Green invokes. But we can glean most of this information from the poem itself, without further research. As such, I think “Summer of ’72” wants us readers to stay on the surface of things. Green uses keyholes but does not really let us see through them. There’s a promise of something underneath, that stays just out of our reach. That said, I think the mention of “Nepenthe” helps to widen the scope of the poem. With the mention of this word, the poem seems to be growing somehow broader than the anecdotes it’s describing.

More important than anything said is the ethos earned by the strong voice. The poem describes that moment in time, those hippies, that California, from various angles. The ethos is humane. It makes room for people’s flaws and strengths. It says that there’s beauty and vulnerability wherever you go. And strife and pain.

The last third of the poem shifts again—grippingly, deftly—to Vertigo, the Alfred Hitchcock film starring Novak. So today, understanding that Vertigo is another keyhole in Green’s poem, I rewatched it. The film hit me as hard as ever. Poor Jimmy Stewart (Scottie), with his muddled intensity, as he obsessively follows the object of his desire (Novak, as Madeleine). So much like Hitchcock’s obsession for “cool” blonde women who reminded him of his mother. Or any artist, obsessed with getting every detail right. The speaker of “Summer of ’72” is—like Hitchcock himself, or his proxy Jimmy Stewart—the sensitive one who watches, witnesses, follows, engrossed.

But, again, I don’t think this poem invites us to strain our eyes looking through the Vertigo keyhole. The poem creates a mood and asks us to enjoy it and then let go. I think Vertigo, set in San Francisco, is a useful reference for Green because it helps us visualize California at that time (more or less, as it was filmed fifteen years before 1972). And, more importantly, Vertigo is the last reference that expands the scope of the poem. The scope has ballooned, little by little, with the introduction of each new reference: Darrell Gray, Desmond Rogers, Tom, Novak, “Nepenthe,” and Vertigo. With each, the poem has broadened until by the end it has somehow transcended the anecdote form and become its own world.

With those last lovely enjambed lines (“her touching performance become / a ravishing advertisement for / romantic and deranged obsession”), the poem swirls away from us—and from the speaker, too, I imagine—out of reach, like Jimmy Stewart’s dream of falling out of the tower, which leaves him shocked awake in bed, some revelation at hand which he can’t look at directly for fear of nervous collapse.