{"id":674,"date":"2018-07-16T12:38:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T19:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=674"},"modified":"2018-07-16T13:01:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T20:01:01","slug":"the-quaalude","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/the-quaalude\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quaalude"},"content":{"rendered":"

This poem was composed in early 1979, while I was engaged in graduate studies in English literature. Among the courses I was taking was a readings course covering Romantic literature, in which we were reading, among other things, Wordsworth\u2019s Prelude<\/a><\/em> (in all its various editions). Someone in the class (possibly me, but it was a long<\/strong> time ago) remarked that the poem was so boring it should have been called \u201cThe Quaalude\u201d (a prescription drug<\/a> popular at that time, the effects of which were to make the [ab]user silly and droolingly stupid). At the same time as I was studying Wordsworth\u2019s biographical poem, I was also taking a course in computers and literary research, where we used COBOL on punch-cards to do some very rudimentary stylistic analyses. One program we were working on would scan a text against a small dictionary of words and print out a stylistic \u201cmap\u201d showing where words from the dictionary clustered in the text. I thought it would be interesting to modify the program to use two dictionaries, so that one could see two sets of word clusters and their possible interdependencies.<\/p>\n

So, by day I keypunched COBOL code onto IBM punchcards while by night I read Wordsworth. Late one evening, drowsing somewhere in the middle of Book Sixth: Cambridge and The Alps<\/a>, I remembered the \u201cquaalude\u201d remark and, hypnotized by W.W.\u2019s monotonous iambs, began to parodize the lines I was reading, substituting pop drug references for Wordsworth\u2019s sonorous reminiscences. Within a few lines I was giddy. I turned back to the poem\u2019s opening book and began to scribble out the earliest versions of the poem you see presented below. It didn\u2019t take me very long to finish the first (and, as it turned out, only) \u201cbook\u201d of the poem, and it was time to go public.<\/p>\n

The parody captured the imagination of some of my student colleagues, one of whom decided to type up a ditto master of it so we could distribute copies. His version differed from my original slightly (mostly typographical variations). Meanwhile, I decided to test the COBOL program I was writing by using the parody as a test text. I keyboarded the entire poem onto punch cards and built two dictionaries: one of personal pronouns, the other of drug-related terms. My conceit was that Romantic poets wrote about themselves a lot; by comparing the clusters of personal pronouns to clusters of drug terms, I could demonstrate the relation between the poet and his drugs. I got the program to work, and it produced a fifteen-foot long printout, which contained the poem, the stylistic graphs, and lots of detailed statistics. (That program, by the way, was the genesis of Homer<\/a>, a style analysis program I wrote that was eventually published by Scribners).<\/p>\n

I posted the \u201cQuaalude\u201d printout outside of the office I shared with three other teaching assistants, along with an envelope containing copies of the variant ditto version that my friend had produced. This led to a small pseudo-research project that flourished for a few weeks: the attempt by some of the more stressed graduate students among us to produce a \u201cvariorum Quaalude\u201d that would reconcile the manuscript with the ditto and the printout, along with a complete \u201cscholarly\u201d apparatus. The following is a slightly emended version of the poem, incorporating the few notes from the variorum project that I preserved.<\/p>\n

One final note: \u201cThe Quaalude\u201d is based on the 1805 Prelude<\/em>, which, to my mind, is the most amusing of Wordsworth’s editions. The 1850 version, by comparison, is stiff as a carp.<\/p>\n

The Quaalude<\/strong><\/h1>\n

I.
\nIntroduction,
\nChildish in School,
\nCrimes
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

O there is something in this gentle breeze
\nThat blows from rooms where students betimes dwell
\nAnd party long: it smells of burning leaves
\nAnd seems half-conscious of the high it gives.
\nO welcome medicine! O welcome drug!
\nA stoner greets thee, coming from a house
\nOf straightniks, from his parent\u2019s house set free,
\nA prison where he hath been sober long.
\nNow I am high, enfranchised and at large
\nMay take my fix, my habit, where I will.
\nWhat druggist will supply me? And what quack
\nWill be my doctor? Underneath what grove
\nShall I light up my bhong? And what sweet green
\nShall with its vapors lull me to my rest?
\nThe earth is all before me. With a stash
\nJoyous, nor scared by insufficiency
\nI take a toke; and should the high I choose
\nBe granted me by sucking in sweet smoke
\nI will not touch the ground. I toke again!
\nTrances of thought and mountings of the mind
\nCome fast upon me: I have taken off,
\nAs by miraculous gift, I\u2019m taking off,
\nThat bummer of my own unloaded self,
\nThat heavy dude with nothing much to say
\nNot me, at least he would not pass for me.
\nLarge toots of coke (and such bold drug affords
\nMe all the promises of the high life),
\nLong months of ease and undisturbed by thought
\nAre mine in prospect; whither shall I turn
\nTo joint or hookah, or take twenty whites
\nAnd find a twig and many unripe seeds
\nWithin my stash, I\u2019ll clean them out, of course.
\n     And yet, being not unwilling now to give
\nA respite to this madness, I smoke on
\nGently, with gentle breaths; and come, ere long,
\nTo a green lady\u2019s place, where downs I downed
\nUpon my knees, slackening my thoughts by choice,
\nAnd fading into numbing happiness:
\n     \u2019Twas autumn, and a calm and placid day,
\nWith drugs, as much as needed, from her friend,
\nA man inclined towards bedrest; a day
\nOf sugar cubes, orange sunshine, lots of grass,
\nAnd in her spaced-out house where I was crouched
\nA lovely madness. On her rug I lay
\nPassing through many thoughts, yet mainly such
\nAs to my drugs pertained. I made a trade
\nFor one sweet Valium \u2013 my eyes did burn
\nAnd saw, methought, my parents\u2019 house and yard
\nPop up before my eyes: I was bummed out.
\nAnd yet, meanwhile, I unpacked all my works
\nAnd thought of all the drugs my folks proscribed
\nThat I, while there, performed. Thus long I lay
\nCheered by the genial pillow of warm thighs
\nBeneath my head, soothed by a teasing touch
\nFrom her warm hands, that caressed me, then left
\nEntirely, feeling nought, nought seeing, save
\nWhen by her bed, that seemed a grove of oaks
\nInside my head, a zipper on my pants
\nSlid audibly, and with a startling sound.
\n     And now it would content me to forget
\nThese lusty thoughts awhile, for present gifts
\nOf humbler industry. But, O dear Friend,
\nThe drug-freak, gentle creature as he is,
\nHath, on a bummer, his unruly times;
\nHis fits when he is neither sick nor well
\nThough no distress be near him but his own
\nUnmanageable thoughts: the mind itself,
\nThe drug besotted mind, relieved, perhaps,
\nWhen it, reliving countless other trips,
\nTakes solace, freaks not always to the edge
\nBut hath more quiet instants, lucid times
\nThat drive her as in troubles to more drugs;
\nWith me is now such passion, which I blame
\nNo otherwise than as I dropped my bhong!
\nSometimes, mistaking vainly as I fear,
\nBrief flashes for a much more sober sight,
\nI settle on some British weed, some old
\nRomantic drug by Milton left unsmoked;
\nMore often resting at some gentle place
\nWithin the groves of Cannabis, my pipe
\nStuffed full to bursting, with resinous buds,
\nSit by a fountain-side, or just pass out.
\n     Sometimes, more sternly moved, I would partake
\nOf hits of Methadrine1<\/sup><\/a>, and then I\u2019d speed
\nAnd, twitching like a cloud of gnats, become
\nSteve Austin; robot on T.V. by whom
\nFlourished the Silverberg Empire2<\/sup><\/a>: become
\nAn athlete from Phillie, a hockey great,
\nA Flyer, goalie for a Fortunate Team.
\nSometimes it suits me better to flake out
\nAnd do some reds and slow my heart-beat down
\nTo a sane rhythm, slow enough to count,
\nAnd then have intercourse with gentle things.
\nBut deadening mystic visions will appear
\nAnd the whole surreal nonsense will portray
\nTom Pynchon, who, of course, appears throughout
\nShadowy and insubstantial. Then, last flash,
\nMy last beloved hallucination, then
\nI yearn towards some psychedelic Drug
\nOf Truth that might illumine channel Five;
\nWith explications of The Dating Game,
\nRe-reruns of Star Trek, immortal show,
\nThoughtfully programmed for weekend trippers;
\nEnough of this.
\n                            Was it for this
\nThat one, that blossom of Hawaiian, burned
\nTo grey-white ash within my well-blacked pipe?
\nFair drug time had my Soul, and I grew up
\nDoing alike my uppers and my downs:
\nMuch favored psychedelics, and no less
\nThat lovely snowy powder for my nose.
\n     One evening (surely I was snorting coke)
\nI went alone unto a wild bash
\nThat someone threw aboard an agent\u2019s boat,
\nA yacht that to a varnished dock was tied
\nWithin a ritzy slip, its usual home.
\n\u2019Twas in Marina del Rey, by the sea
\nI was almost a stranger, thither come
\nA quondam screenwriter with little luck,
\nForth rambled out of El Torito stoned.
\nNo sooner had I sight of this white ship,
\nDiscovered thus by unexpected chance,
\nThan I relit my reefer and embarked.
\nThe moon was up, the host had fallen down
\nAmong a group of hoary revellers.
\nInside the door, a man sold nickel bags,
\nAnd mushrooms, buttons, reds, whites, cocaine, hash.
\nSo like a man, I walked with stately step,
\nQuite bent on speed. It was bad for my health
\nBut good for pleasure, left me with no voice
\nAnd waking dreams: A shrouded narc strode forth,
\nUpreared his head. I struck a match, I toked,
\nBut growing still in stature the huge narc
\nRose up between me and the bar, and still,
\nWith measured motion, like a living thing,
\nStrode after me. I almost messed my shorts
\nAs I with giddy laughter ran away,
\nBack to the parking lot where sat my car;
\nI got into it, shifted it from \u201cpark,\u201d \u2014
\nAnd on the freeway homeward sped, with grave
\nAnd serious thoughts; and after I had seen
\nThat spectacle, for many days, my brain
\nWould sizzle, seem to fry, and dimly sense
\nA world of lima beans3<\/sup><\/a>; in my thoughts
\nThere was darkness, veined with vegetable
\nThemes and motifs. Not one familiar shape
\nCould I perceive. No shows on my T.V.
\nBut swirling, buzzing static, and that taped,
\nReruns of static rumbled through my mind
\nBy day, and were the substance of my dreams.
\n     Chemist, Pharmacist of the Universe,
\nThou Soul that art the alterer of thought,
\nThou conjur\u2019st up forms and stuffs them in my mind
\nWith pixillated motion, not in vain
\nBy pure angel-dust messing up the heads
\nOf Children just as thou hast done for me:
\nA burn-out that blanked out my very soul,
\nNot with the mean and vulgar junkie\u2019s works,
\nBut with High Science, new technologies,
\nLying to Nature, purifying drugs,
\nNew condiments for rearranging thoughts.
\nAnd stultifying by such discipline
\nBoth pain and fear, until I could not feel
\nA rhythm to the beatings of my heart.
\n     Ye loathsome colleges in which we dwelt,
\nA medication hazardous was yours,
\nInsanity, a darksome brain decay!
\nCan I forgive you, maddening as ye were
\nYet beautiful among the pleasant fields,
\nYour cunning mask? How can I here forgive
\nThe plain and seemly countenance with which
\nYou dealt out your cruel comforts? Yea, had ye
\nThe breath of madness wafting through your halls.
\nMorbid and ever weary we perused
\nSick, swollen syllabi by the weak fire
\nAt midnight, planning to stay up more late,
\nOur every minute parcelled out and all
\nOn time-charts and with cyphers scribbled o-er,
\nAnd read mad critics, school opposed to school
\nIn strife too dismal to be named in verse.
\nBlackmur and Barthes, sate in close array,
\nAnd to the conflict Bloom and Frye led on
\nA thick-skulled army, not meant for this world,
\nObsessive and possessive of their fields
\nE\u2019en for the damage they themselves had wrought
\nUpon Art in their mindless long campaign.
\n     One end hereby at least hath been attained:
\nMy mind hath been decayed by wholesome drugs
\nAnd not with critics\u2019 murmurs tumbled down
\nTo haunt me through my later years of life.
\nThe road lies plain before me; \u2013 \u2019tis my scheme
\nTo see if I can tell you what I\u2019ve learned
\nBy chemicals both natural and manmade
\nAnd amplify my drug creed\u2019s argument.4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Notes<\/h2>\n

1<\/sup><\/a>Archaic spelling of “methedrine.”<\/span><\/p>\n

2<\/sup><\/a>As in manuscript and 1979 edition, but historical evidence suggests this should read “Silverman.”<\/span><\/p>\n

3<\/a><\/sup><\/span> This reference has troubled scholars since the first published edition; one school seems to think that it may refer to Lima, Peru, from whence the Author could obtain cocaine, but that meaning is seemingly contradicted by the \u201cvegetable\/Themes and motifs\u201d ff.<\/i> as well as the word \u201cbeans\u201d: cocaine does not come from beans (note, however, that cocaine is<\/i> derived from vegetation).<\/span><\/p>\n

4<\/a><\/sup><\/span> The final lines imply a subsequent book, but none was ever published, and may never have been written.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This poem was composed in early 1979, while I was engaged in graduate studies in English literature. Among the courses I was taking was a readings course covering Romantic literature, in which we were reading, among other things, Wordsworth\u2019s Prelude (in all its various editions). 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