Michael Chabon Talks About Poe

There is music in the hall
A maestro at the podium
And though he is talking of many things
The lyric that runs throughout
Is a refrain of love
The adoration and exultation of language
From the individual words
Each bearing its own history
Each carrying untapped potential
To the sentences that join those myriad pasts and futures
Into unions that delight and disgust, impress and startle
Some seem destined for great things
While others are but a passing fancy

All the while, a web is being woven
With a poet's precision
And a carnivore's intent
To catch our attention and trap our thoughts
Rhetorical alchemy that transmutes a hundred restless hearts
Into a captive audience

We listen to the music of verse disguised as prose
Tension builds as minds fill with images and ideas
Sleek stanzas of terrible beauty
The world seen through another's eyes
A stranger's voice speaking our thoughts aloud
(If they were our thoughts at all,
Before we wished it to be so.)

Then the unexpected jest,
The well-timed quip,
That moment of confusion, poised in midair,
As a familiar, unexpected thread appears in the mysterious tapestry beneath our feet,
Right as the rug is pulled out
The Sacred meets the Profane,
And they go out for a beer
Klingons read comic books alongside the Muses
And the bursts of laughter
Are laced with relief

To and fro the lunatic tide ebbs and flows
Until, with a bow
The maestro stops
The strands are cut
The curtain falls
Standing up,
At my feet what should I see but

A story, perfect as a shell
The spiral arc of a boy
turning
Into a man
turning
Madly hand in hand across the span of years,
Round and round in a delirious dance with words
and the tales they tell