Reading Vampire Poetry

http://www.snarke.com/

Reading Vampire Poetry

“The idea of Catherine Sloper’s
un-knowability in Washington
Square and Isabel Archer’s
astonishing ability to renounce
or not take what she really does
want or not ask herself what she
wants in The Portrait of a Lady…”
—Colm Tóibín http://www.bookslut.com

I can read Vampire Lit—I can go there
And I really like it there—but I can’t imagine
A vampire character—I simply can’t imagine
What it would be like—I can’t see the conflicts
And how they would arise—being of a lesser class
In a haunted castle—somebody like Keanu Reeves in

Dracula (1992)—what would that possibly be like?
These aging decadent aristocrats—craving the life
Blood of a mere accountant—definitely a rather
Class-consciousness thing—but then maybe
Vampires prefer lower class—white trash trade?
Or young naive accountants—like virile Reeves?

That’s not enough for me—mere class-consciousness
Does it have to have—a class element oozing

Out of every pore and orifice?—Although that’d be
Pretty easy to deal with—like D.H. Lawrence did in
Lady Chatterley’s Lover—But when I come across it

.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula—or lesbian

Hungarian Countess Marya Zaleska in

Dracula’s Daughter—I can admire it.

It’s a class thing—the Countess enamored

With street girls—and the Count on the ship to

England draining—the crew dry down to the

Last drop—So that both streetwalkers

And sailors of lower class—are prized by vampires

Each time I go there—I look for it and there it is!!!

It’s this class thing that—gives people erections…