The very phrase \u201cPoets\u2019 Theatre,\u201d it must be said, does not inspire huge confidence, being a compound of two unstable elements. One might as well speak of embezzlers\u2019 Jell-O. The atmosphere, according to Alison Lurie, who observed it at close quarters, was one of \u201crehearsals, feuds, affairs, debts, and parties.\u201d Yet solid achievements were registered in the ensuing years, such as a reading of Djuna Barnes\u2019s \u201cAntiphon<\/a>,\u201d which was attended\u2014at Lang\u2019s brazen invitation\u2014by T.\u00a0S. Eliot<\/a>. Lurie argues that, although Lang was not much of an actress (she reserved her most expert shape-shifting for life offstage), her trick was to treat those around her as if they were playing parts. \u201cThey were excited to be told, and often behaved afterwards in line with Bunny\u2019s definition,\u201d Lurie writes.<\/p>\n To be honest, the whole setup sounds exhausting. Things came to a head when Lang wrote a play of her own, \u201cFire Exit,\u201d which had its premi\u00e8re in 1952. \u201cShe directed it, produced it, and starred in it. She also chose the cast, designed the costumes and sets, arranged the music and lighting, did the publicity, and managed the theatre,\u201d Lurie tells us. For some of the in-house regulars, evidently, such imperiousness was too much, and a campaign was mounted to \u201cStop Bunny.\u201d On the other hand, you have to ask: Was Lang beset by anything more than the exasperation of every poet and every novelist\u2014the loss of control that arises when words are released from the confines of the page and encouraged to run free in the theatre, or onscreen, at the whim of other voices and under the guidance of other hands?<\/p>\n The irony is that \u201cFire Exit,\u201d whatever the ordeal of its conception, emerges as a careful comedy, touched with pathos. How performable it might be, these days, is open to debate, but Lang\u2019s ear for casually loaded prattling does not desert her:<\/p>\n MRS. BLANCHE: I think there\u2019s someone, Pol, MRS. POLLY [decidedly]: He ain\u2019t no one for her. \u201cI need more structure in my life than just being told what to do and what to say by the people who control me.\u201d<\/p>\n Cartoon by P. C. Vey<\/p>\n The woman these people are talking about is Eurydice\u2014often hailed as \u201cEury\u201d\u2014and the musician is Orpheus. Lang\u2019s leaning into myth recurs in her second play, \u201cI Too Have Lived in Arcadia.\u201d (Neither drama is reprinted in \u201cThe Miraculous Season,\u201d but both were appended, with a generous helping of poems, to Lurie\u2019s memoir when it was reprinted in 1975. Beautiful spidery illustrations by Gorey preface each section of Lurie\u2019s book.) \u201cArcadia\u201d sprang from an agonized affair between Lang and an abstract painter named Mike Goldberg; as dramatis personae, they are Chloris and Damon, who inhabit a desolate Atlantic island. They are joined by an irate third party, Phoebe, plus a poodle named Georges. He is not a happy dog: \u201cLady, not to eat and not to love \/ And to no purpose but to live it up \/ And have a ball, was I brought into life. \/ The plot grows sad, no longer good for laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n For anyone who champions Lang, the question has to be: Could you spot her work without her name attached? What, if any, are its distinguishing marks? Well, for one thing, get a load of the animals\u2014an arkful of them prowling the poetry, frequently when they are least expected. \u201cO he has a wildebeeste\u2019s eyes, not nice, \/ And a tongue like an ice pick.\u201d To and fro Lang ranges in creaturely time, back into prehistory: \u201cThe Brontosaurus \/ Stand and watch, their pale, already weedy eyes \/ Are hurting them, and their unmanageable crusted limbs.\u201d Human beasts are rarely alone, and far from secure at the apex of the animal kingdom. \u201cCats walked the walls and gleamed at us,\u201d \u201cWhere lovers lay around like great horned owls,\u201d and \u201cWe lay fat cats under a milkweed sky.\u201d<\/p>\n Those last three, it should be emphasized, are all first lines. Lang is, in the richest sense, a promising beginner. Out of the blocks she launches herself, like a sprinter in spiked shoes. Feel the whoosh as her openings hurtle by: \u201cDarling, they have discovered dynamite.\u201d \u201cHere was the fright, the flight, the brilliant stretch.\u201d \u201cSpring you came marvellous with possibles.\u201d (The last of those is from \u201cThe Pitch<\/a>,\u201d which was published in Poetry in 1950. It should be anything but possible to write an arresting line about springtime, more than half a millennium after Chaucer<\/a>, yet Lang pulls it off.) As often as not, the preliminary burst is comic, as we barge into a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate or the fallout from a filthy private joke: \u201cWhy else do you have an English Horn if not \/ To blow it so I\u2019ll know to let you in?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Candidly. The past, the sensations of the past. 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She\u2019s waiting on. A long time.
You know, you met him. A musician.
A classical.<\/p>\n
Kind of funny-looking, I thought.
She needs a Real Man.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/a28764.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n