William Doreski
is Professor of English, Keene State College (New Hampshire), teaching creative writing, literary theory, and modern poetry. Born in Connecticut, he lived in Boston, Cambridge, and Arlington (MA) for many years, attended various colleges, and after a certain amount of angst received a Ph.D. from Boston University. After teaching at Goddard, Harvard, and Emerson colleges, he came to Keene State in 1982. He has published several collections of poetry, most recently Sacra Via (Tatlock Publications, 2005) and Another Ice Age (AA Books, 2007), and three critical studies—The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), and The Modern Voice in American Poetry (University Press of Florida, 1995), Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (Ohio University Press, 1999)—and a textbook entitled How to Read and Interpret Poetry (Prentice-Hall). His critical essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many academic and literary journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, and Natural Bridge. —Back to Orsorum Contents— |
Of St. NicholasNo one told me the patron saintof Russia, of parish clerks, scholars, and Aberdeen had preserved from whoredom the daughters of a poor man by presenting them with three gold balls, like a pawn shop’s. No one told me he restored the lives of three little boys cut up and pickled in a salting tub to serve as bacon. No one explained that sailors invoke him because he stifled a storm off Jaffa. Fourth-century Bishop of Myra, he attended the Council of Nicæa and famously punched Arius in the mouth. The sixth of December, not the twenty-fifth, is his day. I could have believed in Santa Claus if only I’d known the epic of his sainthood, but no one told me his beard was a bishop’s, his red suit a resurrection. Only the toys he chose for me mattered. No one threatened me with a salting tub, no one promised my unborn sisters a life on the streets, no Eastern Mediterranean storm browbeat my timid carcass into pleadings sufficient to melt God’s heart. Only the slow December nights of finely grained snow sifting down and the points of village steeples stabbing at theologies too gray and aloof to believe. |
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