I rarely comment on the personal meaning of my poems; but, in this case, comment is justified. The titular character was a neighbor of my parents, and I grew up with her sons (with, not not friends with, I might add). When I was five, and had recently developed my nascent interest in literary ghost stories and horror tales, this neighbor spitefully informed my mother, who was naive enough to believe her, that I had become "obsessed," and was, therefore, mentally unbalanced. For the rest of my childhood, until I became an adult, my parents made every effort to squelch any passionate interest I might have. Astronomy---the telescope was put away and a decade's worth of magazines (from a friend of my father's) was thrown away; archaeology---they never put me in touch with a friend of theirs who had made some noteworthy discoveries. English literature---they said I would have to study Pre-Law instead. And, the coup de grace, at the end of my freshman year at college, my mother took, without permission, the draft of my first lengthy poem, and showed it to a colleague of hers who was a published poet. She asked him if it was trash. His reply was, if it had been written by an experienced adult, yes it was; but, having been written by a youth not yet nineteen years old, it promised much. All of these incidents, and many more too numerous to mention, arose from the neighbor's suggestion that great and passionate interest necessarily suggested obsession, which was necessarily a sign and symptom of mental instability.
The neighbor passed away a couple of years ago. Apparently, she fell and, unable to either rise or summon assistance, she died after some three days of suffering. I did not attend the funeral, and I did not send flowers. I have paid mightily for a remark she may have made in cruel flippancy, or in serious criticism; but, in either case, it was none of her business. I can only point out that she is gone---and I have 1200 poems on postpoems.
