It knows it is a construct of words:
no waves can bear it away;
it cannot be lost in darkness and distance.
It has been called, and called to be,
a abhorrent, horrific monstrosity; within the book,
and in the pages of the British Critic.
From words accumulant on blank pages,
It watched its Creatrix---a mere slip of a girl,
slender, delicate, intent on the wild dance of her pen:
elven, she might almost be, except for pointed ears;
fae, she might almost be, except for translucent winglets.
Dawn's light springs through floor-length windows to shimmer around her.
She often disparages her own beauty; but
It appreciates those long curls, the coyly cropped nightshirt, the blue
socks, thigh-high, soles already grass-stained from her morning walk around.
ClubFoot peers from behind a curtain;
Polidori thinks his own prose is without peer; and that
sister, that envious sister, writhes in rage while alone in her bed.
Embryonic, now, a much unpunctuated fetus of phrases,
It feels a fierce protectiveness toward her;
It studies the nuances of her every emotion.
It knows it has been called forth to represent her;
to comfort her through cold, stormy nights in England when she
will feel bereft of all love except her son's---young Percy.
For the rest of her life, she will have an affection for It.
Starward
Author's Notes/Comments:
The sixth line alludes to the review in The British Critic, vol. 9., pp. 432-438, April 1818.
The poem's final line alludes to the penultimate paragraph of Mary Shelley's "Introduction" to the 1831 edition, which is now the edition considered standard by those who teach the novel in literary courses, both in high schools and in undergraduate colleges.
With tongue in cheek, I dedicate this to my undergraduate History Department, where I studied from 1977-1980. In the spring of 1978, during the required Sophomore project (one did not graduate with successful completion of a the sophomore research project and then, two years later, of the Senior Thesis)---which was to assemble one hundred or more index cards, formatted in proper bibilographic style, giving a series of monographs, journal articles, essays, and reviews of a particular historical subject. I demanded---I did not ask, but demanded---to make the critical response to Frankenstein my sophomore project. This was begrudingly granted, but I was subjected to the pressure of innuendoes and asides, primarily from the course instructor and my faculty advisor, for having a chosen a subject, an author and a text, totally out of favor in both the History and the Literature Departments. I refused to submit; and turned in a few more than a hundred indiex cards. In 2001, twenty-one years after my graduation, I attended a private reunion luncheon at which my faculty advisor, who had not seen nor heard from me in that score of years plus one, greeted me, loudly (as if to embarrass me) by asking, with a sneer, "Is Mary Shelley still your girl?" To which I replied, loudly and proudly, "You know that she is." This put an end to any further remarks, at least about her, from him.
