The very phrase “Theater of Poets,” it must be said, does not inspire much confidence, being a combination of two unstable elements. One could just as easily talk about embezzler jelly. The atmosphere, according to Alison Lurie, who witnessed it up close, was one of “rehearsals, feuds, affairs, debts and parties.” However, solid achievements were recorded in subsequent years, such as reading Djuna Barnes's bookHymn“, which was attended – at the impudent invitation of Lang – T. S. Eliot. Lurie argues that although Lang was not a great actress (she reserved her most skillful shape-shifting for life off stage), her trick was to treat those around her as if They played roles. “They were delighted with what they were told, and often subsequently behaved in accordance with Bunny’s definition,” Lurie writes.
Honestly, this whole setup sounds tedious. The situation came to a head when Lang wrote her own play, Fire Exit, which premiered in 1952. “She directed, produced and starred in it. She also cast, designed costumes and sets, arranged music and lighting, did publicity and ran the theatre,” Lurie tells us. The authority apparently proved too much for some of the establishment's regulars, and a “Stop the Bunny” campaign was launched. On the other hand, you have to wonder: Was Lang gripped by something more than the irritation of every poet and every novelist—the loss of control that occurs when words are thrown off the page and left to run free in the theater or on the screen at the whim of other voices and under the direction of other hands?
The irony is that Fire Exit, no matter how heavy its premise, turns out to be a carefully crafted comedy steeped in pathos. How feasible this might be these days is up for debate, but Lang's ear for casual chatter never leaves her:
The woman these people are talking about is Eurydice, often called “Euria”, and the musician is Orpheus. Lang's penchant for myth is repeated in her second play, I Too Lived in Arcadia. (Neither drama is reprinted in The Wonderful Season, but both were added, with generous help from poetry, to Lurie's memoir when it was reissued in 1975. Gorey's beautiful, web-like illustrations preface each section of Lurie's book.) Arcadia grew out of a tormented affair between Lang and an abstract painter named Mike Goldberg; the characters are Chloris and Damon, who inhabit a deserted island in the Atlantic Ocean. They are joined by an angry third party, Phoebe, as well as a poodle named Georges. He is not a happy dog: “Lady, neither to eat nor to love / And it was only to live it / And to have fun that I was brought into life. / The plot becomes sad, no longer suitable for laughter.”
For anyone who supports Lang, the question is: can you see her work without her name being credited? What are its distinguishing features, if any? Well, first of all, take a bunch of animals with you – a whole ark wandering through poetry, often when they are least expected. “Oh, he has wildebeest eyes, ugly, / And a tongue like an ice pick.” Lang travels back and forth through the creatures' time, back to prehistory: “Brontosaurus / Stand and watch, their pale, already weak eyes / hurting them, and their uncontrollable crusty limbs.” Human beasts are rarely left alone and are far from safe at the top of the animal kingdom. “Cats walked on the walls and glittered at us,” “Where lovers lay like great horned owls,” and “We lay fat cats under a milkweed sky.”
It should be emphasized that the last three are the first lines. Lang is a promising newcomer in the broadest sense. She runs out of the blocks like a sprinter in spiked boots. Feel the whistle as her holes rush past: “Honey, they've found dynamite.” “There was a fright, a flight, a brilliant stretch.” “Spring, you have come, marvelous with your possibilities.” (The last one is taken from “Field“, which was published in Poetry in 1950. It should be anything But you can write a fascinating line about spring, more than half a millennium later. Chaucerbut Lang succeeds.) More often than not, the preliminary outburst is comical, as we break into a one-on-one conversation or as a result of a dirty private joke: “Why else do you have a cor anglais if you don’t / To blow it so I know to let you in?”
