vanity fair and an open mic

As my readers know, here at Baroque Mansions we live to serve. In this public service mode, as an act of generosity, I am pleased to share with you a list of guidelines for middle-aged poets published by Rob Mackenzie last week on his blog, Surroundings. (n.b., I think these guidelines refer less to those poets whose long-established gravitas renders them unimpeachable than to those of us still trying tp prove we're interesting. For example, I don't think Seamus Heaney will have to give up his tweed jackets...)

Here's a taster:

6. If you are married, refer to your spouse as your ‘partner’ and talk uninhibitedly about your love life.

7. If you are unattached, sleep around. Or at least say you’re sleeping around. If you repeat anything, people will believe it. Cultivate an ambiguous sexuality.

8. Invent stories about how a poem got you laid. Never tell exactly the same story twice. Even better, write a poem about how a poem got you laid. Have it translated into a dozen languages.

12. Never use the word ‘crisis’ of yourself. But use it liberally to describe friends of a similar age, especially other poets.

Now (and there is more of note in his list) I think this is great advice. But it doesn't say what to do about your kids. Sooner or later you'll have to start darkly intimating that they're nieces and nephews of a much older, tragic sibling who left them to be brought up by you, or possibly that they themselves are your siblings (now that's tragic).

This conundrum reminds me of my favourite anecdote, which I think is about Lillian Lux, matriarch of the New York Yiddish performing family the Bursteins (whose hits included The Megillah of Itzik Manger and A Khasene in Shtetl).

Apparently Lillian (if it is she, and I think it is) became ill and retired from the stage for some years. When she made her comeback a journalist sent to interview her asked her how old she was. "I'm 65," she said.

"That's funny," said the reporter. "I interviewed your son last week and he told me he was 55!"

"Eh!" she said, with a shrug. "He has his life, I have mine."

Anyway, I was a child bride. I'm keeping these guidelines handy for when I get older.