The form is known as a "dramatic monologue". No one ever did it better than Robert Browning, though Max Sebald made several wonderful attempts. The problem with a dramatic monologue, when you read it anyway, is that you have to get the accent right. I'm a Brit, Peary was an American - what more can I say! I also realise that "realised" in line 7 should have been spelled "realized", and I guess that "parlours" should have gone without its "u".
The
name’s Peary, Robert Edwin Peary,
and
no you haven’t heard of me,
despite
the fact you should have done,
because
I, not Cook, not Amundsen, not Scott,
I
was the first to reach the geographical North Pole,
which
used to be the last frontier of human exploration,
till
scientists realised there are more than three dimensions,
such
as inwards to the nucleus of the atom,
and
outwards to the ice below the crust of Mars,
and
upwards to the mount of knowledge,
yes
and downwards too,
into
the darkest depths of human calumny.
I
hope they’ve got the guts they’ll need to find those poles.
Not
that you need to know,
but
I was born in Cresson,
which
lies 40o 58' north and 78o 58' west,
80
miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
in
1856, but moved to Maine,
the
toughest journey of my life,
where
I attended Bowdoin College
(the
natives pronounce it Beau-din),
where
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a student.
I
graduated as a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity –
which
means, I understand, a gentleman, in Inuit -
and
was commissioned as a Civil Engineer Corps Officer
in
the United States Navy in October, 1881.
I
married the very lovely Josephine Diebitsch Peary,
and
had two children with her: Marie and Robert Junior.
I
should also tell you, since I’m always honest,
that
Matthew Henson and I
both
fathered children on Inuit women,
mine
was called Ally,
while
we were on our Arctic expeditions.
We
made them all together, Matt and I,
explored
Greenland by dog sled in 1886 and 1891;
returned
to the island three times in the 1890s;
twice
attempted to cross northwest Greenland over the ice cap;
discovered
Navy Cliff.
How
did we do it and survive?
By
studying Inuit survival techniques, that’s how,
by
building igloos,
dressing
in furs in the native fashion,
both
for heat preservation
and
to get rid of the extra weight of tents and sleeping bags
when
on the march.
Used
Inuit hunters and dog-drivers too,
invented
my Peary system
of
having support teams and supply caches for Arctic travel.
Josephine
came too sometimes.
Lost
eight of my ten toes from frost bite.
Now
people are envious sons of bitches
who
never leave their front parlours
unless
someone’s sent a chauffeured limousine,
and
like to deny you your achievements
cause
they can’t stand the thought that someone
struggled
to achieve something worth the trouble
while
they were fiddling their tax returns
and
wondering who won the baseball,
so
all I’ll say about the Jesup Land controversy
is
that we found it,
and
we saw Axel Heiberg too,
long
before that Norwegian Sverdrup’s expedition,
and
the men as give me the gold medals
from
the American Geographical Society
and
the Royal Geographical Society of London
stated
that they honored my tenacity,
and
they were damned right,
because
it took tenacity to get to Jesup,
and
they haven’t yet invented a word for what it took
to
get the farthest north there is to get,
which
was north of Ellesmere Island.
Now
I gotta take a moment to say thanks to George Crocker,
who
put up $50,000 to acquire the Roosevelt,
and
cut a way through all that ice
between
Greenland and Ellesmere Island,
and
attain a Farthest North world record at 87° 06';
though
the deniers deny me that achievement too,
from
the comfort of their stone igloos
in
the frozen tundra of Yale and Washington and Harvard,
where
the only degrees they know are Law degrees,
certainly
not ones of longitude nor latitude
(they
give no latitude at all, these academic pedants),
-
so many childless bachelorhoods at the Smithsonian.
87°
06' I say it was,
and
get yourself out in the ice, and starve,
and
lose your toes, and prove me wrong –
I
challenge you.
87°
06' and returned to 86° 30' without camping,
72
nautical miles,
83
statute miles,
between
sleeps,
and
not a single detour.
We
got back to the Roosevelt in May,
then
weeks of agonizing travel,
west
along the shore of Ellesmere
where
we found Cape Colgate
and
sighted a previously undiscovered farther-north,
named
it “Crocker Land”.
People
say I made the place up,
but
folks at the National Geographic Society
don’t
give you the Hubbard Gold Medal
for
something they reckon you made up.
But
I came here to tell you about the north pole,
because
I found it first, whatever others say.
Me
and 23 men set off from New York City on the Roosevelt
under
the command of Captain Robert Bartlett, July 6, 1908.
Wintered
near Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island,
then
set out for the pole on February 28, 1909.
Sent
the last support party back from “Bartlett Camp”
on
April 1, latitude 87° 45' north.
That
left just six of us,
Matt
Henson and me and four Inuit,
Ootah,
Egigingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah.
Set
up “Camp Jesup” in honour of my greatest sponsor,
on
April 6 it was, not five miles from the pole.
Hit
the point on April 7.
90o
dead.
We
nearly were too, from hunger, and exhaustion.
Now,
all these years later,
it’s
as much as I can do to make an expedition
to
the liquor store on Eagle Island
and
pick up a newspaper
to
read all my detractors saying
I
never done this and I never done that,
and
Congress wanting to send an expedition to prove it,
like
as if the footprints haven’t blown away.
Or
if not me then Freddie Cook,
who
was my surgeon on the 1891 expedition,
and
if he says he made it to the Pole,
then
I trust his instruments
more
than I trust those jealous stay-at-homes
at
the Smithsonian,
and
I couldn’t care a monument in Greenland
whether
he discovered it and I attained it,
or
the other way around,
or
both, or neither,
and
whether you can prove it or you can’t,
cause
the whole point ain’t the North Pole anyway,
that’s
just a round number you stake out in eternity
like
an igloo in the ice or a triangle in spherical trigonometry.
No
point telling that to Congressmen and academics though.
They’d
say there isn’t a north pole,
if
they thought it would win them votes or research fellowships.
My
toes hurt.
"Ninety Degrees North" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
You can find David Prashker at:
Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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