You're Just Saying it Wrong

Spike: 

Never much cared for you, Liam, even when we were evil. 

Angel: 

Cared for you less. 

Spike: 

Fine. 

Angel: 

Good. 

[long pause]

Angel: 

There was one thing about you. 

Spike: 

Really? 

Angel: 

Yeah, I never told anybody about this, but I-

I liked your poems. 

Spike: 

You like Barry Manilow.

Frankly, Mr. Shankly, this position I've held,

It pays my way and it corrodes my soul.

Oh, I didn't realise that you wrote poetry

I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry...

Host:  
My Question first -

And answer True, 

Because you Know I'll Know. 

 Why Mandy?

Angel:  
Well, I-I know the words - and (leans in closer) I kind of think it's pretty.

Host (smiling):  
And so it is, ya great, big sap!  

There is not a Destroyer of Worlds that can argue with Manilow -  and good for you for fessin' up.

Reconstructing William's Poetry

(an essay on the worst English poet ever to be turned into a vampire, by Am-Chau Yarkona). 

Obviously, actual examples are the best place to start, but there is very little material here. The sum total of what we know comes from the Buffy episode `Fool for Love', and what we can piece together based on William's likely reading matter, education, and inspirations. 

In `Fool for Love' we get a snippet to begin working from. William doesn't read any of it out (though we do hear him choosing words: I'll come back to this later) but Aristocrat #3 does. 

He says: "Don't be shy. "My heart expands/'tis grown a bulge in it (shooting script gives `in't)/inspired by your beauty, effulgent." (laughs) Effulgent?" 

Let's look at that written out as poetry, shall we? 

Transcript: 

"My heart expands `tis grown a bulge in it

inspired by your beauty, effulgent." 

Shooting script: 

"My heart expands 'tis grown a bulge in't

inspired by

your beauty effulgent."

There is a quite definite change of meaning here, which is why I have given both versions. Without the comma, the laughable adjective `effulgent' is applied to Cecily's beauty (and he does confirm that it is her beauty referred to). With the comma, the whole sentence becomes a little grammatically dodgy. 

In modern English (i.e. without the `poetic contractions') it reads: "My heart expands it is grown a bulge in it inspired by your beauty, effulgent." This renders it highly confusing. With a little more punctuation, however, we can turn it into: "My heart expands: it is grown a bulge in it, inspired by your beauty, effulgent." We can now see that `effulgent' could also refer to his heart. Presumably `it is' is William's poetic speak for `it has', and allowing that this is so, he could easily have meant "My heart expands: it has grown an effulgent bulge in it, inspired by your beauty," but twisted the sense to produce a rhyme (of sorts). 

To see which of these is more likely, I turn to my trusty `Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles' which gives: 

"Effulgent a. 1738 [-effulgent-, pres. ppl. stem of L. effulgere; see EF-, FULGENT.] Shining forth brilliantly; diffusing intense light; radiant. 

He is upborne by an e. cloud 1852. Hence Effulgently adv." 

This leads us to believe that `effulgent' is the word William arrived at from his choosing of words: `luminous', `irradiant' and `gleaming' would all be reasonable synonyms for `effulgent' (and William is nothing if not reasonable). Given this, we can assume that it is Cecily's radiant beauty he is describing in this laughable manner, and not his heart or its bulge. 

The next obvious step is to consider the other poetic materials with which a young gentleman in 1870-80 could be expected to have been familiar- because William undoubtedly would have known of them. 

He would have been familiar with the work of Shakespeare, and of famous British Victorian poets: Tennyson, for example, and probably Wordsworth, Coleridge etc. He would also have been aware of the work of other poets who were becoming popular- Andrew Marvell, and some others. He may well not have known some poets whom we now consider to be classics of their time; Keats, for instance, was not famous until more recently, as Byron and Shelley overshadowed him. However, it plausible to assume that William, given Spike's later rebellious streak, may have sought out and read obscurer poets as well as the mainstream ones. Reading poets that his teachers and possibly parents disapproved of is the sort of quiet act of rebellion that I see William going for. This rebelliousness, this interest in the poetic work of the lower classes (John Clare, maybe, or the almost unknown E.A. Poe) may explain why Cecily considers a man of apparently equal social standing `beneath her'. 

Poets William is certain to have known (of, if not well):

 

William Shakespeare

John Donne 

Ben Jonson 

George Herbert 

John Milton 

Andrew Marvell 

Alexander Pope 

Thomas Gray 

Oliver Goldsmith 

William Cowper 

William Blake 

William Wordsworth 

Sir Walter Scott 

Lord Byron 

P. B. Shelley 

John Clare 

John Keats 

Thomas Hood 

William Barnes 

Browning E.B. and R, though more likely the first) 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (could be great, could be worse than William) 

Edward Lear 

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (*) 

Lewis Carroll 

A.C. Swinburne 

Oscar Wilde (*) 

(Names marked with a * are likely candidates for writers whom William may have admired, but older generations may well have felt were rather on the scandalous side.) 

On considering this list (and I can recommend that you try reading any or all of them) something does stand out- that the name `William' is very common. It is plausible that William's parents, one or both, were very fond of literature, and named their son accordingly. This may then have lead to their putting pressure on their son (on William feeling that they did) to be like the famous men he was named for, and write poetry. Past speculation seems to have gone in favour of William enjoying writing poetry, although he wasn't very good at it, but if he was under pressure to do so, a mother's boy such as William may have felt compelled to write anyway. This is probably incompatible with my earlier theory that William may have used poetry as a means of quiet rebellion- but it may not. It is not inconceivable that William attempted to subvert his parent's desire for him to like literature, by liking it so much that he began to read and write things they weren't so keen on. 

The combination of rebellion and apparent lack of independence would, I feel sure, be plenty of grounds for Cecily to reject him on. 

Those writers who want to write William or Spike slash fiction may want to note (and research) the presence of Oscar Wilde in the above list. 

I hope that this essay has given some background to the poetry of William's time, and raised some interesting ideas for the writing of fanfic. You are welcome to use them, but I'd be very interested to see what you produce. Please feedback to 

mailto:amchau@popullus.net