Basiliké Pappa created “In the Long Slow Stroke of the Midnight Bell” from:
Needwood Forest, by Francis Noel Clarke Mundy (1776)
The Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by Henry T. Riley (1893 edition)
Favorite Fairy Tales (1907)
The Wounded Eros, by Charles Gibson (1908)
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, by John Fox Jr. (1912 edition)
Love Poems and Others, by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang (1914)
Kazan, by James Oliver Curwood (1914)
Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein (1914)
St. Nicholas Book of Plays and Operettas (1916)
The Story-Book of Science, by Jean-Henri Fabre (1917)
Geography and Plays, by Gertrude Stein (1922)
About the poem and the process of composing it, Basiliké Pappa writes:
They say a wolf in a dream often stands for one’s inner power and intuition, for one’s wild nature and yearning for freedom. A wolf may appear in our dreams to point us in the right direction, help us find our way home or what it is we really want. Trust yourself again, dare to roam free, says the wolf. Run with me, and I will show you how.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the idea to write about a dream-wolf came to me. What I knew though when I began picking words from Gertrude Stein’s books was this: the number twelve was somehow going to play a part in my poem.
I copied excerpts from Stein in a clean file and started rearranging the words. Gibson’s sonnets came next, so contrary to Stein’s experimental prose. I wove his words and phrases into hers. From there, I moved from one book to another, selecting passages; adding and replacing words; cutting, combining, and dismantling sentences, until I had drawn from twelve sources. The wolf that appears in a dark dream to offer guidance and light was somewhere in there, waiting to be found in the long slow stroke of the midnight bell.
In incorporating a dozen sources, “In the Long Slow Stroke of the Midnight Bell” reflects our invitation to poets to use 12 (on the occasion of our twelfth volume) in some way in their poems.
Also by Basiliké Pappa at Heron Tree: “How to Become a God and Fade from Sight,” “Portuguese Wires,” and “The Moon This Night.”