![]() The final three lines, originally in Harry’s voice and now in Bess’s – “Every escape is a success story, no? / Now you see me, / now you don’t.” – hopefully convey this. What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? As the final poem in the sequence about the mysterious escape artist, I wanted there to be a sense of conclusion but still an aura of mystery about him. So to have Houdini “speaking from the grave,” as it were, would cause some confusion, and the final two poems in the book are now in his wife Bess’s voice. ![]() They had a famous public disagreement about this. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of these people who endorsed “Spiritualism,” though Houdini knew it was all a hoax, because he’d performed the same tricks. One of the themes, after all, is Houdini’s skepticism about “Spiritualism,” the idea that our dead can speak to us from “the other side,” a stunt that mediums of the day performed to hoodwink the grieving. Credit and Copyright by Charles Rammelkamp ![]() It is in the voice of Harry Houdini himself, but as it takes place after his death, a reader suggested I put the poem into the voice of his wife. I’ve attached a screenshot of the draft I mailed to myself. (The file was called “Alternative Facts.”) ![]() ![]() Others I wrote on my cellphone or the computer and ultimately copied them into the file of the manuscript. Some of the poems in the project I wrote out long hand in a notebook. I was sitting at my computer composing the first draft of the poem. It was early summer in Baltimore, where I live, the temperature around 90 degrees and muggy. Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. ![]()
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