Poet Patricia Keeney reads "Shakespeare in Space" at Toronto authorship conference

Patricia Keeney reading "Shakespeare in Space" York. U. April 7, 2012

Poet Patricia Keeney read her poem "Shakespeare in Space" at the York University seminar titled "Shakespeare: The Authorship Question" held April 7, 2012 in Toronto, Canada. Keeney is professor of English and creative writing at the university and is married to conference organizer Don Rubin. Together they attended the 2009 SF/SOS Shakespeare authorship conference held in Houston where Keeney was inspired to compose "Shakespeare in Space". Keeney said:

What inspired the poem is contained in the little headnote under the title. That first (for me) conference in Houston with the Oxfordians was a revelation. Combined with our tour of the space centre, it gave me two whole sets of languages with which to express what I think is really a call to take risks in our thinking, especially in academia which should be all about discovery and exploration, intelligent adventure!

As an editor, and theater and literary critic, Keeney publishes in Canadian and international journals. She is the author of nine books of poetry and a picaresque novel, The Incredible Shrinking Wife; her works have been translated into many languages including Hindi and Chinese. Her latest English book of poetry, First Woman, was published in 2011 by Inanna Publications.

Oberon is honored to be given permission to publish the poem, "Shakespeare in Space", by Patricia Keeney.

Shakespeare in Space

(being the result of a conference on the Shakespeare authorship question held in Houston, Texas)

Houston we have a problem.

There’s an alien in the galaxy

imposter on the cultural radar

pretender to the literary throne

an English Renaissance upstart

cruising around with the classicists

Gemini and Apollo

sailing the Sea of Tranquility

cresting an Ocean of Storms

here and now

at the authorship conference

literary inquisition

star chamber, torturing

the question:

was Shakespeare really Shakespeare?

or the Earl of Oxford?

We circle in space.

Did he sign his name

hand write a manuscript

(disputed hand)

compose the music

trumpet fanfares and an aubade

this simple man of Stratford?

Skylab trainees

we ponder

his dance with Don Juan of Austria

flamboyant in Love’s Labours Lost and Othello

an intimate of France and Spain.

Could our untraveled bard step so lavishly

before the conqueror at England’s gates

light a Spanish fire in Elizabeth’s court?

Somersaulting through weightless space

we come undone

froth at the mouth when we brush our teeth

spray onto walls a pointillist painting.

The shaker of spears was any playwright

needing anonymity in a dangerous time.

Stratford kept Oxford

umbilically tethered to earth.

Reading Greek and Latin in the original

marking out verses of his blue boar bible

David and his harp, the artist at court

practicing legalities in the sonnets

this unlettered actor in his verse

sang songs of strange birds

the phoenix half-dreamer,

the siren, all-seeming

this local village man.

From mission control

our brains are bombarded

invisible relays, the tapping of keys

sending whispers through space

close as a closet, farther

than freedom or fear.

We’ve practiced for this.

dangled in partial gravity

spun in neutral buoyancy

Snub-nosed and charging

we’re riding the rocket

not easy but hard

to moonwalk again

past an oak grove of dead astronauts

and ideas

when Stratford was a Roman road

and Oxford a crossing for cows.

Patricia Keeney, 2009

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by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h

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