The speaker of this poem declares, “Virgins have written some resplendent books” while trying to convince himself that a girl “may not be a beauty, but she’s cute.” A dialogue between this poem’s speaker and his wife about the sound of the wind as they play chess is followed by a Goethe reference in the line, “Who rides so late in the night and the wind? / It is the writer’s grief.” The speaker of this poem is raised by his Aunt Maud and falls in love with his future wife on a high school field trip. After being abandoned on a blind date arranged by the typist Jane Dean, the daughter of this poem’s speaker drowns in an icy lake in a possible suicide. This poem was written in New Wye on 80 index cards and begins, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.” For 10 points, the fictional scholar Charles Kinbote wrote a commentary on what 999-line poem by John Shade that titles a novel by Vladimir Nabokov? ■END■
ANSWER: “Pale Fire”
<American Literature>
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