I Have No Idea What I am Doing » ideas about poetry

Poetry: If A Clown

no idea — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:33:16 +0000

My friend sent this, and for the first 4 lines I thought I was going to hate it. From the New Yorker. Enjoy.

If a Clown

by Stephen Dunn

If a clown came out of the woods,

a standard-looking clown with oversized

polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,

a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him

on the edge of your property,

there’d be nothing funny about that,

would there? A bear might be preferable,

especially if black and berry-driven.

And if this clown began waving his hands

with those big white gloves

that clowns wear, and you realized

he wanted your attention, had something

apparently urgent to tell you,

would you pivot and run from him,

or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed

to understand here was a clown

who didn’t know where he was,

a clown without a context?

What could be sadder, my friend thought,

than a clown in need of a context?

If then the clown said to you

that he was on his way to a kid’s

birthday party, his car had broken down,

and he needed a ride, would you give

him one? Or would the connection

between the comic and the appalling,

as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear

that you’d be paralyzed by it?

And if you were the clown, and my friend

hesitated, as he did, would you make

a sad face, and with an enormous finger

wipe away an imaginary tear? How far

would you trust your art? I can tell you

it worked. Most of the guests had gone

when my friend and the clown drove up,

and the family was angry. But the clown

twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird

and gave it to the kid, who smiled,

let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,

the birthday boy, what from then on

would be your relationship with disappointment?

With joy? Whom would you blame or extol?

Little Ashes, a movie about Dali and…Lorca? The Generation of ’27

no idea — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:56:13 +0000

I had no idea that artist Dali and poet Lorca were friends and lovers, or that Lorca was murdered at 38 by Spanish nationalists during the Spanish Civil War and dumped in an unmarked grave. Here’s Lorca’s profile from the Academy of American Poets. This movie, Little Ashes, is apparently already out. Anyone seen it? How did I miss it? Looks gorgeous. It’s playing at Living Room Theaters, where movies are $5 on Mon and Tues. Who wants to go? Tuesday, let’s say? 7:45.

(Seen Twilight? Me neither. The actor who plays Dali is apparently head vampire in it.)

I have to admit, Dali just doesn’t hit me hard. The one thing that I saw and immediately felt was the Lobster Telephone at the Tate a few years ago. It’s one of Dali’s sillier works (I dislike his gore) of a black rotary telephone with a plastic lobster glued across the handset. It’s hilarious. I think about it all the time when new techy gadgets are released.

But I had no idea about La Generacion del 27, the name for the surrealist group of Spanish artists that included Dali, Lorca, and a filmaker named Bunuel in addition to other poets.

Poem to live with: Delphiniums in a Window Box, by Dean Young

no idea — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:27:34 +0000

This poem appeared in the New Yorker’s May 18th, 2009 issue. I can’t stop reading it and I’m going to be a little bad and put the entire thing here, apologies to Dean Young. Buy his books.

Read it aloud.

Delphiniums in a Window Box

Every sunrise, even strangers’ eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, characters’
rages and poets’ strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Did it feel like something swallowed?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I’m talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says,
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmers’ market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.

*sigh* Oh how I want to go to Iowa for a MFA in poetry. The month I spent there studying with James Galvin was catatonically beautiful.