About the Poems - PS
About the Poems
by Peter Shippy “Orpheus Breaks-up the Band” Inspired by Michael Schmidt’s The First Poets (Knopf) and Jean Cocteau’s Orphée and Le Testament d'Orphée. Judge: Who are you? Orpheus: I’m a poet. Judge: What does that mean? Orpheus: To write and not be a writer. “Ka-Boom” ka n in ancient Egypt, the soul of a dead person, said to be able to reside in a statue of a person after death boom v to utter a warning in Bryan Ferry’s voice “The Most Up to Date Explanation of the Universe’s Absence of Meaning” An orphan from a failed book (#433) of sonnet-like poems. “Sadness, After Li-Shang” Before leaving Emerson my dear pal and ex-officemate David Daniel stapled a rather disturbing (and yet…alluring) photo of an old, shirtless Ezra Pound to our wall. Now, his bellybutton follows me. I’m afraid to remove Ezra—he has the pec(cavi)s of a 30-year old…. This Pound reminds me of the Russian / Dominican / Irish men I see walking around Jamaica Pond in the summer, seniors with their shirts rolled-up, letting their bellies fly! Those are men on autopilot. “When I Whistled to Robert Mitchum, Wintry Beneath” My new manuscript includes many short plays or variations on ventriloquy. Inspired by: Kenneth Koch, Daniil Kharms, and Joyce Mansour. Ben Harper: What religion do you profess, preacher? Rev. Harry Powell: The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us. from The Night of the Hunter (1955)