Saturday, February 25, 2012

Hamming It Up at Grauman's Chinese Theater

After hands-down performance, 
head temporarily in firmament— 

feat soon to be cast 
permanently in cement.

5 comments:

  1. No kidding, when I first read the title I thought it said "Cheese Theater." This was a side-effect of "hamming," I assume. Or I'm hungry. Anyway, this is another of your poems where the wordplay creates a house of mirrors, every turn the way through it spectacularly disorienting—until you anchor us with the reiterated "-ent" in the last line. Wow!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joseph's right.

    Poetry is a wonderful wordlplay, illuminating house of mirrors. I love the way the "firmament"'s been turned into cement. When I visited Grauman's the frozen hands, feet seemed to me to be nothing more than a badly sculpted sepulchre.

    Where is your lustre now, Clark Gable?

    ReplyDelete
  3. A month from now this Hollywood big shot's gonna do everything you want, Vassilis. I can see it in the stars.

    Digressively speaking, I once stood in the thin sunlight outside GCT for several consecutive mornings, in June 1951, waiting, with 5 cent pocket notebook at the ready, for a celestial sighting.

    The third day, an actual Hollywood star walked by. But of rather low magnitude. (It was difficult later to get much bragging mileage out of the signature of Adolphe Menjou.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cheez, Joe—I love the way you sink your teeth into this poem, convincing even Conrad to take a bite out of it; as for your adolescent pilgrimage to Grauman’s, Tom, you can still take solace in the fact that at that time Adolphe was after all, a bright right-wing star and stellar attraction of the HUAC galaxy who had done his part to rid Hollywood of all that commie pinko scum. That in itself should’ve made his autograph priceless to freedom-loving American moviegoers.

    A month from now....hmm...Greek Easter.I hope that Hollywood big shot can make like a lamb and spit!

    ReplyDelete
  5. If only I'd considered that before tossing it into a trash bin in Mexico, Missouri!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...