At the start of the
book, the poet shows how the title poem got its name, from a list of “Saleable
Titles.” He could have chosen, among
others, Fried Shoes, or Cars are love, or Earth is not even a star, but instead went with The Happy Birthday of Death.
The lightheartedness
continues into the table of Contents.
The title of the first poem is Notes
After Blacking Out. The second is How Happy I Used To Be (“…no---I’m in
it/for the excitement.”) Further on down: Discord;
The Frightening Difference; Death; Paranoia in Crete; Mortal
Infliction; to list but a few. Plus
his most famous work, Bomb.
Actually, I’ve cited
Gregory Corso and this book in a previous post, but that was then and now is a
good time for some more examples of the delight on the pages therein, lines
like “To die by cobra is not to die by bad pork” and “The punches of winter
knocked out a herd of deer,/Winter left the wood like a plate of chicken
bones.” and “I knew you’d come, wild architect!”
And then there’s
this short poem:
A LITTLE LOST
by Gregory Corso
Immortal goat
Ring your good bell;
With God’s ear
loaned
I eavesdrop near—
Ring! bright crier
The Vast to hear.
***************
But it is the
following poem that knocked me out this reading. (And, I know they need no introduction, but a
link might help: Ted Williams was a famous
baseball player from the 1950’s and 1960’s, and Randall Jarrell was a famous poet
from the same period.)
DREAM OF A BASEBALL
STAR
by Gregory Corso
I dreamed Ted
Williams
leaning at night
against the Eiffel
Tower, weeping.
He was in uniform
and his bat lay at
his feet
--- knotted and
twiggy.
‘Randall Jarrell
says you’re a poet!’ I cried.
‘So do I! I say
you’re a poet!’
He picked up his bat
with blown hands;
stood there
astraddle as he would in the batter’s box,
and laughed!
flinging his schoolboy wrath
toward some
invisible pitcher’s mound
--- waiting the
pitch all the way from heaven.
It came; hundreds
came! all afire!
He swung and swung
and swung and connected not one
sinker curve hook or
right-down-the-middle.
A hundred strikes!
The umpire dressed
in strange attire
thundered his
judgment : YOU’RE OUT!
And the phantom
crowd’s horrific boo
dispersed the
gargoyles from Notre Dame.
And I screamed in my
dream:
God! throw thy
merciful pitch!
Herald the crack of bats!
Hooray the sharp
liner to left!
Yea the double, the
triple!
Hosannah the home
run!
