Skip to main content

Poem By James Franco



Eyewear is very glad to feature a poem today from James Franco's new chapbook, a UK exclusive.


James Franco, American Poet


BLUE BEING

by James Franco



There is a surface
That we all make together
And the wild man
Seems to pop through

Like a line dancer out of step
And others start complaining
That he doesn’t know the moves
And he’s stepping on everyone’s toes.

There was a man named Mike
Who called my father five times a day.
You’d hear each burdened voice of the family
Shout across the house,

Daaad, it’s Mike.

At dinner my father often explained
That Mike saw demons.
They spoke to him,
He thought they were real.

I pictured a flaming blue being
Entering the dingy room,
And sitting by Mike
On the gray sheeted bed.



'Blue Being' is from James Franco's chapbook, Strongest of the Litter, and appears courtesy of Hollyridge Press .

 

Comments

Daaad, it's a garbage poem.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said…
I understand your poem and I like it very much. Your use of imagery is strong, clear and clever. Thanks for this poem
Not James Franco said…
strong first stanza then it crashes and burns. for some reason I assumed Franco would do better. can't have it all I guess...

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".