Adrian Matejka
For the past few years, I’ve been working on a series of ars poetica inspired by Danez Smith and Patricia Smith. The poems are about everything from where a poem starts to how a poem performs in the world. “Har Hars Poetica” was one of my early attempts, and it felt off almost as soon as I finished the first draft. It was inspired by a poetry performance I saw in 1993 that was exaggerated and distracting, but many other people in the audience responded positively. I’ll never forget: the poet read with these long pauses for laughs, eyerolls, and lots of pulled faces that reminded me of Jim Carrey in his In Living Color days.
The first draft of the poem felt (and still feels) a little mean-spirited and unnecessary. Part of that is because I remain ambivalent to a particular kind of poetry performance. Part of it is the language of the first draft: the verbs are sharper and more judgmental, maybe, than I would ordinarily use or that would end up in a final draft. And part of it has to do with Aristotle’s idea that humor is always at someone’s expense, whether the joke is on us or someone else. Who, really, is the butt of the joke in this moment? So I scrapped the draft and I decided to redirect, to think about my own performance on the page and in the world.
< draft >
Har Hars Poetica
The second time I stumbled into a poetry reading,
it was spring in Bloomington again & a famous poet
wearing practical spectacles offered us a pause before
saying what he wrote wasn’t for our applause.
Giggles & hand claps filled the room as he pretended
to stumble through his stylish notebook squiggles.
Hardy har har & small flicks of rain knee slapped
the window. Nobody in that chuckle bunch seemed
as inspired by spring’s thaw, not even when it appeared
uselessly in one of his Steely Dan homilies. They were
yukking-it up, loud as Hee Haw as this guy dusted off
his elbow patches, mimed & sighed into his new collection.
He kept looking affectionately from book to sky,
unseeable through the ceiling’s poorly sectioned patina.
Dude’s laugh track hooted with sublime feeling
as he raised an eyebrow & said, This sestina’s fine.
& when he straight-faced: I only fly to Muswellbrook on
Tuesdays, the crowd shook like corn stalks busking July.
< final version >
Memoirs Poetica
& after all these years of uncertain pauses
passing as line breaks & light-skinned jokes
disguised as self-applauses, the volunteer dancers
in my head finally apologize for their faux pas.
The rest of my notebook scribbles are poem
lookalikes at best for my fellow chuckle bunch.
& there are a lot of them: uneven verses
as bumpy as the red pickup that dropped
us at the field edge to shuck corn. The truck’s
half-locked tailgate, “Reagan For Prez” sticker:
familiar as hay-fever sneezes in summer.
*
The mosquitoes eeeeing like a laugh track always
chewed on me, amidst a whole gang of losers
who said Yeah to five dollars a day to be corn pickers.
After all that insect nibbling & by-hand shucking,
I sat slightly richer on my dad’s mohair chair at a desk
under the open window of my imagination’s
guest room. The poems written there began with
Galileo’s sketchy Saturn staring back at me. His version
from 1616 teared up just like an eyeball that read
a love poem for the first time. Its ocular universe sniffle-
cried over those verses like corn stalks that lost July.