"Three Scenes from Jurassic Park," by Mike Ramm

"Three Scenes from Jurassic Park"

T-rex chews up the jeep with the kids inside.

When he bellows from the depths of his

tremendous chest, my six year old son roars,

"I know what he's saying; he's saying,

'I'm king and I can do what I want!'"

The gallimimus herd wheels every which way,

trying to escape the pursuit of King Tyrant Lizard.

My ten year old son, who can actually pronounce

pachycephalosaurus and every dinosaur in print,

informs me that coloring dinosaurs is guesswork,

and I can assign them any color I please.

Dr. Grant stares out the helicopter window

at a flock of birds which, as the theory goes,

evolved from dinosaurs, and I think maybe

there's hope for a bellowing world after all

if T-rex himself could lose the drive to be king

renouncing his title, diminishing himself until

the orange chest held just enough air for a song,

until fledgling wings delivered him into the sky.

*****

A year ago I bought a quarterly poetry journal for a quarter at a used book store.

One poem stood out to me in it. It was "Three Scenes from Jurassic Park," by Mike Ramm. The poem took a pop-culture resident and extracted something inspired from it. I love it when stuff does that.

On a lark, I googled "Mike Ramm," and found an email address. It turned out to be the same Mike. He's agreed to let me use the poem, and also answered a few questions for me. What a swell dude.

Mike Ramm Q &A

Question # 1. What is poetry to you?

I certainly hold with Robert Frost when he says a poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world. The key word, of course, being momentary. A poem temporarily crystalizes something that is otherwise ineffable.

Question #2 What do you do?

I've been teaching high school English for twenty-two years. (So what do you plan to do with your degree in English, Jeff?)

Question #3 Do you still writing occasionally?

Just starting to write again. Something about 9/11 forced the writer in me underground. Paying too much attention to politics is toxic to the imagination. Not surprising, though, my recent poems mostly focus on environmental and cultural issues.

Much thanks to Mike for his help.

Junk Mail: "Posthumous," by Jean Nordhaus

Today's poem is "Posthumous." It was written by Jean Nordhaus. You should read it here. Really, why wouldn't you? having come this far.

I first heard this poem listening to Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" podcast, and it stuck with me ever since.

My grandmother's junk mail still routinely arrives at our door step. When it started I wondered how the senders didn't know that she was dead, and considered what her son felt as I watched him intercept telegrams to the dead.

Aside from the small gems of description found throughout (letters become "cold flakes drifting/through the mail slot," and "the last tremblings of your voice/have drained from my telephone wire."), it performs well that creative magic, where cotidian threads are woven into something extra-ordinary.

Nordhaus is a member of the Washington Writers' Publishing House, a non-profit press in the Washington-Baltimore areas. She has published four books, including Innocence, which, oddly enough, you can read here.

"The Dead" by Billy Collins

I rest on Sundays, so all I'll do is post this, of Billy Collins' (one-time poet laureate of the US) "The Dead."

It's beautiful, and speaks for itself.

Learning to Fall: John Updike's "Baseball"

So it's the fourth of July, so I guess the poem should have some sort of Patriotism.

What could be more American than baseball? Without further babble, I give you "Baseball," by John Updike, who (RIP) died just a few months ago.

I was finished with baseball in second grade, when I took one to the eye playing some warm-up-catch with the only girl on our team. I was on the Expos, and a week earlier I had caught a pop-fly with my nose, a "dark star," a "leaden meteor" on my head. Bloody bloody stuff. So I was done and through, not one of the "chosen"

This poem captures the sport beautifully though. Reading it, I thought I could feel what baseball, and America, is:

"...beneath

the good cheer and sly jazz the chance of failure is everybody's right,

beginning with baseball."

I know that sounds bad, that failure is everybody's right, but it is—we all fail. A ridiculous whiff in baseball youth will help us know now, that after the crushing failures, it's okay. The world has not yet ended.

"Dream Home" William Reichard

Today's poem is "Dream Home," by William Reichard. You can whisked away, to it, by clicking here.

Reichard is from Minnesota, and has published a book of poetry, This Brightness: Poems. There is a short review of the book, where he is quoted:

“I learned a lot about storytelling from watching old movies on television. A visual method of dramatizing mood and message plays out in my poetry, so I owe as much to Hollywood as I do to any specific school of poetic form when it comes to the success of my own creative work.”

"Dream House" begins happily enough, panning the "elegant yet simple" world "south of here." The pleasures—outdoor breakfasts and afternoon swims—only becomes melancholy in the last lines, where the illusion cedes to reality, and only sad, longing voices remain to answer the televisional cry: "And we do, oh Lord. Yes we do."

Plural Monism: Suji Kwock Kim's "Drunk Metaphysics after Ko Un"

Today's poem, "Drunk Metaphysics after Ko Un," by Suji Kwock Kim, can be brought right to your computer screen if you click here.

Watch her read "Drunk Metaphysics" (jump to 17:10), and other poems, below.



I stumbled across Kim's poetry by accident while researching Richard Beban for this very post. Her poetry is acute. "Drunk" is minimal, but meaningful: Are we one? or trillions? And which—of those many—makes us, us?

This talk of division continues, and goes further, in another poem of Kim's, "Monologue for an Onion." It is beautiful, and penetrating, and true. What is at our center?

If you like what Kim does in these poems, you might like these: Julia de Burgos, "To Julia de Burgos" Pablo Neruda "Ode to the Liver."

Wishing Things Were Different: "Antimatter" by Russell Edson

Todays super-fun poem about a special mirror, "Antimatter," by Russell Edson, can be read here, or here, or here. They're all good places to read the thing. Which one you choose is just fate—or

choice—I guess.

Actually, the Lowbrow team has had a change of mind. Due to recent and unforseeable events (you can't blame us) the poem of the day has changed.

It is now "The Reason Why the Closet-man is Never Sad," which you must read by clicking here.

We apologize for making you read "Antimatter," which we love, but it was just the wrong one. "Closet-man" gives a much better first impression of Edson as a poet, the slyness and the wit of his surreal worlds. The closet-man is

obviously sad and afraid of the consequences of living, which we infer this from the ironic title, and, in a most melancholy way, from the unconvincing repetition of the lines "I am never sad."

Playfully whimsical, seriously serious, and often poignant, Edson is a poet alive and kicking. He has published eleven books of poems. Despite of the quality of his work, he has largely remained out of the public eye, and is a self-described hermit.

Thanks to the boon and bane of Google Books, you can read one full book of Edsons poetry online, and preview two others. Click here to be taken to them.

McSweeeney magazine The Believer has an article on Russell Edson, click here to read it.

While talking to Mark Tursi, in the journal Double Room, Edson really pegged what poetry is. Or at least what we, of the offices of Lowbrow Lit, believe it to be:

"All the arts have a strong affinity with poetry. But the difference is that all the other arts are attached to sensory organs like eyes and ears. Poetry can be heard, read, or tapped out on one's back in Morse code; it can be read as Braille through the fingertips. In other words, all other arts have a physical presence which writing has always to earn."

Lastly enjoy this video, an animation to accompany Edson as he reads "Let Us Consider."