It has been said that girls
just want
to have fun. Oh Cyndi Lauper
if only you had met David Lehman.
“But what
does fun mean to Dave?” skeptical
Cyndi asks, unsure of how exactly
to fit Da-vid Leh-man into her pop
hit wonder.
Well, Ms. Lauper, perhaps you and
your skepticism are right perhaps
Mr. Lehman’s fun has only a little
to do with light gels
and amplifiers and a bit more to do
with the lovable and devious solitary figure who has
systematically
deranged his sensibilities enough
to bound the 20 odd flights of
stairs to the no-access-rooftop so that he can best see language, chance, and some basic poetic instincts
swirl and toss themselves back down
into a rainbowed street puddle. “Yes!
exclamation point! that was fun”
leaps David Lehman
and turns to face us, gun in hand
“Nobody move! This is a robbery!
Put
your pre-established codes of decision in the bag and no one will get
hurt.”
Of course by hurt he means fun; by
no one he means everyone. And so we move
through sestinas dedicated to fellow poet Jorie Graham’s big hair, pantoums
about the 1944 film noir Laura, prose
poems turned personal ads, Kafka in Las Vegas, and parties where art for art’s sake nurses a vodka
gimlet.
And maybe just maybe
David Lehman hopes,
as he looks out at the city’s
horizon,
he has defeated the sneers of
selfish men,
and all the dreary intercourse of
daily life.
-- Becca Jensen
[Washington University, St. Louis: April 2, 2009]