I've got a clutch of vintage photographs that didn't make it into Hollywood Cafe: Coffee With the Stars -- acquired too late for publication, but too good to pass up. Here's a backlot, between-scenes shot of Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon getting their cups freshened by a snazzily-attired unnamed Columbia Pictures gent, on the set of 1954's My Sister Eileen. The caption on the back of the photo is headlined "COFFEETIME," it's credited and stamped "Van Pelt," the studio's veteran photographer, Homer Van Pelt. A World War II Army colleague of director John Ford, post-war, Van Pelt was hired on to shoot production stills for almost all of Ford's films.
And nothing to do with Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Homer Van Pelt or John Ford, here's a poem by Ron Padgett, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation. A Google search reveals that there's actually a roaster and cafe in Knoxville, Tennessee, called Three Bears Coffee. Maybe the proprietor was inspired by Padgett's caffeinated musings? (P.S. -- Note the name of Padgett's publisher. It's a caffeinated conspiracy!)
Prose Poem ("The morning coffee.")
of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of
brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the
day on. It's something to do between being asleep and being awake.
Surely there's something better to do, though, than to drink a cup of
instant coffee. Such as meditate? About what? About having a cup of
coffee. A cup of coffee whose first drink is too hot and whose last drink
is too cool, but whose many in-between drinks are, like Baby Bear's por-
ridge, just right. Papa Bear looks disgruntled. He removes his spectacles
and swivels his eyes onto the cup that sits before Baby Bear, and then,
after a discrete cough, reaches over and picks it up. Baby Bear doesn't
understand this disruption of the morning routine. Papa Bear brings
the cup close to his face and peers at it intently. The cup shatters in his
paw, explodes actually, sending fragments and brown liquid all over the
room. In a way it's good that Mama Bear isn't there. Better that she rest
in her grave beyond the garden, unaware of what has happened to the
world.
Ron Padgett, "Prose Poem" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2013 by Ron Padgett. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehousepress.org
fathers day poems
Posted by: happy fathers day | April 27, 2016 at 08:18 AM