Erik Campbell

March 12, 2024

“Considering Metal Man (as a Template for World Peace)” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

CONSIDERING METAL MAN (AS A TEMPLATE FOR WORLD PEACE)

The sum of evil would be greatly diminished if men
could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.
—Pascal

He sits in Union Station so that you don’t have to,
Covered in metallic paint, not moving, like applied

Pascal taken one step publicly further. The tourists
Patronize him; put money in his gold painted fedora,

And encourage him not to explain. The homeless wish
They had his strangeness, his calculation, his economy

Of gesture. The writers know he is a fleshed out
Character worthy of 200 pages or more, a catatonic

Knight-errant appearing everywhere in full armor.
The philosophers see him as a meta-symbol,

A shimmering sage who sits better than the Buddha.
Look how he sits and stares, they say. Observe how

Nobody dies because of this.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
Tribute to Poets Writing Abroad

__________

Erik Campbell: “One afternoon in the summer of 1994 I was driving to work and I heard Garrison Keillor read Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘Tenderness’ on The Writer’s Almanac. After he finished the poem I pulled my car over and sat for some time. I had to. That is why I write poems. I want to make somebody else late for work.” (web)

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January 5, 2021

“Poet and Audience” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

POET AND AUDIENCE

I. The Argument: You Wondered Why You Weren’t Published

It’s because the postman has opened
All your submissions and kept them
Tucked your words, as it were, under
His proverbial, federal wing.

And just so you know,
Your love poems work.
He reads them to his wife in bed
Before what has recently become

Most lyrical sex; he even adds
A few verbs here and there
For the sake of flow.

 

II. The Consolation

But you’ll be pleased to know
He generally leaves your
Enjambment alone
And understands the way irony

Goes; a fulcrum for your failure
And his formally elegiac evenings
Which he now has the diction
And courage to call epiphanic.

His only regret
Is that you aren’t
More prolific.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

__________

Erik Campbell: “One afternoon in the summer of 1994 I was driving to work and I heard Garrison Keillor read Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘Tenderness’ on The Writer’s Almanac. After he finished the poem I pulled my car over and sat for some time. I had to. That is why I write poems. I want to make somebody else late for work.” (web)

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June 11, 2020

“The Vikings Between Us” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

THE VIKINGS BETWEEN US

It’s important to think periodically
of the Vikings, so often having to

glance at the water to see ships rowing
into port that look like their own, but

sometimes aren’t. Here there be dragons,
friends, so no Middle Ages mist is needed,

nor the death-beat sound of distant drums.
How candidly and dreadfully those ships

rowed onto shore, as though the tide were
in on the joke, as if it were a homecoming

of sorts. And 1,000 years later she says
she left her husband because she could

never tell what he was thinking, and I
said that’s what you think, without thinking.

Neither of us knew much at the time, only
that it was dark and that we longed for warm,

rudderless breath on our necks because
something important had failed us both.

The night became a sadness of imagination
from there, and ended in a bed because we

couldn’t agree on the Vikings between us,
even if they were rowing toward us or no.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020

__________

Erik Campbell: “One afternoon in the summer of 1994 I was driving to work and I heard Garrison Keillor read Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘Tenderness’ on The Writer’s Almanac. After he finished the poem I pulled my car over and sat for some time. I had to. That is why I write poems. I want to make somebody else late for work.”

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August 28, 2018

“Sound and Sense” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

SOUND AND SENSE

Genesis 2:19

Work wouldn’t have understood his mission’s delicacy,
and why he needed to be naked on Monday instead
of at the office, buttoned-down and pressed, in order
to play Garden of Eden, to be The Gardener, weeding

out words that just didn’t fit. He decided to call in sick
last night, after his wife slammed the door. That is
the sound of hope losing its feathers, he said after, aloud
to the hallway mirror which insisted on underscoring

his wrong. The door sounded nothing at all like slam,
he thought. Perhaps thak. And when the mirror ended
up smashed it didn’t surprise him that the glass didn’t
make the sound of succor. But when he later labeled

his cat Meow before bed things seemed a bit better,
the very air made windy with honesty. Renaming things
naked in his kitchen the next morning the phone kept
ringing, but he hadn’t named it yet (he knew ring would

be small, cliché) so it couldn’t be answered. Although
rechristening nouns in his cupboards and drawers took
all morning (turning on every appliance and listening
for verity, dropping each piece of flatware on the floor;

so many silver sounds, he thought, compounding this
crucial list), the concrete nouns were nothing compared to
the abstract—although he did manage to successfully rename
“justice” phoosh while drinking coffee, just after “cook”

became siss. And so softly he progressed through the audible
afternoon. The coffee soon became brandy, which shortly
became shllip. By 4 PM she still hadn’t returned (although,
he surmised, she may have phoned). At 4:30 he struggled

to give “pathetic” more precision and failed. At 5 he decided
to call his office (having momentarily dubbed “phone” ring
for utilitarian, not honest, reasons); his secretary answered
the ring with an easy hello, followed by a deep sigh, sibilating

through the receiver. “How did you know it was me?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Who’s calling?” It was almost enough
to make him go upstairs and get dressed, but the stairs were still
nameless, dangerous; he hadn’t a clue yet where they might lead.

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

__________

Erik Campbell: “I recently left Papua, Indonesia, where my wife and I lived for five years. Although I’m currently homeless and jobless in America, I’m very happy that I can now procure bacon and decent cheese whenever I damn well please.” (web)

 

Erik Campbell is the guest on episode #46 of the Rattlecast. Click here to watch …

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April 10, 2018

“The Man Kissed the Letter” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

THE MAN KISSED THE LETTER

The man kissed the letter slowly
Before dropping it in the mailbox.

It felt awkward dropping
My gas bill in after this.

Even my packet of poems
Couldn’t help, whittled down
To imprecise love letters,
Photocopied for any and all comers.

And I felt suddenly as shameless
As a man in a bar teaching
A pretty woman to shoot pool.

This is nothing new to you.

You’ve seen the man
Kissing the letter.

Perchance you’ve been the man
In the bar. As for me,

Anymore I’ll take any scrap of shame
That the Greeks left us.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

__________

Erik Campbell: “One afternoon in the summer of 1994 I was driving to work and I heard Garrison Keillor read Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘Tenderness’ on The Writer’s Almanac. After he finished the poem I pulled my car over and sat for some time. I had to. That is why I write poems. I want to make somebody else late for work.” (web)

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August 4, 2016

“Great Caesar’s Ghost” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

GREAT CAESAR’S GHOST

I was on my third drink in my mother’s basement
because it was Christmas and my father is dead

and took with him the plural possessive
of the basement and the house above it.

He was so tired before the end
that he spoke only in Freudian slips.

He painted houses and sighed a lot before
he died, and my older brother who is clever said

if you divided up his sighs you would have words
but all the words would be a synonym for “sigh.”

And when he died I remembered something
funny he said at a restaurant one night:

“I bet you Caesar would hate his salad.”
I remembered this and whenever I read

a menu, I think of Caesar, pissed
that the Greek salad is superior

even though they were punks. It happens
like this. A man becomes a salad joke,

becomes drop cloths in the basement draped
over an old bed frame. The drop cloths

become abstract paintings I can squint through
and finally sigh to, because a man can’t fail

a Rorschach test, even if he’s dead
drunk because it’s Christmas and cold.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

[download audio]

___________

Erik Campbell: “I read and write poetry to remind myself that I have a soul that needs a periodic tune-up.” (website)

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June 30, 2015

“What I Mean When I Use the Term, ‘Witch Doctor Sad'” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

WHAT I MEAN WHEN I USE THE TERM, “WITCH DOCTOR SAD”

After a hard spring rain when the after
air has just enough heft, I think

of the witch doctor the mining company
I barely worked for for five years

would fly in from Sulawesi to Papua
for the corrupt Regional Governor’s

Annual Golf Tournament, which
the Governor always won by fiat or had to

sometimes lose to his current mistress,
imported from Timika for the week.

The witch doctor’s job was to keep the rain
at bay by way of herbal fires and atavistic

chants; the mistress’s job was not to be
the corrupt Governor’s wife for as long

as she and the trip would last. And I
wrote the above so that you’ll understand

what I mean by insisting there are few things
sadder than a witch doctor failing in the rain

with an audience watching and waiting,
pointing out the sky to him with golf clubs.

—from Rattle #47, Spring 2015

__________

Erik Campbell: “I read and write poetry to remind myself that I have a soul that needs a periodic tune-up.” (website)

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