James Franco's "Blue Being": an explication

So James Franco is the biggest thing to hit poetry since Jewel and Tupac.

I am torn now as I was torn then--I really want these famous people to be good poets.

Really I do. I remember being disappointed picking up (actually just seeing the title of) A Night Without Armor and just being wholly underwhelmed by The Rose that Grew from Concrete.

So when Actor-turned-Poet James Franco started popping up all over the blogo-twitter-facebook-sphere I was trepidatiously intrigued.

And then Eyewear (linked above) published his poem. I'm not convinced their lineation is correct, so I'll take out the extra spaces. Feel free to send corrections:


BLUE BEING

by James Franco

There is a surface

That we all make together

And the wild man

Seems to pop through

Like a line dancer out of step

And others start complaining

That he doesn’t know the moves

And he’s stepping on everyone’s toes.

There was a man named Mike

Who called my father five times a day.

You’d hear each burdened voice of the family

Shout across the house,

Daaad, it’s Mike.

At dinner my father often explained

That Mike saw demons.

They spoke to him,

He thought they were real.

I pictured a flaming blue being

Entering the dingy room,

And sitting by Mike

On the gray sheeted bed.

Part of me can hear William Logan's voice crawling through my ears: "what damned surface? how do we make it together? You expect the reader to believe this bullshit? No reader is going to buy this. Quit telling the reader what is and what isn't."

But I ignored William's advice for a while so let's skip that, shall we (note: he was at least partially correct).

The title: "Blue Being" (let's forego the all caps). It's ambiguous and playful and sonic but it's also cliched. Both words. "Blue" and "Being" are struck right out of some Beat-Ashbery mashup. Again, though, they sound nice (and it's better than the possibility of the reverse: "Being Blue").

The two opening stanzas don't give us anything the transcendentalists already hadn't--and folks have said it better before. There's an interesting colloquialism regarding line dancing--one assumes most poets are too uppity to know the boot-scootin' boogie and may even scoff at the electric slide--but if one's attempting to secure a broader readership, I can see the appeal of gutterizing one's metaphors. The problem is that it's not a terribly interesting symbol. The out-of-step line dancer. I think it implies we're having more fun that most people say we're having. 

Having said that, I must address the damned word "seems." Franco--and all poets--should know better. As Pound said, either it is or it isn't. A little decisiveness goes a long way.

Then to this Mike fellow. Would the father have to "often explain" that Mike saw demons? Wouldn't that be something you'd likely remember?

Then the image of the "flaming blue being." 

Snore.

Like, folks, not even the promise of the hint of a description. And it's in a "dingy room." Franco is demonstrating a serious need for the "show, don't tell" lecture. 

The poem's not good. It's not terrible. I've read terrible poems. It's just not good. I could see it getting a chuckle or two with a well-timed reading at a poetry jam but unless Mr. Franco is releasing a YouTube series instead of a book he better get serious with his verse.

I hope for his sake and that of Graywolf Press the remainder of his book's poems are superior to this one. Otherwise The Strongest of the Litter will turn out to be a runt.