Ned Discusses Beckett in Key West

Overview
Excerpts

by Lawrence Mallory

Larry Mallory’s Ned Collection is a TED Talk delivered by Descartes, while being heckled by Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin. Ned is a forensic detective following the trail of what’s been left out, what’s beneath and outside of. The poems stand on their head to point at or not point at the secrets behind the secrets. Human foibles get a wry tongue-lashing and a pat on the back. In one piece, Ned admits he’s a ‘smart ass.’ Yes, his poetry inspires you to look at the world with one raised eyebrow. Buckle up, a load of surprising words, images and inconclusive obser-vations are coming your way!

—Madeline Artenberg, author of Awakened, poems by Madeline Artenberg and Iris N. Schwartz

As a devotee of Kant, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, Lawrence Mallory not only views humanity through a bemused philosophical prism but his vision is alive to what is comic in our foibles, misadventures, and in our tragedies. The poet is quizzical but never judgmental; he observes the mud wrestling-like chaos of the late 20^th Century and aims to make sense of senselessness. My mother-in-law wants to know/what it means./Krapp’s Last Tape./Is Krapp going to die?/Is there a disease?/Is he getting ready/to kill himself?/I suggest the meaning is/there is no meaning. What if sense is nonsense? Without pretense or affectation, the poet asks whether all that is beautifully idiosyncratic in us is helpless before the ravenous forces of consumerism and surveillance. It is in the answering of almost unanswerable questions where the greatness of Mallory’s poetry lies. This only begins to scratch the surface of what makes Ned Discusses Beckett in Key West: The Complete Poems of Lawrence Mallory, a marvel. These poems are pleasurable in their sardonic darkness; they are made for the 21^st Century.

—Stephanie Dickinson, author of Girl Behind the Door and The Emily Fables

Lawrence Mallory was a unique individual and poet who affected an extended family of writers and readers. In Ned The Monster we sense the man behind the Ned persona who argues for living life on his own terms and whose pithy observations create a kind of existential wisdom. Born in West Virginia, he studied philosophy and literature and spent the rest of his life involved with the arts while making a living as an excellent technical writer. By reading his poetry, you’ll know the man’s essence.

—Tony Vlachos

Larry Mallory's Ned the Monster was published in 1997 and Some City of Their Desire was published in 2000, both by Linear Arts Press. Retired from Hudson Pier Poets' workshop (co-founder), The Unnamable Poetry Reading (former host) and the New York Quarterly (editorial staff), his poems have appeared in The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks, Medicinal Purposes, New York Quarterly, The Potomac Review, Salonika, and Split Verse.

Lawrence Mallory

Key West: Discussing Beckett

We’ve been to see Krapp’s Last Tape,

director, a friend from Zimbabwe,
which used to be called Rhodesia.
We have brought drinks to the swimming pool.
My wife and I sit at the edge of the pool
dangling our feet into the water.
My mother-in-law wants to know
what it means.
Krapp’s Last Tape.
Is Krapp going to die?
Is there a disease?
Is he getting ready
to kill himself?
I suggest the meaning is
there is no meaning.
After Krapp slips on the banana peel
and the soliloquies begin on the tape recorder,
there is no plot.
My wife and her mother insist
that bearded men from India,
who own collections of Rolls Royces,
know that there are truths hidden
in every microscopic breath of air.
The details aren’t clear yet,
but progress is being made.

It is quiet by the pool.
The Palmetto bugs
like the cut limes and quinine water
but let the humans have the gin.
Not far away there exist
The sounds of the semi-tropic night.
Drunken tourists exit the closing bars,
tomorrow a sick breakfast and then the beach.
The moaners squat in alleyways
against the sides of buildings
and know without being told
that Key West, Caya Hueso,
means Island of Bones.

The scene changes for no reason,
We are living in Long Island.
It is winter and the days are gray and short.
We are trying to be domestic,
with two new children.
The director calls from Key West.
He has tested positive.
The director,
Caucasian blond,
born in what used to be Rhodesia,
living on the edge of America
in Key West,
once said he was thinking of
changing his own name to Zimbabwe,
dead in four months.

Some Places I've Driven From

The land here lies flat beneath the sky.
Any mountains will be supplied
by memory. Some places leave you

wrapped in ribbons. In others
you lay open. It is all much the same.
Innocent roads have claimed many lives.

Not far from here there’s a cemetery
full of poets. In the morning
we sit on the patio and drink coffee

spiked with last night’s argument.
The fat man mows the lawn. He’s already
grumbled politics and there’s nothing

left to do but cut the grass. We agree,
there’s hardly ever an escape. I lay
my book on my lap and think road.

Memento Mori

I have lusted after pensions,
inhabited guilty offices,
and numbered innocent people.
I have woken at night
to hear my pinstripes moaning.
I have commuted without mercy,
I have clutched my stomach,
I have had my shoes polished.

Green birds have wept without me.
Tailors have measured me and laughed.
Corporations have collected
My urine and tested me for lies.
Musicians have understood much
that has escaped my grasp.
Priests have blessed me
and worried about their wine.

Telephones have pursued me into subways.
I have bored people
with interesting scientific theories.
Computer programs have shown me
to be mistaken many times.
I have thought myself into abandoned buildings
and scattered ancestral photographs
like dried leaves around my feet.