Poetry Friday: The Pleasingly Perplexing Poems and Paintings of Calef Brown

Browsing our poetry shelves for something to post about today, I made an unfortunate (though far from scientific) discovery. Several humorous poetry books I picked up didn’t hold up well for cover-to-cover reading. Taken alone, the poems were, for the most part, funny, cute, and clever. But reading one after another, they quickly lost their freshness. There’s only so many poems you can read that have the exact same form and the exact same meter and the exact same rhyme scheme and the exact same flavor of punch line.

So that’s why I’m not going to talk about any of those books. Instead, let’s take a look at some books of poetry and art by Calef Brown, namely Flamingos on the Roof, Polkabats and Octopus Slacks, and Dutch Sneakers and Flea-Keepers.

First of all, these books are visually stunning, from cover to cover. Not a page goes by without a painting or line drawing by Brown. His paintings are lush affairs: bold colors and shapes with folk art sensibility.

And they’re weird. The poems are unapologetically oddball, filled with surreal suppositions and quirky conclusions, and the paintings complement them perfectly. Insects with human faces, scowling unicorns, Poseidon in a kelp toupee – all par for the course.

The form, length, meter, and rhyme scheme vary from poem to poem – essential, as I noted, for cover-to-cover reading. While I think every poem does generally rhyme, Brown isn't afraid of ending a poem with a line that doesn't. This only adds to the whimsy; the poems do not end with an answer, but rather with another question.

And Brown doesn’t seek to explain the bizarre scenarios he posits. Why do two children hear flamingos on the roof, the night of December twenty-third? Why does Grandmother Pennybaker sketch a dozen Martian men at eleven o’clock? Why do Polkabats scare off birds by "Loudly screeching nasty words like 'Stroganoff'"? Stop asking questions and enjoy the flight of fancy!

Brown’s works are the poetic and artistic parallel of a Daniel Pinkwater story. It’s hardly surprising that Brown was the cover artist for Pinkwater’s latest novel, The Neddiad. The more literal-minded kids and adults among us may find these books perplexing. For kids who are willing to relax and enjoy pure absurdity, however, there’s a lot here to enjoy.

I'll leave you with some lines from one of my favorites, though it's one of the most straighforward poems in these books and therefore not the most representative. But it's funny. From "Ten-Cent Haiku", from Flamingos on the Roof:

Shiny silver friend.
I will never let you go.
Look! An ice cream truck!

Find more poetry picks at this week's Poetry Friday round-up at A Wrung Sponge!

Polkabats and Octopus Slacks: 14 Stories, Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Dutch Sneakers and Flea-Keepers: 14 More Stories, Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Flamingos on the Roof: Poems and Paintings, Houghton Mifflin, 2006.