Long Playing Egg Poem

Eggs: Father and Son Egg & Cheese Sandies, Griddled Brioche, Yellow Bird Agave Sriracha.

Song: “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night” by The Space Lady
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Poem: “At the Zoo” by Alfred Starr Hamilton
At the Zoo

On the back of an invoice
I wrote my name in large Capitalist June Blue Letters

And because money was involved
And so was my name ever in jeopardy

On the back of the same invoice
I rewrote my name in large Capitalist June Blue Letters

And in Leopardy and in Jeopardy
I resolved, dissolved upon a radical eradicator

Inking in, dissolving upon
Jeopardizing my own name in large Capitalist June Blue Letters

from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave)

Notes: The Space Lady wears a winged helmet. A little red nubbin of a bulb on top lights up. She has lived in a cave. In an early formative experience, she listened to her sister play Schubert on the piano while high for the first time. She saw music dancing around the room, waves of clefts, the colors of notes. She realized she was looking into another dimension– one of the ones always there, and she felt, if only our senses were not so limited, our multi-dimensional existence would be evident to everyone. It is both clear and unclear how this informs her art.

Alfred Starr Hamilton, the bard of Montclair, New Jersey. Born, raised, lived, died in Montclair. Every week during the 1960s, Hamilton would send Cornell’s lit mag (Epoch) about 45 poems. 45 poems. Every week. Boxes of his work cluttered the offices. Thousands of his poems have been lost. Hamilton was not a careful preserver, curator, or even editor of his stuff. Here’s Geof Hewitt quoted in the New York Times: “Alfred Starr Hamilton wrote both breathtaking and inane poems without seeming to know the difference, and I think the editors who published his work, myself included, were sometimes similarly confused.” And in addition to writing a Dickinsonian quantity of poems, Hamilton also wrote (unhinged? poetic? prank?) letters to the local police. Here’s a plum: “Dear Police; Is anything of this kind surreptitious?” reads one letter dated Jan. 10, 1983. “I don’t know. Make sure everything is alright. Send this to the immune officer. I am immune. Alfred Starr Hamilton.” (NYT)

And one last quote from the NYT piece about Hamilton, because these words seem relevant to the Space Lady as well: “Crazy [wo]man? Erratic genius? Authentic, untutored voice? Inkblot misinterpreted as art? All of the above? Cynics and romantics can find something to like in [the Space Lady’s] Hamilton’s life, though it’s unlikely to be the same thing.”

The Space Lady is cult-cool again after retiring from music after her cover of “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night” got picked up by an influential compilation of outsider art called Songs in the Key of Z. Hamilton too was culturally resurrected by those looking for outsiders– Weird New Jersey, purveyors of the Jersey strange. While I think outsider art can be appreciated to some extent its own moment — the Space Lady and Hamilton had small bands of fans in their day– it seems like, with age, weird art, anti-art grows in appeal. Maybe, with retrospect, as the mainstream (pop or art) culture of a particular era clarifies, it become easier to see outsider art as not just strange, but creative in how it rejects the mainstream. Or maybe it’s just that time better protects us from the freaks. I don’t know. Send this to the immune officer. I am immune.

And what of the eggs? I make these egg sandies at least once a week for my son and me. A mainstream dish in our house. An egg sandie is not exactly outsider art by any measure. But maybe not every egg dish need be breathtaking or sublime. And maybe like Hamilton with his thousands of poems (and letters to the police), or the scraps of talents and visions that is the assemblage we know as The Space Lady, it is the sum total itself that is the work of art. I’ve cooked and/or eaten eggs every day now for two weeks. If I can keep this up for another quarter century, maybe it is the practice (not the substance) that elevates the long playing eggpoem to art.

Sources:

“His Poetry Was Odd, But His Letters to the Police Were Odder” Peter Applebome, New York Times, April 23, 2010.
“The Space Lady in Her Own Words” Daily Red Bull Academy, 2016