Andy Coe

Writers Studio: Would you mind telling us a little about yourself?

Andy Coe: My publication history thus far is pretty slim, and includes two poems published in The Blotter:  a poem called “Gauguin’s Bastard” and another one called “A Long Way to Tiperary”; and one called “The Occidental Tourist”  that was published in the Writer’s Studio newsletter.  I am married and a father of 5 children.  So reading anything without pictures is a luxury I enjoy. 


WS: What writers have influenced you the most? 
 
AC: Billy Collins was the first person who made poetry accessible and inspiring to me.  I also love Langston Hughes, Wislawa Szymborska, and Robert Frost.  Will Campbell and Vonnegut are probably the novelists who have shaped my thinking the most. 
 
WS: Are there books from the past which affected you?
 
AC: Profoundly.  Huck Finn for it’s ability to address complicated issues through a story.  The Glad River by Will Campbell is the best description of community I have ever read, and I think the only book to ever cause me to weep openly.  Lots of things by Kurt Vonnegut (our modern day Mark Twain), but especially Breakfast of Champions because of the way he brings humor to existential crises.  Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael.   And I would have to say Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, just because it is by far the funniest thing I’ve ever read.
 

Gauguin’s Bastard

A painting you will probably never see
is the one with the beautiful Tahitian paradise
in the background. The subject is
a very angry and sad child
staring out to sea.
He is wondering where his father is
and what it means to be the product of
the juxtaposition of a European’s mid life crisis
and a naïve island girl’s romantic fancy.

If you did, you would note the vibrant
use of color that drew your eye
to the bowl of tropical fruit
smashed on the ground.

Billy Collins is the Juan Valdez of Poetry

I like poetry like I like coffee
which is to say,
I like the idea of it
-- just not the actual experience

Oh, that there was need for “java” in my lexicon.
Would that I had occasion to experience the lilt of “Arabica”.
To be among the fortunate ponderers of French Vanilla v. Hazelnut
One lump…..or two…

Poetry and coffee make one sophisticated.
I always get the feeling
around poets and coffee drinkers
that they possess some secret knowledge.
There is something smug and patronizing
about the way they “get it”.
If I don’t get it, they can’t explain it to me.

There have been a few--
penned with enough cream and sugar,
that I found them palatable.
And some, written in decaf,
so as not to leave me with that jangled edge.
Alas, I haven’t the moxie for authentic joe.

Sure, I can discreetly order my hot chocolate
and sidle up to the conversation,
but I won’t crack the code.
I will laugh a beat to long
or, “hmmm” a moment too late.

After having rehearsed my spontaneous explication,
in the midst of unwinding it off the reel,
I will notice the awkward silence at the table;
look down to see
my soul-patch has come unglued
and is now swimming in my cocoa.

I stare down at it.
It is floating on it’s back
occasionally spouting a mouthful of my hot chocolate
in between spouting selections
from “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

What it’s all about…

Standing alone at the bar
in the corner of the country club,
that is hosting his nephew’s
bar mitzvah reception,
he is stumped by the task at hand.

He needs to fill out the card.
It needs to say the right thing.
Sage, witty. Without being trite.
And he is lost.
Has no idea what to say.

He fumbles in his pockets;
finds the matchbook that
the redhead gave him last weekend.
Number not in service.
That’s happened to him before,
plenty. But for the first time he wonders
if she gave him a wrong number
on purpose

He scratches his head;
deftly readjusts his piece.
He had been moved by the sincerity
of the Hair Club President. After all,
he was also a client. But now he
is not so sure he didn’t get played.

He is wondering if somewhere
along the way he has passed
over a line between cool and kitsch.
Wondering if he can make it back.
How is it that at 43, he can not muster
half an American Greeting card’s space
worth of wisdom for a 13 year old?








Then from the next room
where the dance floor is, he hears
an old song in a new way:
“You put your whole self in…”
…he has never really done that….
“You get your whole self out….”
That’s what he really wants…
He turns himself around.

The weather is here,
wish you were beautiful

I want to believe it is only a little
naïve of me to wonder how much better
things would be if we all sent each other
postcards.
One a day, to and from, total strangers.
The numbers might not work out smoothly.
--what with their being some six billion of us.
Though as for that, knowing that the project
would outlive you might not be
such a bad thing.

Here is a giant stone face
larger than three men
gazing in perpetuity through closed eyes.
I think tomorrow I will send one
of a field of yellow daisies.
They bloom every September, this variety, but
only here, near my home town.

Can you imagine a slight, elderly woman
in a broad conical hat, on the porch of her hut
somewhere in southeast Asia
gazing perplexedly at
her postcard of a water tower in the
shape of a giant peach?
Or the solitary Tibetan trying to decipher
his directive to, “See Rock City”

Pictures are said to be worth
a thousand words.
With a really good postcard, that is Understatement
But for most, it is Hyperbole.

Now that I think about it, maybe the postcard thing
isn’t such a good idea.
But XXX OOO, all the same.

It’s a Long Way to Tipperary

When my generation is doddering about
in nursing homes,
I imagine our being wheeled into the “activities room”
-- the one with the almost finished
jigsaw puzzle with the missing pieces of sky
and the optimistically arranged ceramics projects.

In the corner, there will be an old piano,
and on Tuesday afternoons,
a kindly volunteer will come
to lead us in a sing-a-long. Golden Oldies.
Songs from our youth
-- intended to reconnect us with our vitality

Soft chords will drift out to the nurses station
…Like a virgin, touched for the very first time…
and because many of us will be mumbling
….it’s a nice day for a white wedding…
they may not even take note of our songs
…two American kids growin’ up in the heartland…

But then one of our grandchildren
will be walking down the hall,
and he will overhear…2000, zero, zero, party over,
oops, out of time… So tonight we’re gonna party
like it’s 1999…
How odd that will sound to him
-- to hear us anticipating a time that seems
so impossibly far back.