C.P. Klapper's Blog

I dream about you
then wake to taste
my dreams of you
my serving of you
which feeds my lust
a breakfast of you
in bed



Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

Lost Thoughts

Does anyone know
Where the lost thoughts go
When we slip the hold on our dreams?
At the waking clock
Do they hide like a sock
Unmatched when we fold the wash?

Or perhaps the sheep
Without a peep
Have pulled the wool o'er our eyes;
With slumber most kind
They stole from our mind
And left a fool for ideas.

Yet what if that jester
Who now we think pesters
Our brains in salons of the posh
Was already there
As we drifted from care
To nothing is quite as it seems?

Are we then like the fox
Who casts sour pox
On every delight which flees?
For we can rue
Only the true
Which now is lost in our sighs.


Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

It Can't Happen Here: A Novel by Sinclair Lewis


My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
A charismatic Democratic candidate whose speeches are more memorable than the content... hmmm.... Hints of populism to get the support of the most naive voters -- who think the candidate will give them all they need -- with no intention of following through... hmmmm... Bailing out the big companies in order to control them and the economy... hmmm... Personality cults.... hmmm...



The idea is eerily prescient, though it took two parties and two Presidents in real life. I know that I will be labeled a "Republican" or a "conservative" (the currently rankest epithets) for saying that Barack Obama is a closer match to Berzelius Windrip than George W. Bush, but it is just the honest truth. Also, I am a free-market populist of my own ideology, which I call "Popular Capitalism", so the labels are wrong. It is part of Lewis' genius that he recognizes that type of mislabeling as an integral part of the fascist toolbox.



However, the writing is uneven. It is poetic in parts but the imagery doesn't tie with the rest of the work. The chronology is loose towards the end for no particular reason, leading some readers to think that Lewis forgot who was killed when. The ending, though ultimately realistic, trails off as if Lewis got tired of writing.



I don't think, however, that the main character, Doremus Jessup, being unsympathetic was a flaw of the book. The whole point is to show that a Fascist dictatorship can happen here, so if Jessup was sympathetic enough to us, he would have been sympathetic enough to his fellow citizens to be a "hero" and would have garnered enough support to stop or overthrow the regime. There are no sympathetic characters in the book, so it can happen here.



My overall impression is that Lewis rushed to get this book out before the 1936 Presidential campaign. He probably saw the voter as getting complacent after Huey Long's assassination in thinking "it can't happen here." Though I would differ with Lewis in his assessment of Long, colored as it was by virulently anti-Long and anti-populist propaganda of the time, he is certainly correct in pointing out that there were threats to liberty which did not bear the scapegoated name of "Huey Long". The importance of this message and of getting it out in 1935, in time for the 1936 elections was greater for Lewis than producing a literary masterpiece.


View all my reviews.

Love of Fountain



The thin string of water

Connecting the fountain to the pool

Which ever binds in weakness

To the spouting statue this basin fool



Her casual sprinkling of wetness

Is enough to tempt, enslave, seduce

The sturdy base who sought her

In each drop of her rain which flows through his sluice






Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

Keep the Faith


The promise of that warm white gleam
Which I saw in our first meeting
Was shining through the clouds that seem
To hang over every greeting

As I hang back and stop each dating
Since our time has not yet come
Elaborate rituals of mating
Delay the day of consum-

Then while encouraging news is spoken
Which brought me what I hoped
I read the words where my heart is broken
Her name with another roped

Yet what can I do but keep the faith
That when my efforts earn
The laurels of the public wreath
I then my bridges burn

Except the destined one to her
That she will let it stand
Where promised hope and we become sure
In greeting hand-in-hand



Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

In Night


Am I to live in mere recollection
And never see the sun again?
Am I to take my distant, dark orbit
And only be near with thought or pen?

The warmth of your laughter burns within
Which once ran the circuit of your smile
Returning for a time in your sparks of wit
The flame a memory of my cold sundial

Copyright © 2009 by C. P. Klapper

Prayer


My dream, my hope, my life, my everything

I look into the sky to gaze at You

The ballads, lays and bluesy songs I sing

Are hymns I raise to the divine and true

Which lives within Your smile, breathes Your laugh

Your soft and gentle words into the air

But I am broken, not a man but half

Who worships, yearns and pleads that in Your care

You would come down and fill me with Your love

Redeem what twice descended into hell

To take me up to Your abode above

Baptize my heart with waters from Your well

To join with You and no more live in sin

That separation from Our Self within



Copyright © 2007 by C. P. Klapper

Loser


I am nobody.

Nobody is me.

I am paid nothing.

I work for free.

There is nothing left

At the end of the day,

Nothing but dust

Which you kick

Out of the way,

Bereft of ashes

Of the life that never was.

Dust I was.

I have returned

Without life

Or remembrance.


Copyright © 2007 by C. P. Klapper

4.0 out of 5 stars Very modern, very personal suite of verse, December 21, 2008
By Elizabeth A Triano "lizziewriter"


Sonnets for the Spanish is a somewhat larger body of work than the famous cycle by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, comprising 50 poems rather than the 44 by the Victorian poet. While there are cosmopolitan references, most notably to music and myth, the sense here is more modern (words such as "vouchsafe" notwithstanding), to the point that the reader may feel almost too close to the action, to the blade that they are balanced upon. At least, that was my impression.

Traditionally, sonnets have often been used as they are used here, as a vehicle of admiration by a male poet for an inaccessible female. Mr. Klapper's writing is completely standard fare in this regard -- the passionate shepherd to his coy mistress, and all that. It is evident to the reader that the writer and his Muse/flame are friends to some extent, and that any further relationship is unlikely. Thence the tension of the poems, and again, quite traditionally so.

I'd say that they are as dramatic as Shakespeare, as modern as (fill in names here, as I don't read many modern poets), and less religious than Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work.

Klapper's reverence for his subject also may call to mind sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney or even Edmund Spenser -- both masters of the romantic sonnet. It's been a popular form in English since it migrated over from Petrarch's Italian original ("Petrarca" as Wikipedia informs us, was not the first sonneteer, but he is probably the one responsible for the form's initial longevity).

Returning to the poems at hand, the words themselves have a romantic formality, but the subjects, from the poet's concern and care for his Muse's injured ankle, to glimpses of conversations, dismay and laughter, are entirely visceral.

My favorites from this series include No2. 22 "Darkness," 25 "Mercy," 39 "Healing" (a signature piece), and 43 "Count," with its fun ending, "Love unconstrained by algebraic thought / With transcendental fervor have I sought."

That said, these poems don't entirely appeal to me personally. I can't argue that the poet does not reach his goal, because Mr. Klapper has been writing for longer than I have, and he knows what he is setting out to accomplish. Perhaps I would like them better if I heard them read, rather than read them on my own; because it is something of the cadence as well as the personal nature of the work that gives me difficulty. Perhaps it is the level of tension that gives me pause; there is no closure in this book, so I cannot relax. Other readers, wanting a living story, may well prefer it this way. I never had much patience with the genre of poems-by-frustrated-male-would-be-lover, I suppose.

Thanks for reading. Hope this helped.