Not My Circus by Henry Goldkamp

Everyone knows poets are clowns. This is usually estimated by the pejorative. The wasted hours towards some inscrutable goal. The wasted money towards inane degrees. The silly way they speak and perform their esoteric and ineffectual little acts. However, Henry Goldkamp, a self-professed practitioner of "clown poetics" utilizes this derision as a poetic subject in his Not My Circus. The speaker laughs and ululates through a funhouse of American-grade horror, its enterprise our most amusing commodity. "2 for how the fuck," opens the poem "1 FOR THE MONEY," "to pluck the yeehaw out / the stupidity shooting off my mouth / i'm at cvs for the civilized vibes." Just as it is the job of the clown to disorient the viewer into a physical reaction of humor, often at the clown's own expense, Goldkamp steps up as that object of derision, painting a smile across his weeping face. Even in the spirit of levity, our tragic conditions are never far behind, contrasting their pall against our colorful distraction. Goldkamp's book playfully delineates somewhere between these two contrasts. Look no further than his couplet titled "Retail Therapy,"

"i want to suck on yr airpods and cum in yr hokas

death is very exciting!"

The inevitable trajectory of our consumerism laid bare. Our obliteration through postmodern capitalism expressed in ticklish terms. However, tickling without cessation turns eventually into torture. Goldkamp's poems take us right up to that threshold before they release us. Were we laughing or crying all along?