Professor Clown On Parade Poems by Rick Lupert
Professor Clown on Parade
Poems by Rick Lupert
Force of Nature, Rick Lupert, and his wise wife, Addie, have been let loose in the Northeast, and the result is poetic mayhem of the highest order. These poems chronicle the couple’s obsession with food, art, architecture, and each other over an action-packed 12-day roadtrip. “I’m following the Vermont food trail/and am about to pray to a donut,” Lupert confesses in “At the Cold Hollow Cider Mill.” A brilliant, beer-fogged take on America by one of the funniest, smartest poets around.
PS – These poems could also be construed as Lupert’s 293 page love letter to his wife. -Alexis Rhone Fancher, poetry editor, Cultural Weekly, seven-time Pushcart nominee
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Every year I look forward to Rick and Addie’s summer vacation. Instead of a slide show or a lousy T-shirt I get another book of poems. What you have in your hands is a travelogue – the newest installment in a series of road books written by Rick Lupert, the minimalist Huell Howser of Van Nuys poetry. Lupert is a comedian with impeccable timing and a poet whose work is deceptively simple. Nestled somewhere underneath the jokes about tour guides, night pavers, Vermont hugs and kisses and Norman Rockwell paintings is an ongoing love story. This is really a book about Rick and Addie. It’s a work that’s underpinned by a depth and decency you don’t see very often in this world, let alone in a book that will make you laugh out loud. -Daniel McGinn, Author “1000 Black Umbrellas”, Write Bloody Publishing
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New Religion
The tour guide at the chocolate factory urges
Let chocolate change your life.
Out of everything I’ve learned in Judaism,
school and on TV,
No advice has ever made more sense to me.
Yes, chocolate, I will go where you go.
Guide me to your bliss.
In Front of the Cryptozoology Museum
We arrive at the cryptozoology museum
ten minutes before they open at 11 am.
A woman gets out of her nearby car and tells us
the museum opens at 11 am.
This confirms what we read on the door and
what was mentioned earlier.
She just needs to count her money
she tells us, unlocking the door with
a plastic bag of bread pieces in hand.
We tell her we’ll look for mythological creatures
on the streets until she opens. She says
Oh honey you’ll find some.
The sounds of seagulls are ever present.
I want to tell them about the bread.
Sasquatch waits inside.
