2013/07/01

Yet Sad that Her Frankenstein Had Become Just a Name, Like Dracula or Satan, Something that Stood for a Kind of Scariness, Good for a Laugh




Slide show is from yesterday's production of Richard Campbell's Frankenstein, a rock opera, the first musical I have voluntarily gone to see since the movie Tommy in 1975 with my cousin Jennifer. The lead guitarist is my friend Mr Alarum. We were told we could take photos as long as we turned off the flash, so I think it's OK to post that, if it's not please let me know. Planet and Earthgirl and Ari were particularly impressed with the monster, especially his spasticity when rising from the operating table. I was happily amused with the emcee guy - his voice, in the upper registers, the tone and timber of Geddy Lee. When I said so to Planet and Earthgirl and Ari they said, Who?











MARY SHELLEY IN BRIGANTINE

Stephen Dunn

Because the ostracized experience the world
in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it
clearly yet with such anger and longing
that they sometimes enlarge what they see,
she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.
She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.

How startling, though, no one knew about her past,
the scandal with Percy, the tragic early deaths,
yet sad that her Frankenstein had become
just a name, like Dracula or Satan, something
that stood for a kind of scariness, good for a laugh.
She found herself welcome everywhere.

People would tell her about Brigantine Castle,
turned into a house of horror. They thought
she'd be pleased that her monster roamed
its dark corridors, making children scream.
They lamented the day it was razed.
Thus Mary Shelley found herself accepted

by those who had no monster in them —
the most frightening people alive, she thought.
Didn't they know Frankenstein had abandoned
his creation, set him loose without guidance
or a name? Didn't they know what it feels like
to be lost, freaky, forever seeking who you are?

She was amazed now that people believed
you could shop for everything you might need.
She loved that in the dunes you could almost hide.
At the computer store she asked an expert
if there was such a thing as too much knowledge,
or going too far? He directed her to a website

where he thought the answers were.
Yet Mary Shelley realized that the pain she felt
all her life was gone. Could her children, dead so young,
be alive somewhere, too? She couldn't know
that only her famous mother had such a chance.
She was almost ready to praise this awful world.