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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
GEO-BESTIARY: 32, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: How the love of tarzan in africa haunted my childhood, strapped with
Last Line: Of a sleeping elephant.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Children; Story-telling; Childhood
First Line: How the love of tarzan in africa haunted my childhood, strapped with
Last Line: Of a sleeping elephant.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Children; Story-telling; Childhood
How the love of Tarzan in Africa haunted my childhood, strapped with
this vivid love of an imaginary wild, the white orphan as king of nature
with all creatures at his beck and call, monkey talk,
Simba! Kreegah! Gomanganini! The
mysterious Jane was in his tree house in leather loincloth
and bra before one had quite figured out why she should be there. Perhaps
this was all only a frantic myth to allay our fear of the darkest continent
and help us defeat a world that will never be ours after we had tried so
hard to dispose of our own indians. The blacks were generally grand if
not influenced too much by an evil witch doctor, or deceived by venal
white men, often German or French, while a current Tarzan, far from the
great Johnny Weismuller, has the body builder's more than ample tits, tiny
waist and blow-dried hair, Navajo booties somehow, while the newest
Jane has a Dutch accent and runs through a Mexican forest (if you know
flora) in shorts and cowboy boots screaming in absolute alarm at nearly
everything though she simply passed out when a black tied her rather
attractively way up in a tree. What can we make of this Aryan myth gone
truly bad, much worse than Sambo's tigers turning to butter for his pancakes,
much more decrepit than noble Robin Hood; or how we made
our landscape safe for mega-agriculture and outdoor cow factories by
shooting all the buffalo, and red kids fast asleep in tents at Sand Creek and
elsewhere, the Church climbing to heaven on the backs of Jews; or that
we could destroy the Yellow Plague in Vietnam? The girl or boy with
their brown dog in the woods on Sunday afternoon must learn first to
hold their noses at requests to march. But Tarzan swinging over the whole
world on his convenient vines, knows that bugs, snakes, beasts and birds,
are of the angelic orders, safe forever from men and their thundersticks
and rancid clothes, and Jane's lambent butt and English accent singing
him to sleep in their treetop home, she waving down at the profuse eyelashes
of a sleeping elephant.
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
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THE THREE CHILDREN by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN
CHILDREN SELECTING BOOKS IN A LIBRARY by RANDALL JARRELL
COME TO THE STONE ... by RANDALL JARRELL
THE LOST WORLD by RANDALL JARRELL
A SICK CHILD by RANDALL JARRELL
CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS
ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS IN CHILDHOOD by DONALD JUSTICE
THE POET AT SEVEN by DONALD JUSTICE
THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON