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The Bronzes of Grand Juction

by Richard Paul Haight

123 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0981; ISBN 1-55395-267-7; US$16.00, C$20.95, EUR13.70, £9.50

The five Bronzes of Grand Junction are ordinary people instantly bronzed, like baby shoes, right in front of reliable witnesses, cause unknown. Could be the work of God, aliens, an artist, a magician. The bronzes cause quite a stir in town. And tourists arrive by the busload to see and talk about them. The result is an extended colloquy that is much more about us- America and Americans - than about the "bestatued" ones.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book The Bronzes of Grand Junction is a verse drama in twelve scenes. It is suitable for full scale theatrical production, or minimal production, or readers' theater presentation (à la Under Milkwood, or "pageant" production (everyone in town plays a role). The players include a Narratorand six men and six women of any combintion of ages, race, ethnicity, and body build. These 12 players each play/read many characters. The Bronzes of Grand Junction are-were- ordinary people going about their ordinary lives on an ordinary day when suddenly, instantly bronzed, like baby shoes, "bestatued" right in from of reliable eyewitnesses. They are "a women with shopping bags," "a businessman, " "a homeless man," "a pretty gilr," and "a running child." The cause of this "miracle" is unknown and, as it turns out, unknowable. Could be the work of God, aliens, an artist, a magician, or a scientist putting an odd spin on genetics. The effect on the town of this phenomenon is far-reaching but not particularly profound. Local quarrel over whether the bronzes deserve "a decent burial" or should serve as a tourist attraction (of vast commercial benefit to the town, or someone). Visitors overrun the site where the bronzes sit and stand. Tourists arrive by the busload. Blue-collar folk, scientists, religious persons, cranks, poets, researchers, professors, and teenagers speculate about the cause of the phenomenon and weave fantasias about who th ebronzed ones were and why them. The bronzes give the world something to talk about and are the focus, therefore, of a wide range of speculation, personal projections, contentious opinions, and even a few thoughtful, compassionate responses. The responses are usually off-base as far as the actual lives of those bronzed, but would that not be expected? The effect of all these repsonses is an extended colloquy by (mostly) Americans (mostly) about themselves and their culture. That The Bronzes of Grand Junction is a "verse drama" should not alarm or put off those who have a negative attitude about "poetry." The play reads, and will strike the ear, as almost normal speech. The author uses rhyme to inspire better language than he can ordinarly muster, and he likes rhythm. Here are a couple of examples, first Abraham Falling Blue Father speaking about "the woman with shopping bags": Oh cruel white-man fate! She is searching in a Target sack of heartless plastic for the answer to her every prayer, but she can search in those wishbags forever, and not find the answer even to wrinkles or vaginal dryness, let alone flat affect or unhappiness or anything serious. THIRD WOMAN FROM CAMBRIDGE And the inexorable spin of this, our bicycle in space, makes us upright even when we're upside down, and for a few turns warms our faces with the light of dawn, and says, to me at least, lucky you, you get to try again.

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About the Author Richard Paul Haight received a Ph.D. in English literature from The Ohio State University. He has taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and briefly at the University of Colorodo in Boulder. He was the humanities advisor to large-scale grand projects sponsored by The Dallas Theater Center and the National Farmers Union and was assistant director of The Colorado Humanities Program, a state=based re-granting agency of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Haight has published poetry, social commentary essays, and book and film reviews. At the time of publication he lives and writes in Denver.

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Sample Excerpts

Sample lines from the play

            MALL STORE OWNER
They like our T-shirts
of the Pretty Girl,
but our best seller
is the plastic dioramas,
either with flying saucers
or with angels . . .

            FATHER GOETCHAL
The way she so saplessly sags
toward the shopping bags
in an agony of guilt knowledge
is surely the body language
of a lost soul.
Could it be that this sorrowing woman
has committed the greatest sin
and had an abortion?

            PASSIONFLOWER JONES
      (also about 8)
They were in the sun and hot,
like a car when the bank is a hundred eight,
and the poor statues
was like babies left in a car
with the windows up
and they can't move or cry anymore,
and their mommy is going to jail forever.

            WOMAN
. . .
It just breaks my heart
when nonbelievers
quote scripture
to mock scripture.
Do the cynics know
how decency and lovingkindness
can at least wait at the door
outside the devil's palace hall,
where blood runs down the marble wall
and Salome dances
to confuse the senses
and please the beast in man -
do they? Does anyone?

            VOICE OF DOOM
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.
The secret, bloody loins of woman
could not give birth
to so glorious
a universe.
Only the pure, reasonable, articulate mind of man
could accomplish so momentous
a task

            LOCAL PROGRESSIVE
. . . NRA member, no doubt, a gun lover,
a gun addict, on his way
to fall on his knees and pray
for Constitutional literalism,
then home to caress his gun,
this neat man so betrayed
by the ignorance and bigotry
of the gun haters, so angry
that crime be gun-blamed:
Dear God in heaven,
dear Moses of laws and Abraham of obedience,
let there be justice
for Sacco Beretta and Vanzetti Kalashnikov;
and give us this day
our loaded assaults, out Magnums,
our snub noses,
our dum dums . . .

            WIFE OF THE BUSINESSMAN
. . .
One day I was wandering Rico,
in an aspen forest
on a bright, sunny day,
and I came upon an untended cemetery
in that untended town.
I found an ancient, broken headstone
wrapped in roots and thorns.
It read,
"This life had not been so hard to bear,
Sidney,
had you your thoughts learned to share."

            READER OF RILKE
      (making himself heard)
A righteous man barely gets his lust
locked up like a rifle in a gun chest
and down the street comes
fleshy tests -
naked bosoms
full of breasts.

            WELL-BRED VISITOR
I prefer the jolie laide,
a woman of unconventional attractions -
a moon-faced mountain climber
surprisingly lean and agile of body;
a hatchet-faced peasant girl of ferocious eye
who's a flamenco dancer;
a woman on insane hair and neurotic eye
who writes erotic poetry;
a freckle-faced, gap-toothed woman
who distributes food to refugees
and has unromantic,
but enthusiastic,
sexual intentions.

            THIRD YOUNG MAN
      (dreamy)
One crisp autumn afternoon,
with a few white sails scudding upon
the blue surface
of the near universe
and with a playful breeze sweeping leaves
in crinkling waves and eddies upon the lawns,
I passed by a residential backyard
and saw a bewildered boy of about 3 or 4
sitting on a tricycle,
wearing a red and white cowboy outfit,
and watching his sister,
who was about 10,
running in circles around him
with her arms outspread;
and she was naked,
and so beautiful,
flying round and round,
so unselfconsciously naked and beautiful,
so free -
so unforgettable -
an image of everything joyous
and innocent . . .
a lifelong gift to my senses . . .

            CONSERVATIVE
Yeah, so, may you welcome his hairs
to your bathroom;
may he be a volunteer grey mouse
gnawing at your table;
may he be given dry socks and a cot
at the mission in your upstairs hallway;
may this refugee from the ethnic cleansing
in Utah
tent with his kind in your backyard;
may this illegal immigrant
from a poverty patch in La La Land
picket your patio;
and stage a sit-in in your kitchen;
and curse your ignorance of the latest
in offensive music;
and improve your mind with paranoia;
and may your neighborhood
have its restraining order
against the exploited and oppressed
be compassionately enforced.

            THE HOMELESS MAN, ONIONS
My mother spent most of the time
in a big field behind a Safeway.
      (pause)
I suppose now you'll want to know why.
She was keepin' the field clean -
carryin' stiff yellow newspapers to the Dumpster -
and making friends with the rabbits.
      (pause)
You like hearing about goody habits?
      (pause)
The other thing she liked to do
was get in fist fights with fat men.
She said a fat man
is a coward.
She had a cauliflower ear -
brushed her hair weird
to cover it over.

            UNCLE OF THE RUNNING CHILD
. . .
Our family is somewhat grateful for those of you
who are silently understanding and compassionate -
and outraged and hurt
by those who have loudly mocked
and lewdly cheered
and shown themselves to be
from the same family of imbeciles
who beat up homosexuals.
. . .

      HEAD
I have no answer, but I'm willing
to make something up
with the tantalizing ring
of plausibility.
Speaking Amerohistorically,
they represent, respectively,
      (slowly and distinctly, with pauses. as if talking to
idiots)
the commercialization of common decencies;
the genitalization of the body politic;
the marginalization of the callus-handed;
the subversion of the democratic
by the vertically minded;
and the commodification of necessities.

            SECOND POET
In the beginning was the bewilders
of may flowers and fondling fathers;
of pure tans and black hands;
of thievery by infection, colonel custard,
and the discouraging word.

            YOUNG WOMAN WITH CLIPBOARD
Hi. I'm with the newspaper.
Today's Man on the Street question is,
Do you think any of the bronzes
ever went rafting?

            LOCAL LABOR LEADER
You might know
something like this would happen
in Grand Junction
with nowhere else to go.
But we've got
inarticulate mechanics here who can,
if they feel like it,
make a diesel bus cry uncle and women
who,
if they're in the mood,
can cry rock into biscuit.
But all this talk
is making them queasy and weak.

            THIRD WOMAN FROM CAMBRIDGE
Bangladeshis overswept by typhoons,
our supermarket produce section
out of strawberries, famine
in the Sudan,
crushed grandbabies and aunts
beneath the rubble in Turkmenistan . . .
and what matters most to me
is my niece's lesbian wedding.

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Catalogue Information

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