Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bad Movie

I

Among 20 warring urbane film critics,

The only thing agreed on

Was the bliss of the truly bad movie.

II

In three classes I was behind,

Like a movie marathon

In which there are three bad movies.

III

The bad movie moaned in the autumn winds.

It was an orgasmic mirror of the times.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a bad movie date

Are done.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of Renoir the elder

Or the beauty of his son,

The bad movie opening

Or just after.

VI

Lonely watchers filled the long theater

With barbaric laughs.

The shadow of the bad movie

Crossed it, to and fro.

They all

Traced in the shadow

An improbable joy.

VII

O film critics of America,

Why do you imagine Oscar birds?

Do you not see how the bad movie

Bleats into the ears

Of the pedestrians about you?

VIII

I know noble actors

And lucid, inescapable moments;

But I know, too,

That the bad movie is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the bad movie flew out of sight

It missed the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of bad movies

Winning on the red carpet night,

Even the gods of ultra-kitsch

Would cry out sharply.

XI

Hitchcock rode over Hollywood

In a limousine.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his mother-in-law

For a bad movie.

XII

The earth is shaking.

The bad movie must be finishing.

XIII

The director didn’t have money for realistic sets.

It was showing

And it was going to show.

The bad movie sat

On its plutonic throne.