Lost Worlds
        From 24 Frames in the Life of Willis O'Brien
        (1925)

Brontosaurus. Wonderful word. What
word better evokes the manifest thing?
hearing it, my eye flies straight to the
sequoia femurs, the Denali haunch,
quintessence of Hogarth's postulate curve.
No more powerful locomotive construct
in all nature; no finer word in the whole
English language. Scopes convicted, a hundred
dollar fine; slap on the wrist, cry the faithful.
The picture the biggest ever for First National,
bigger than they hoped and higher, my primordial
stampede in flight from London to Paris. Rothacker
well pleased and another picture lined up, Easy
Street in view. The great archosaurs were gone
long before the rise of men they say. God
allows the serpent into Eden and no
sauropod, then calls that
Paradise?

ABSTRACT: This is the 5th in a series of 24 meditations on the life and career of Willis O'Brien, the technical and artistic genius responsible for the still astonishing mise-en-scene of the original "King Kong." O'Brien's soaring, rambunctious, tragic life in many ways epitomizes the artist's predicament and in this particular verse pauses at a moment of all too temporary triumph.

Tweet
Copyright © 2022 James Earp All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission