“It’s no fun living
in the no-fun zone”
“Drama, drama, drama, drama.”
This single poem has the breadth of an armada of ships. Oh, I guess that was awkward, but if you like single poem reviews, welcome to the first one I have ever written. “It’s no fun living in the no-fun zone,” was a poem that initially had me saying, I want more of that; for some reason I wanted an immediate sequel. I would even settle for a prequel. In other words, this poem, a single page poem, is a page-turner.
Devaney’s work stands out from his contemporaries in its ability to be so many things at the same time: lyrical, tight, sparse, disorienting, and most of all funny. His poetry has an effect on me that is reminiscent of Anselm Hollo’s work, but ends up in another place. Always experimental, but never void of emotion, each Devaney poem shadows the others, even in subtle ways.
In “It’s no fun living in the no-fun zone,” I feel the “drama, drama , drama drama,” as he states it. Our times are filled with it, instead of these being tragic times, they are times over-stuffed with drama, each event becoming an elongated sparring match of some kind. Devaney’s stories, in their terse and tight form, lead me to the point that I am looking for.
They often need to be read aloud- loud, in fact, whenever I like a poet I want to read them loud the way I sing loudly in my car sometimes. “It’s no fun living in the no fun zone” also works quite well in the morning shower.
Some of my favorite lines with parenthetic critical analysis:
“Tomorrow on Oprah will be
called, Creating Damage”
(Oprah as a word is funny in itself, so it flips it and makes it
sad, you feel that once the lights go off and Dr. Phil gets in
his Bimme and heads home, Oprah is sad)
“At his funeral they said he was, ‘Never a downer’” (no explanation necessary, if you don’t understand why this is great, change the channel now)
“Drama, drama, drama, drama.” (hence, the drama)
Picture this: a zone filled with no fun, not a cynical, lets turn to irony because earnestness has run its course type of no fun, but as Iggy said it, no fun— There is a redefining of fun after no fun- perhaps fun is momentary.
When we were in grammar school, things often happened that were real fun, like once we started this huge whiffle ball game in my backyard and all the dads joined in and it went on for hours and all the Moms came out and cheered and I think the Dads let us win. That was fun.
When we tried to start a game like it the next day- it just wasn’t the same. Like I said, the re-inventing.