Originally
published in Sensitive Skin magazine, February 2021
The
Literary Odyssey of Ed Wood: Beyond the Notoriously Bad Films, Here’s the
Unearthed Poetry
Edward D Wood, Jr.,
Selected Poems, Unexpurgated Edition (Black Scat Books,
2020)
by John Pietaro
Yes,
it really is that Ed Wood. Recalled in cult movie circles as the bizarro planet’s
Orson Welles, Wood was writer-director-producer of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster among other Golden Turkey recipients. Yet,
there is more to Edward Davis Wood Jr than the mere obvious. Beyond the movie
infamy, Wood is probably best known for his cross-dressing, but within a filmmaking
and fiction-writing career, latent credit is due for his bold introduction of a
once secret drag society to a conservatively fearful America. The fact is Glen or Glenda?, which featured Wood in
the titular role(s) and included others from the L.A. trans community, premiered
in 1953—the year of the Rosenbergs’ executions--as the Hollywood Blacklist, loyalty
oaths and whitewashed conformity raged on. The seventeen years leading to the
Stonewall uprising was, in effect, a lifetime away.
Wood’s
output through the ‘60s focused on horror, crime and the supernatural,
increasingly incorporating lurid sexual imagery (i.e. - Orgy of the Dead). At baseline bizarre, these films often walked the
line between pseudo-experimental and merely exploitative. Into the 1970s, suffering
from major depression and alcoholism, Wood earned a meager living writing porn and
taking the odd role in X-rated films. He died in 1978, just 54-years-old.
A
review of Wood’s rather sordid writing life clarifies that he was a kind of
prodigy, even if largely of the bad, having completed at least one work of
non-fiction, engaged unsuccessfully in authoring drama for the stage, and penned
multiple articles, numerous screenplays, and some 80 pulp novels (occasionally under
the pseudonym Ann Gora) including Take It
Out in Trade, Raped in the Grass,
Necromania and Death of a Transvestite. Somehow overlooked, though, was the poetry.
According to legend, Wood in 1968 decided that these poems were worthless and released
the chapbook manuscript into the La Brea tar-pits. Posthumously, Selected Poems was published in a
limited edition in the 1990s, followed by a brief run by Black Scat Books that has
since fallen out of print, leaving very few with the knowledge that this work
even existed. However, on November 7, as per the publisher’s announcement: “In
honor of Donald Trump‘s
historic election loss we’re bringing back an out-of-print classic from our Absurdist
Texts & Documents series”. Certainly seems timely.
Unexpurgated
as it is, the title page shows a photo of the author’s original cover, handwritten
in fountain pen. Also included is the image of one of his typed interior pages
decorated with corrections, deletions, blotches and even a line of poetry, long
lost. Far from deeply artistic, the work remains a fascinating document. Some
of the poetry is grown from screenplay synopses and science-fictional visions,
while others are based on the author’s wider musings and ideals, much of it
leaving the reader with only more questions. Opener “There is No Here There, Either”
(page 11) is dedicated to Gertrude Stein, yet his focus remains on the
supernatural. Or does it?
There’s something out there/out there in the cemetery/that’s
too near/for comfort there
The
piece begins with a seeming renunciation of fantasy escapism, committing to
only the “you” cited herein; as per the dedication, the subject is Stein, the
celebrated author and fully out lesbian of a still earlier, even more groundbreaking
time. The symbolism seems of particular import (and
I’m locked up here/not there), though far too brief a gaze into Wood’s
personal struggles. Unfortunately, there is no indication as to when these
poems were actually written. He offers more insight with “The Woman Thing” (pp
16-17) which was composed “for Glen and Glenda”, perhaps a challenge to those
refusing to accept the trans lifestyle. Later in the book, Wood responds with
more overt militancy in “Screw You, Mistress Crowley” (page 24):
Can your heartthrob stand/my shocking corset/the
mink straitjacket/
I’m a pretender in the nightlight/and there’s no
pretender!
The
poems, however, which directly relate to his 1950s films are, as expected, bizarre
enough. See “Poem Nine from Outer Space” (page 20) and “Second Thoughts” (page
15), both of which appear to be stage direction excerpts from the script of Plan Nine, the latter actually having
been read aloud on screen to the footage of Bela Lugosi, that which was shot briefly
before the actor’s death.
So
much of Wood’s work, in every media, was riddled with conflicted sexual concepts,
often of a violent sort, so a piece like “Paula” (page 18) opens with generally
erotic imagery that is soon realized as the rape of a sleeping or drugged
woman. Halfway through the poem, the rape is ironically attributed to Eros, the
Greek god of love, but it ends hauntingly cold:
Paula running/Paula running/running beside the road.
This
theme is also evident in “Nothing from This World” (page 13) which vacillates
between the other-worldly and the brutally guttural:
It’s getting dark/where she is pointing/
His awful wife/buried in the ground/
Pointing up while he/lies down sealed in a vault
Within
this mix of emotional upheaval and splintered symbolism, Wood closes the
chapbook with a particularly notable piece, one indicating his inclusion in both
the literary underground and the LGBTQ community as well as the sorrowful
reality of unsuccessful arts careers. It is dubbed “Howl” (page 25) and opens
with a sharp, possibly satiric awareness of Ginsberg:
I saw the best flicks of my generation destroyed/by
critics/ranting hysterical mutants/
Dragging directors in drag through the mud
like/blood-thirsty bullies
Here,
Wood deems himself “the angel-headed
genius in the orange neon dusk of Hollywood”, and observes his audience both
laughing at and cheering him in the cinema before
They staggered off into the sunset strip/
Leapt off the Hollywood sign into the bliss of the
curvaceous cult-womb/
That wrapped them forever in its loin-lit angoric
embrace
For
more information on Selected Poems of
Edward D. Wood Jr. - https://blackscatbooks.com/2020/11/07/the-saucer-has-landed/
