Joan E. Bauer: The Man on the Flying Trapeze

Most people think I’m the kind of guy who shaves
with a blowtorch. Actually, I’m bookish & worrisome.

— Burt Lancaster (1913-1994)

~

He grew up hardscrabble Irish in East Harlem
acting in Settlement House theatre with a Social Gospel

that stayed with him for life. Redemption, a big theme.
Trapeze, the ex-acrobat redeemed by love.

Come Back Little Sheba, the alcoholic saved by AA.
He dropped out of NYU, worked as a circus acrobat

without a net or padding. After the War, a lucky break
on Broadway, then Hollywood ‘he-man’ roles

that got him labeled ‘Mr. Muscles & Teeth’ though he’d read
since childhood everything from Shakespeare to Spinoza.

God-like beauty, reckless courage & underlying anarchism
set him apart. So many towering roles: hustling preacher,

loathsome columnist, deluded swimmer, transfigured lifer.
He could be cruel, compassionate, arrogant, deadpan funny.

In The Leopard, he played a Sicilian prince in the dying light
with sprezzatura, that non-chalance that conceals all art.

In Louis Malle’s Atlantic City, a luminous performance
as an aged, low-rent mobster & dreamer.

Passionate about justice & civil liberties,
Lancaster underwrote the ACLU’s LA chapter for years.

Hungry & restless, he kept pushing his battered body
until a stroke rendered him immobile & wordless.

A friend remembered:
He was a gentle man because he knew he could kill someone.

~~~~

Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.

Poem copyright 2024 Joan E. Bauer