 |
|
|
Archive:
|
|
| Poetry |
| DIRTY LAUNDRY (100 Days in a Zen Monastery) Robert Wilson & Miriam Sagan New World Library This book, a joint diary written by husband and wife while he spent 100 days in a Zen monastery, constantly left me asking, "What's the point?" What seems like a potentially rich scenario -- examining how spiritual experiences influence one's relationships -- quickly becomes a flat recitation of gripes. The point seems to be that even monks have emotional problems, that even monasteries are full of political infighting. In fact, spiritual experience seems almost absent -- most of the entries focus on the mundane and the worldly. It may have been that the spiritual experience was such an ingrained part of the day that it was only the worldly which stood out. Or it may have been, as the diaries read, that the spiritual experience was mostly absent from day to day life. Two things might have helped the situation. One would have been a simple glossary of Zen terms. Most of the religious activities are referred to by their Zen names, and never explained. So we never get much sense of what the monks are doing, are instead left to decipher entries such as "Quick vacuuming in Roshi's room for soji. Sesshin-style oryoki breakfast in the zendo" and "Roshi left zazen during second period, so I'm still doshi at service." The second, more fundamental problem is the briefness of most of the entries. For the most part, Winson and Sagan skim over the events of the day, a style much better at capturing the worldly moments than any moments of enlightenment. Perhaps the books is intended as a sort of koan itself, a riddle who's meaning needs to be deciphered through deep contemplation. Or maybe it really says nothing more than monks are human too. G. Murray Thomas |
| HENNAMAN By Derrick I. M. Gilbert Riverhead Books I have long defended performance poetry, often in the context of slams, but in general as well. I have especially claimed that the best of it works just as well on the page as the stage. I point to poets such as Jeffrey McDaniel, Ellyn Maybe, S.A. Griffin, and Patricia Smith, daring the critics to read their works in print, and then tell me they aren't great poets. However, I still have to concede that there are poets whose work only succeeds in one format, be it print or performance. Derrick Gilbert (aka D Knowledge) is, unfortunately, such a poet. I have seen Gilbert enthrall an audience many times, but in a book, his poems fall quite flat. Gilbert's poems are built on word games of repetition and listing, games he can wrap his delivery around, building tension and significance. On the page, however, they are just repetition and lists. Lines like "Filled with all my/ Passions/ Dreams/ Fears/ Pains/ Joys/ And/ Really/ My soul" and "Super-stars appeared/ Showing off/ Shining/ Radiating/ Glowing/ Exploding" just don't have much impact in print. One problem with these lists is that are just that: mere listings of items or actions. There is no poetic statement, no imagery, little crafting beyond accumulation. This problem of bald statement is pervasive throughout HENNAMAN, is many other ways as well. Many of Gilbert's poems are political poems, especially dealing with issues of race. And here, bald statement definitely rules the day, rather than poetic nuance. These are speeches, dressed up in word play, but they are not poems. Gilbert finds no room for subtlety or ambiguity, two keys of poetic expression. Instead of examining the multiple shades of our dilemmas, he makes easy points about obvious targets. Once again, this does work in performance, especially when the crowd vocally agrees with him. A little more ambiguity does creep into the love and sex poems, but he still usually has an obvious point, which he makes in an obvious manner. Gilbert does have his strengths, primarily, as I have said, his talent for wordplay. These poems have a powerful flow, as Gilbert slip-slides his way through his streams of words. And he uses that play to deftly draw us into his emotional state, whether righteous indignation or flowering passion. But those are the strengths of performance, not print. And Gilbert has already been presented in that format, on his Qwest CD, ALL THAT AND A BAG OF WORDS (released under D Knowledge). I would have to recommend searching out the CD, over HENNAMAN. G. Murray Thomas |
|
| NORTH BEACH REVISITED AD Winans Green Bean Press This is casual poetry. Unconcerned with what people think of it and free to wonder from thought to thought, pondering the human existence and the writer's place in the world. In North Beach Revisited, AD Winans manages to capture the feeling of a long lazy day reminiscing about his life. His compassion for what has come to pass for himself and for others around the North Beach area is present in every poem. The writing itself is not always great, but the sentiment keeps you reading each poem as you would listen to the drunk at the bar tell his life story, because someone should. Carlye Archibeque |
| SOME ETHER Poems by Nick Flynn Graywolf Press SOME ETHER, Nick Flynn's debut collection, was the winner of a "Discovery"/ The Nation Award and the 1999 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for poetry. The book, being published by Graywolf Press in June 2000, is a harrowing trip into the very heart of suffering. The narrator of these poems almost surgically works at understanding the how's and possible why's of his mother's suicide and his distant father's reappearance as a homeless man. While the pieces themselves are at times uneven, the whole 83 pages serves to portray a sense of survival against great odds. Separated into 4 distinct, separately titled sections, the book moves from a close look at the narrator's mother's suicide, through its subsequent effects on his life, his more recent encounters with his now homeless father, and his state as a survivor looking back. The thematic flow is very well-planned. "The Visible Woman", the book's first section, opens with 2 of the most powerful poems in the collection, "Bag of Mice" and "Fragment (found inside my mother)". The only other poem in this section which is as totally effective as these is "My Mother Contemplating Her Gun", which ends with the stunner "Tomorrow it will still be there." The first piece in "Ether", the last of the 4 sections, is "Cartoon Physics, part 2"; this poem also focuses on the narrator's mother very successfully. It opens, "Years ago, alone in her room, my mother cut / a hole in the air // & vanished into it." Flynn constantly finds new ways of examining the mother"s tragedy, and none are more effective those which infuse a bit of humor to lighten the load on the reader. He is less able to accomplish this with the poems which address the father, seemingly because the father character is still present and so can't be as freely afforded all the missing elements of his story. As a result, these poems are a bit more stilted. What keeps the collection interesting, even through the less captivating patches which don't deal with the narrator's mother, is the wide variety of structural variations which Flynn employs. He goes from short lines to long lines, from left-justified text to words all over the page. His line breaks are very careful, and his use of white space between stanzas, and even within lines, serves to add air to what could otherwise be overwhelmingly dense poems. This is studied writing that takes chances for good reason, though not always entirely successfully. Some of the pieces, even with brilliant individual lines, just don't come together enough to pack the punch they seem to suggest. All in all, the book is cathartic. It's a journey which alternates between amazing, clearly focused, powerful work, and strong, less focused, challenging work. Flynn is never lazy as a writer, though; and it is his struggle to find the way to say what he needs that proves to be the collection's real drama. While not entirely consistent, and certainly not the most uplifting tome on the shelf, SOME ETHER is well worth a look " just don't inhale too quickly. Robert Wynne |
 |
 |