ABSURD GOOD NEWS by JULIEN POIRIER
PATRICK JAMES DUNAGAN Reviews
Absurd Good News by Julien Poirier
(Insert Press, 2006)
LOVE FOR MY LIFE AMONG THINGS
The body is a characteristic thing. Pressures it exacts upon its environment, along with such pressures exacted upon it, spur on the job of living. Where attention is laid comes care for the action occurring. Habits and forced behaviors, the crummy work of making a living, combine with chance and unknown quantities, taking a different street, going for a walk for no good reason, to bring about the corollaries art is concerned with. Old story, maybe, what isn’t seems rather naïve to any reader who’s paying attention. For those doing the writing the very thing is to remain physical, that thing you is.
MY SKELETON
my skeleton
first off, depends upon
no
though compleat
has the advantage
blacked out
winds turn
blindness to
coals
plus he’s sweet
and I can’t believe we’ve never spoke
an analogy
the scarred bowler
my asshole
he peeps through
piccolo
predates me
and he knows
flowing points
when I dance
Poirier explores further. He finds the other inside the thing his body is; that sweet believer, total support on which his frame is hung and both dances with and upon. Poirier’s true grace is his willing embrace of abrupt jumps line to line, banging meaning around, syllabics up against good common sense.
WHY SAY NOT
Why say not when I fender garden water in?
a cream coupe the nebulous puppies
sleep off their hunches
& the sound of money
is the only lunch coming
her guitar
and trawled by suns, elucidate
their sexy waterskin
suns rush over the big problem
is they don’t rush. we are chortling
tricked by their heat, cold in hand
smooth customers
on the dime cool clover
Consonants are employed in the pursuit of joy. How terrific is that. Poetry is not limited to that serious business having to do with language, but, oh yeah, it’s about play, too, that serious business having to do with language. As Blackburn says, “My song’s of JOY, I’ll make it now”. Poirier’s traveling the same good old road as those troubadours Blackburn holds dear.
to the chime
sweet seedy & beckoning
green
gone & sexy
(“FRA”)
This isn’t some hallowed out insensitivity lacking swing. This fellow human named Poirier weaves his days and nights throughout every page. His words are visitors to the reader, accompanied by his cartoon sketched characters who tag along for the ride scattered with frequent delight throughout these pages. In “KID V. KIDARSKY” there’s encouragement, “Buck up, Oberon” that’s both playful, “MAX JACOB LOOKS LIKE A PINSTRIPED SEAL / your mama” and at turns serious, “if you’re not fixing mailboxes / you’re metering paradoxes” reminding the reader there’s work to be done which by necessity is cared for outside of the page. What matters is the world and the experience of it. To share with others and learn from that sharing, sharing it in turn, that all may have further opportunity of experience. Part of this endeavor is always to provide warning less the reader like Poirier as much anyone else too often dwell in that common sense of loss the human mind is fraught to giving itself over to time to time.
THE DONUT
I return to the colony
only to find the donut
an utter cipher
though
a perilous beauty
tempts me to embellish
and risk destroying
its nature
to be open-ended, hardly
at all
dead as some
say my nature is
but too alive
for my passion
I doubt
And crush the thistle
Thankfully Poirier is never fully lost to such darkness and repeatedly emerges in the dance song is. His words are energy in Blake’s sense: they delight in their own form. Such pleasure creatures of the human world desperately lack Poirier gives to his reader.
*****
Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works in the library at the University of San Francisco. He has published poems and chapbooks with Auguste Press, Blue Book, Chain, Mirage#4 period(ical), Pompom, Red Ant Press, and Snag Press.
posted by na @ 9:55 PM
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