REVIEW of BAMBOO EQUALS LOON
by Anita K. Boyle,
Egress Studio Press,
5581 Noon Road,
Bellingham, Wa 98226
(egresstudio.com), 2001
By Anselm Parlatore
Let's not kid ourselves. We are at a point in time now that finds us
all demanding
much more of our poetry, our poets, & surprisingly, ourselves,
in relationship to our
individual, idiosyncratic, & at times, eccentric responses to the
poems we read.
The etiology of this state of affairs is obviously very complex but
probably has much to
do with our ambivalence about our own language, our cultural language(s),
(often
against the constant backdrop or screen of media-speak), & the
compelling need to
experience our emotions with grace, dignity, honesty, & conviction.
It was with these thoughts in mind that I read Anita K. Boyle's beautifully
designed
BAMBOO EQUALS LOON.
It is a robust & bracing read. Most of the poems won't let you
go. They announce
themselves with a sense of urgency & commitment that is at once
not only reassuring
but also, at times, alarming, yet healing.
There is a sustained mixture & modulation in tone & attitude
that has as its main ingredients,
confidence, maturity, wisdom, humility, empathy, wonder & awe, loss,
grief, & a quietness.
The many emotional excursions in the poems are never mutually incompatible, & are
often
associated with a raucous sense of fun, humor & wit.
Don't get me wrong: despite a stunning dexterity in the book's orchestration,
these poems
are all clear & precise, declarative statements of discrete disclosure.
That's where the grace,
I mentioned, becomes evident.
The poems: "Lure of the Loon" in its entirety:
I was unaware that this world
could become an anxious monstrosity.
But it does hold doubtful comforts
like unearthly calls I hear from the loon at night.
I did not know things out there
would urge me to lose my mind:
beasts and cries and barraging undercurrents
pushed me toward the edge of the world I knew.
The loon's eerie pleas are present every evening just past sunset. Strange
impulses disrupt.
Liquor-awakened
apprehensions skew commonplace images.
The loon calls for me.
Like sweet caramel over cole slaw,
innocence has no place
in a world meant for crazies.
Only the loon's starlit blackness comforts me.
"Lure of The Loon" is a scary yet comforting, haunting poem.
No mean feat. And, most
assuredly, "Strange impulses disrupt."
"Arborescence" is delicate yet powerful. There is a perfect
balance in this poem that is
metaphorically sophisticated and pure. The first stanza sets up the
metaphoric power;
The whole poem:
From tree to tree, year
to year, trails meander like creek beds,
swerve around frost-forced rock, yellow
twigs of willow, red sprouts of wild rose.
A stranger in the path
becomes as familiar as a good friend.
This spring, one woman's wrinkles
follow the same paths as last,
and deepen; swollen blue rivers course
through her hands a little slower this year.
When she breathes in, a green leaf unfurls
on a red branch.
The last stanza of "The Warrior",
Don't worry about me.
I'm harmless. Even if
you see the glint
of sword in my eye.
Here is a startling section from "Energy":
The absent body begins to remember itself:
worm spine,
colander liver,
eye socket vision purse,
certain ancient digits…
"Bamboo Equals Loon" is, in places, sinister, yet lovely.
…………And bamboo
under stars can be stiff
as a dead loon
in the daytime.
"Unveiling the Marlboro Man" is a disturbing poem with images
of decay and disease
that manages to not only be sardonic and humorous, but also erotically
playful. All this
in one poem! Here is section #6:
The simplicity of cowboy underwear
in late twentieth century
America is beautiful
for spacious skies. Exploration
is unnecessary. Everything is obvious.
Like a toss of a lariat, his boxers
are flung to the clouds.
Welcome to Marlboro Country.
Contrast this to section #10:
He takes your hand, runs your fingers
up and down his papery chest, pushes
your thumb into his packaged skin
just below the sternum.
A quick flick and his chest opens like a carton.
He stands back coolly, tacked
to the wall.
"While She Waited" is a fable and an allegory. In part it
reads,
She wanted to escape
from life, but found it necessary
to stand in line
with her kohlrabi and mutton pull toy.
Leaning patiently beside the cobweb ladder
to the portly egress, she met a white bumblebee
with a large hump on his back,
a dromedary drone,
a crack albino with a wild crock pot
hysteria in his eye. He waved his
antennae and said, "Ms Mantis, I see
you are knowingly closeted."
Then he had a labial seizure which forced his lips
into the pouted posture Queen Mary
of Scots held while she waited
for her final beheading.
"Buffalo Logic" has a very effective tone and pacing. The
poem's resignation and
acceptance brings with it a serenity and peace, the poem's flux notwithstanding.
Here is how the poem begins:
Good news from the village
follows the logic of the buffalo.
And that, my friend, is a fine thing.
"Daily Defamations" is an heroic, honest and successful
attempt to articulate the
complexities and metaphysics of contriteness, remorse, and guilt. The
first section follows:
I picked up an unused ticket from the sidewalk. "ADMIT ONE
to the One and Only,
Phenomenal, Tropical Ice Cave
Located on the Entire West Coast
of North and South America."
My brain, coated in deep fur,
prevents me from pursuing the idea further.
My indecision is like pollen
that rots before it moves along boreal
winds, even before it can be swallowed
by a ridge-backed
pickerel skimming a pond's surface somewhere.
I'd rather swirl in fractal spirals
like those that linger round the empty carapace
of a beetle blowing about on a pond; I
treasure this decision without sincerity
or use of syntax.
Marjorie Perloff, in her book, "Radical Artifice", writes, "Language,
for the poetry
that persists in its demand for authenticity, seems to be something
of a distraction,
interfering as it does with the direct communication between poet and
reader; perhaps
poetry can dispense with it altogether and go for the unmediated image."
Most readers are more than familiar with the results of such experiments.
Anita K. Boyle has achieved an immediate and direct communication without
having to
sacrifice neither language nor image. The poems in BAMBOO EQUALS LOON
are
uncompromising intimacies between the poet and the reader and for this
we all should be grateful.