THE NERVOUS FILAMENTS and
SKY BOOTHS revisited
Check out this
excellent review of the book. It appeared
in the newest number of
The Laurel Review, but John
Gallaher has graciously posted it on his blog, for which
I give him much thanks. Much thanks as well goes out
to Nick Sturm, the reviewer. Full disclosure: before I
noticed this posting, half an hour ago, I was out in my yard
feeding antlions, the bay reflective in the near distance,
green herons suddenly everywhere. Talk about absorbing.
Also, now, posted below, an equally insightful review
of
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere, The Ashbery
Erasure Poems, by Jay Robinson (thank you Jay)
The review originally appeared in Barn Owl Review, was
posted on the 42 Miles Press blog, and now I'm sticking
it here.
A Review for Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere
by David Dodd Lee
By Jay Robinson
Lee, David Dodd.
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere,
the Ashbery Erasure Poems. Blaze VOX [books], 2010. $16.
(It also now available on the Amazon Kindle for 99 cents)
When people discuss David Dodd Lee’s poems, they gravitate to
simile because Lee’s recent work—so wonderfully original and
strangely formed—inspires only equally original comparison.
John Gallaher has said of Lee’s haunting Orphan, Indiana that “…
it’s as if a manic tour guide were speaking to you on an intermittent
intercom on a tour bus riding the back lots…” In less than a
calendar year, Lee has released three books. Each feels like a
distinct stylistic breakthrough, and each also feels like a
slightly different version of the same mesmerizing thing. Of the
three,
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere, The Ashbery
Erasure Poems is the most unique, though not in what it says via
subject, theme, and execution, but in how it was written according
to the terms of a self-invented form. Lee explains in a prefatory
note: “The rules were simple enough….I had to construct my text
by moving through the source poem, selecting words as Ashbery
ordered them (consecutively), while omitting the rest. In other
words, were I to white-out my omissions on the page of an
Ashbery text one would have little trouble, reading from left to
right, deciphering the words and phrases that make up the
‘narrative’ that are my erasure poems.” By its nature,
Sky Booths
in the Breath Somewhere doesn’t call into question where a
poem comes from; however, it broadens that scope, and implies
that poems can come from anywhere. And can do anything.
If we want to, we can tell our stories simply by erasing words of
other people’s stories.
And yet, there’s little difference between these poems and the
poems of
Orphan, Indiana or
The Nervous Filaments (though
Lee employs greater use of multi-lined stanzas in “The Ashbery
Erasure Poems”). Reading them, Ashbery’s influence isn’t the
faintest echo; it’s more like a house in the distance hidden in the
fog, a house you only know is there because you’ve lived in this
town for years. Written with inconsistent end punctuation and few
line breaks—because the poems often unfold in a series of
one-line fragmentary stanzas—Lee’s poems form narratives
through juxtaposition and association. In fact, they deconstruct
and construct narratives, and they do so simultaneously. Lee is, I
think, nothing short of a collagist of the relentless internal
monologue of human experience. His poems surprise us by
continuing to surprise us. “In favor of life” exemplifies his
style:
nobody knew where to buy a minute
after God was forgotten
long shadows wider each time
names in the fabric like pain
so when will God be able to
disconnect us from all that is real?
you think of desire as a lit stone in hell
The poem’s theological implications seem clear enough: Life is
hell sometimes, but so is hell, even if it’s something we’re only
willing to engage on a conceptual level in the 21st century.
Therefore, other concerns make the poem engaging. For
example, “disconnect” is a key word, as parts of “In favor of life”
refer to what’s off-stage and never-revealed. Whose “names”?
The “fabric” of what? But Lee doesn’t just pose such questions
indirectly. His poetry actively pursues them. It’s as if he’s really
asking, Is a simile effective if we don’t know what the
comparison is being compared to? Is it more effective?
Often the poems of
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere
probe the boundaries of experience through unswerving
self-interrogation. At his best, Lee juggles moments of honesty
and levity. Listen to the opening of “On a nameless road”:
I flash merrily
when people think
if only we could get the cows
to consider voting
Levity for levity’s sake? Hardly. The comic gesture
complements the poem’s conclusion by addressing the
pervading existential helplessness at the heart of the punch line.
But Lee tells us nothing new in doing so. How he tells us,
however, is a different story:
I don’t know if I’ll ever look young
pitiful morning,
sooner or later,
one’s apertures
start looking disingenuous
desire is never enough
The lack of punctuation and stanza breaks—even the use
of white space—each force the reader to make leaps, to
connect what might not intend connection, via intuition, whether
those connections situate the grammar of what may or may not
be a sentence, or whether they let us put a couple of the poem’s
puzzle pieces in place on the kitchen table. In that way, Lee’s
poems yield us control. Or the illusion of control anyway.
Other poems dissect issues of identity. At some point, all
contemporary poets show their debt to Whitman, who famously
claimed, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict
myself….” Such a moment arises in “Erotic Double.” The poem
is more investigative than erotic, but quite unlike Whitman in its
aesthetics:
Another go round?
Rescue me before the night does…..
I can hide it. I choose to.
You. You are a very pleasant person.
And just who does the speaker of the poem address?
Who is this ‘erotic double,’ if not the speaker of the poem,
a poem which articulates very deftly how we can desire
something and its opposite all at once?
Perhaps the greatest compliment one might pay Lee and
Sky Booths
in the Breath Somewhere is that these are truly original poems,
made all the more fascinating, all the more engaging and likely to
outlive so many others, as is the great gift he’s given us of insight
into the creative process of doing so.
I can think of no finer poet to read at this moment than
David Dodd Lee.
