The Worm
In The Apple In The Garden: Two American Poets
I’ll Tell
You So: A Flash Story/Haibun Collection by Jeffrey Winke
Cross+Roads Press, $12.00, ISBN 978-1-889460-23-9
Drought
Resistant Strain by Mather Schneider
Interior Noise Press, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-9816606-1-5
Jeffrey Winke’s book I’ll Tell You
So begins with an author’s statement about the relationship of his ‘flash
prose or brief personal recollection’ to the ‘concluding haiku’ which partners
each one. He points out that it is
intended to be ‘consistent in tone – not an extension or explanation – to the
story. When successful,’ he says ‘the
haibun chimes true in the reader’s mind like a Tibetan tingsha bell’. This is followed by an introduction (‘Bright
Lights, Big City, Basho’) by his editor, informing the reader how Winke’s work rises
above labels… Don’t get me
wrong: I totally agree with their aims, exploring alternatives to the usual ‘Western
devices such as simile and metaphor’; it’s just that their readers will most
likely be conversant with haibun – and curious now to see whether the collection
fulfils these ideals.
As promised, the author’s observations range far and wide, from people
overheard in coffee shops to science fiction, the world of work – and encounters
with women: in terms of volume, one of the dominant themes in the book. The reader is soon struck by the
frequency with which Jeffrey Winke’s women are referred to by hair colour or
some other physical attribute, rather like the disposable broads of hard-boiled
detective fiction: mostly blondes, but with the occasional ‘smoky brunette’ in
a jazz club, also one ‘dirty-blonde’ echoing American Psycho. There
are a handful of positive – or at least neutral – images of females to be found,
but most present as man-hunters looking for their ‘next Match.com victim’ or needy,
emotional basket-cases hungering for a ‘strong, take-charge kind of guy’ to fix
them. Women are on-the-make, prick teasers, or they destroy men’s art and
dreams as when Grandma callously tosses deceased Grandpa’s unfinished novel
into the garbage. The Science of De-evolution states that
most of the seductive lizard-people are women; in Too Perfect to be 100%, someone
is drugged and about to be sliced by a circular saw whilst a feminine voice
coos reassurance. And so on. Taken singly, these stories outline the
sins of one anti-social female – but, as a recurring theme, images begin to stack
up and resonate: ‘I accidentally elbow her while making my way to the
counter. She lets out a pained
yawl, like I had prison-yard shanked her’.
OK, so some of the men are not exactly covered in glory (eg Smelly Behemoth Stops), but an
unrepresentative number of the women are flawed. Defining men via negative interactions with women is a
long-established strand running through American literature, since before Huck
Finn escaped from the aunts and Gatsby’s Daisy tarnished, but moderation or an effective
counterpoint is needed to prevent a possible slide towards misogyny. Bottom line: the attitude is Papa
Hemingway – and then some – but half a century later; Rita Hayworth might
appear at any moment singing ‘Put the Blame on Mame, Boys’ whilst stripping.
If only an editor had put the brake on some of the ‘film noir’ spider
women (yes, one has a web tattoo) and steered the author instead towards areas
in which he can be touchingly effective. His cityscapes are evocative, eg The Sign As They Likely Dashed where a neon ‘open’ sign is left on
all night at a locked restaurant.
Instead of bracing yourself whilst the feminine mystique is soundly debunked
one more time, you are free to linger and speculate about the scene, like in a
painting by Edward Hopper. Whilst
Jeffrey Winke’s depictions of business men don’t ring true (too savage), like
Philip Levine he has a real insight and affinity with the lives of hard-working
men and unsung heroes: eg Jarvin, ‘the keeper of the keys’; Gordon Johnson,
the actuary who is secretly an expert on mythological creatures; the
closely-observed contents of a male’s dressing table in Small Fingers Left Will Deftly. He also handles the great outdoors skilfully and in very few
words, like Louis Jenkins (Miles Alone Through
Cedar and Birch). This was
real quality and all the more so for being low-key. Let’s hope his next collection will focus on this undoubted strength
– the untold tales of all the good guys who turn in to work every day, the
dedication of men to crafts and hobbies – as the small glimpse we got of this
secret world was absolutely fascinating.
And does the format fulfil the stated intentions? Well, when the author resists the
temptation to work from a sub-text and selects a unique event, bells do
ring. And he generally avoids
simile, although metaphor is more pervasive. The phrase taken from each poem to be used as the title works
sometimes and, with few exceptions, the concluding haiku are not all that
illuminating; cover them with your thumb, as they are not in the same league as
the flash prose which is impressive in places. However, this body of work definitely provokes the debate: should
every piece of writing in a collection take the same form? Drought
Resistant Strain by Mather Schneider poses a similar question.
This exciting collection is pure urban-frontiersman stuff, rife with
genuinely quirky characters (hookers, drunks, jailbirds, snakes, cacti), but
all impeccably written in the ‘page-poetry’ style, much revered by the British
Poetry Police: restrained free verse, mainly short lines, metaphor rich,
compound words, debatable line-breaks, epiphanies: stylistic corsets tightly
laced. Apart from a few very-short-line
poems, only the stanza length varies. If it wasn’t for the setting
(Arizona/Mexico) and the importance of narrative poems alongside the lyric, I’d
have assumed this was the work of a British academic. Mather Schneider’s biography states that he has no degree or
awards, but he would win prizes on this side of the Atlantic – except the
establishment might disapprove of his usual subjects, which are largely taken
from what the British term ‘the underclass’.
These poems inhabit a similar world to that of Raymond Carver where
employment and accommodation cannot be guaranteed, but crime and substance use
can. The poetic voice is consistent,
so the reader assumes that much of the vision may be that of the poet – but, as
with all poetry, it might not be – and part of the collection’s unity is
undoubtedly due to a strongly evoked sense of place. Having been raised in exactly this sort of environment
myself, the life depicted in his poems was instantly recognisable to me: same
rules apply, whether a marginalised community is located in USA, Britain or
elsewhere – living on the edge is always a frontier. I won’t spoil it for you by giving away too much, but
suffice to say that this is a roller-coaster ride through lives (and bars) that
most people who write have never visited.
That’s why I think work of this nature is so important – and still so
under-represented in Britain, even in this millennium, where it is often labelled
as ‘gritty’. And maybe that’s the
reason for Mather Schneider’s careful styling and rather erudite feel: a traditional
approach to craft, acting as a counterweight to the content, so that his
subjects cannot easily be dismissed.
At all times, the poet avoids descent into grotesquery or exploitation,
due to the compassion he displays for his subjects, whatever their age or
life-experience. The hooker who
decides not to give a regular customer a freebie, even on his birthday, is not
condemned; everyone in this world knows the value of a dollar and wouldn’t be
too proud to accept money when it’s offered. In Schneider’s world, as in the tough port where I grew up, sex
workers and other folk unwelcome in the mainstream are an accepted part of the
community. If there’s any justice,
Vaselina and Company should become a
classic poem. Life is celebrated
in all its forms and beauty is to be found in the most unexpected of places,
e.g. An Angel In An Ankle Bracelet
which turns out to be uplifting urban-pastoral, making the point that we all
live in a prison of some sort but it can be transcended:
I
have bars on my window.
It’s
that kind of neighborhood.
The
woman who lives across the alley
is
under house arrest.
Having
few outward liberties
she
has turned her back yard
into
a paradise…
There are also strands of poems concerning an ongoing relationship with
a steady girlfriend/fiancée, employment and childhood recollections of growing
up in the country, most memorably Spring
Is In The Air where ‘Dad de-balls the Billy goat’, seemingly without the
benefit of anaesthetic. The beauty
of the landscape, especially the Sonoran Desert, is also captured and Mather
Schneider gets the duende/heart balance just right, time after time. The language the poet uses is not
complicated, but is deployed in a masterly fashion; the imagery soars off the
page – so many poems I instantly wished I’d written. The only criticism I have is that the poems are so similar
in style that the cadence gets a bit samey if you read the whole collection of
over one hundred poems in one sitting – but that’s a minor quibble and the vitality
of the writing more than compensates.
Delicious – enjoy.
… our reviewer Beverly
Ellis is a poet working in the east of England. She studied American Literature at Warwick University and
has a PGC in Creative Writing from UEA.