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Duane Vorhees\u2019s Love\u2019s Autobiography: The Ends of Love<\/em> comprises of selections from The Many Loves of Duane Vorhees<\/em>. Apart from the Prologue, the book is divided into three sections titled \u201cBeth\u201d, \u201cJenny\u201d and \u201cYeobo\u201d, with the last section having the greatest number of poems. As the title suggests and the poet himself acknowledges the poems are about the many aspects of love and relationships. But what is so different in writing about love by Duane Vorhees? Duane\u2019s poetry is highly steeped in allusions which provide the poems their richness. It is also his craft that catches the readers\u2019 attention. The opening poem \u201cEither Alzheimer\u2019s of the Lightning\u201d starts like this:<\/p>\n Whizdizzyingly Duane employs Joycean syntactical innovations in his poems because a poem is as much, if not more, about expression as communication. His poems display metaphors that make a reader pause and ponder: \u201cThe sun is a gong hung low across the sky\u201d (\u201cAnother Spring Night In Farmersville, Oho), \u201cAh! Nights you were a harem\/ and I the unmade Bedouin too long in the thirst\u201d (\u201cAh! Nights\u201d) or \u201c:daybreaks are harlots all scarlet and huge with rouge and paste\u201d (\u201cHer Name is Jenny and Many a Morn Has Worn Her Face\u201d).<\/p>\n Sometimes he can be sexually explicit in his imagery but in a beautiful way reminding of the metaphysical poets like Donne or Marvell. In the poem \u201cThe Beast\u201d the two layers of meanings simultaneously skim in our imagination as we read the lines:<\/p>\n Imagine our bodies in Braille, We turn over The poem is as much about making love as it is about poetic creation where the poet makes the reader foreshadow and the lovers reading each other\u2019s bodies and the reader reading the lines of the poem into a single act. Sometimes he can be succinct and yet profound as in the poem \u201cEvidence for the Mutational Codependence of Time\u201d:<\/p>\n Yesterday :ours. (p. 44)<\/p>\n This short poem not only convey a sense of loss but also a pathos and more so when the last line comprising of a single word comes as a separate stanza. It is this structuring that makes Duane\u2019s poems so potent. He is a serious poet who uses his experiences of love, loss and longing to hone his craft of poetry. In another short poem \u201cHawked and Doves\u201d he writes \u201cLove is hawked from every ad,\/ is sent like doves from all our arks,\u201d and achieves in two lines a contrast between the new and the old concepts of love through the allusions to the contemporary and the Biblical and through the imageries of the bird of prey, the hawk and the mild and docile dove.<\/p>\n Duane Vorhees\u2019s loves have become his muses and nowhere it is more evident than in his poem \u201c(And) Purple Prose\u201d where he writes: There is a sort of mercenary-ness in poets who make their loves their muses. Duane is no exception. The duality of being a lover and a poet is sometimes conflicting because it no longer love for love\u2019s sake. Now love has more purposes \u2013 of inspiration, of stimulus, a sort of utilitarianism is attained. This might not be acceptable to the love-turned-muse who might object to the poet when he says: \u201cFor to fill my verse up, rim, barrel, and bung,\/ let me borrow your breaths to stuff my lungs.\u201d This is the tragedy of the poet and Duane further expresses it with an innovative metaphor:<\/p>\n Poet needs muse to keep his thoughts young. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr. Amit Shankar Saha<\/strong> is a widely published award-winning poet and short story writer. \u00a0He has authored a collection of poems titled Balconies of Time<\/em>. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Seacom Skills University.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\ncruising The Moment,
\narrowing past all awareness:
\nhighway, enginewhiine, (p. 7)<\/p>\n
\nfinger tongues perusing,
\nteasing our nuances,
\nweighing every significance.<\/p>\n
\nsheet after sheet.
\nEach climax foreshadowed,
\nwe read ourselves to sleep.\u00a0 (p. 24-5)<\/p>\n
\ntoday
\nwas
\ntomorrow.
\n& my future<\/p>\n
\nAnd I\u2019m just a poet in search of a muse,
\njust a sea-starved seaman in need of a cruise.
\nA poet needs a muse to sweeten his songs,
\nso won\u2019t you play sugar if I play tongue? (p. 58)<\/p>\n
\nThe muse is the clothesline on which are hung
\npoet’s pants & fancies before they get cold. (p. 58)
\nThis is it. No doubt a melancholy pervades the love autobiography of Duane Vorhees.<\/p>\n