Napier, Mouth for Picket Fences (2010)

Barry Napier, A Mouth for Picket Fences. Needfire Poetry, 2010. Pp. 88. ISBN 9781926912066. $9.99 print / $2.99 e-book.

Reviewed by Christopher Michaels

How do you review poetry? It’s such a subjective art, both in the writing and the reading. This wasn’t always true. Poetry was the primary form of stylised speaking and writing, as a performance art in the past; now, apart from its role in song, it’s a minority art mostly accused of being elitist. As a writer and appreciator of poetry I focus on emotion and passion and on these ways of experiencing and thinking about life, relationships and self. I like poetry with a strong emotional core. To me the power of poetry is its ability to point to the deep complexity of life beyond the limitations of words, its medium. For me another important quality of good poetry is the sense that it expands our language by playing with its metaphoric uses and the edge-meanings of it.

Barry Napier’s book is full of beautiful poetry in a modern free-verse form which fulfils these criteria admirably. Some of the poetry in the book continues the pattern of elitism of modern poetry in the complexity of its colliding imagery in ways that obscure meaning and feeling at first but then you learn his language. There is a sense of melancholy to his style which is not quite the enraged darkness we see in a lot of modern poetry, that slows you down to think and feel. He disrupts the blackest moods he suggests with gentle humour.

This is demonstrated in the very first poem ‘Hiding in October’. It starts with images of a one-track world and bored birds suggesting we have no control over the world and therefore life, but then he says:

“This was the same day you realized that a clock
has hands that can’t applaud
or hide themselves in coat pockets
or hold a baby, slick and new to the world.”

A humorous way of expressing the limitations of time yet filled with compassion. The poem is lovely and profound about the way symbol and organisation can overtake life by talking about how thin the calendar page is between September and November. The sad thought that a month is reduced to no more than a page in that calendar.

Another beautiful very sad poem from the first segment is the ‘Sentinel’. This one has no humorous relief. It is a short emotionally precise expression of self-destructive solitude, though it also seems to be about the loneliness old age and dementia. In contrast, towards the end of this segment, there is a rather sensuous contemplation on haunting, heaven and death, ‘We Will All Be Voyeurs in Heaven’, which nonetheless ends with:

“you will waste away in the shadow of life
regardless.”

The book is divided in three segments or chapters: ‘Normalcy’, ‘The Darkness Weighs Us’ and ‘(in)humanity’. To be honest I found it hard to know the relevance of the titles of the segments to the poetry within them. Normalcy has pieces, like the above three, which don’t necessarily seem to have much to say about normal life, unless he is saying normal life is melancholic.

The first poem of the second segment gives the book its name, ‘A Mouth for Picket Fences’, a description of mysterious evil, or is it God? This poem suggests a Stephen King-like story and character with an Old Testament complexity for the higher power. The strength of this poem is that he could be talking about marketing and capitalism just as easily as gods, demons and/or spirits. This poem has quite a different feel to the poetry of the first segment, there is a passion and clarity of opinion to it. The next poem ‘Morning Choir Practice’, a reflection on the sounds of a suburban morning chorus, returns to the melancholic feel of the first segment, but has a more judgemental sense to it. In away it seems to be more of a statement about normal life than most of the poems in the segment called ‘Normalcy’.

Most of the poems are about one page, short intensely emotional. ‘What We Know of Blackbirds’, at six pages, is the longest poem and picks up the theme from the sentinel of loneliness and aging. It uses the language and images of horror and mystery, reminding one of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Raven’, but is a contemplative exploration of hallucinogenic solitude brought on by profound grief. The choice of blackbirds as the birds of focus gives it symbolic depth. It could easily have been cliché, bringing on Stephen King, Hitchcock’s Birds and the Beatles, but the subtle understanding of the subjective, of feelings and the edge of sleep terror takes it into the realm of beauty.

The last poem in the book is appropriately ‘Rituals of Farewell and Departure’. It picks up the feel and narrative style of the earlier ‘Mouth for Picket Fences’, though not quite as strong as it, in the sense that it tells the story of a mystery spirit, maybe death, moving though suburban and small town life; a

“single shadow sulks across town,
under layered shadows and a collective naiveté”

Barry Napier’s collection of around forty poems is a substantial work worthy of wider notice. It courageously explores areas of life that are left untouched by many other art forms. Its style and emotional qualities take it into much deeper territory than the horror or dark lit that the promotional back pages suggest. To review a book like this is a little unfair since some of these poems are worthy of long consideration, of whole reviews by themselves. If there is a criticism it is that the collection is unlikely to pull non-poetry readers from the general public, people who don’t already love and appreciate poetry, but that’s not its aim.

Another minor problem is that of consistent emotional tone, maybe this is about his voice and the publisher’s idea that it should all fit together thematically and stylistically but for me it makes it a bit flat. A poem in the last segment like ‘The Misogyny of Writing’ heads towards sensuality and love with humour but then ends with grave-robbing obsession. A beautiful rendition of an afternoon of lemonade and a daughter’s relationship with her mother ends with a wasp landing on a “glazed-over eye where it marched onward, unseen”. It is as if everyday life is not enough, not profound enough or worthy enough for poetry unless it points to death and grief. However, the fact is few ordinary people in everyday conversation chat comfortably talk about death and its emotional consequences, its relationship with love and loss. These are important parts of our human experiences and Barry Napier is unflinching yet compassionate and sensitive in his expression of the intimacy of these moments.

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Di Filippo, Roadside Bodhisattva (2010)

Paul Di Filippo, Roadside Bodhisattva. PS Publishing, 2010. Pp. 174. ISBN 978-1906301941. £20.00 / $32.00.

Reviewed by Christopher Michaels

Roadside Bodhisattva is a good example of the way a teen central character and narrator does not necessarily mean its readership will be limited to young adults. There is none of the literary revolution suggested by the author’s dedication to Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski or the central character’s continual references to Jack Kerouac. The only similarity is in that this is a first person story about being on the road (well mostly beside it). It is told by a sixteen year old about life at a roadside diner and motel. It is one of those “spiritual apprenticeship” stories, but without the magic of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Teachings of Don Juan or The Peaceful Warrior, though possibly with more quiet wisdom. The author is suggesting that Buddha is found in everyday life through ordinary relationships between ordinary people—as contrasted with the young central character’s desire for something extraordinary.

Kid A is a sixteen year old runaway anonymously seeking a life of adventure on the road guided by, even better living through, Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. He meets Sid, a man whose long experience on the road, knowledge and generous attitudes reflect a practical understanding of the real Buddhism the boy is looking for. He contrasts with his parents’ Buddhism which sees them with “their heads so far into some kind of jackass mysticism that they tended to let a lot of ‘unimportant’ things like grocery shopping and mortgage payments and laundry slide.” Kerouac had proved for him there were other types of Buddhists.

Sid on the other hand lives by simple rules like, “I start out friendly, and see how the other guy responds. After that, based on what he does, I follow tit for tat.” His attitude to the boy’s guides is clear cut but mixed: “Your Kerouac is a shot of super-antibiotic to cure you of mental clap. But the other one is like a stolen blank prescription pad. You can write yourself all the prescriptions you want from it, but there’s no authority behind ‘em, and you’ll never get ‘em filled.” Kid A quotes directly from Gibran from memory whilst he associates himself and Sid with the main characters and events in Dharma Bums.

The two stop at a roadside diner and motel for breakfast when Sid talks the owner Ann into giving them both jobs. We meet a group of ordinary people in ordinary pain. Sue, a girl about seventeen, about a year older then Kid A, who’s been in trouble and sent to live with her aunt by parents who don’t know how to handle her; Sonny the stuttering cook; Angelo the grumpy mechanic; and Yasmine the sexy but bitchy waitress. Through the story we find out each of their stories as Sid intervenes to change their lives for the better, apparently out of generosity. Meanwhile our main character stumbles along, accidentally helping out each person while he tries to get it on with Sue. Kid A finally becomes impatient to get on the road and continue his search for the adventures that will let him live his Kerouac fantasy life, leading to a somewhat surprising climax.

Roadside Bodhisattva has a simple direct narrative style of storytelling; it is an easy read, probably comfortable for a sixteen year-old readership, as suggested by the narrative voice. But we don’t really see even the darkness that plagues Harry Potter, which has driven the Kid to run away and to base his life on a literary fantasy. It doesn’t even stretch the reader’s vocabulary as much as the Potter books. It is a pseudo-Buddhist fable set in small-town America. It is a little slow in places and the plot is convenient in others, but as you’d expect from a fable it points to depth whilst focussing on daily life, apparent simplicity and surface appearances.

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Beckett, The Holy Machine (2010)

Chris Beckett, The Holy Machine. Corvus, 2010. Pp. 288. ISBN 9781848876569. £10.99.

Reviewed by Christopher Michaels

This book has many of the elements of classic science fiction. At first impression, it is full of clichés, but its takes these ingredients in interesting directions that make reading on worthwhile. Like the best classic sci-fi, The Holy Machine has captivating writing that draws in the reader’s imagination. It explores a future that is an extension of current social movements. It has conflict between robots and workers, and looks at the social consequences of technology. It has questions about sentience and personhood for robots that go back to Asimov in the 1940s and ‘50s. Of course there are robots designed for pleasure, one of the morally problematic economic functions that many hope they could help solve. You have philosophical and political ideas being explored to their logical extreme, and as with the best of classic sci-fi you have all of these being explored through an emotional personal story as you journey with a few people struggling to cope with this world.

The world we are visiting has been engulfed by “The Reaction,” a movement across religions which has meant they each now rule their home territories. In this irrational darkness the one beacon of light is the Mediterranean island-state of Illyria off the coast of the Balkans. This city-state has the sense of Western philosophy’s mythic place for ancient Athens surrounded by barbarism. Illyria is populated by rationalist refugees from the rise of radical fundamentalist religion. Atheist scientism (my coinage) is the state religion.

The older generations have horrifying memories of persecution by the religions of their mother cultures as they took power. So if you are southern European you were persecuted by the Catholics and the Orthodox. If from the USA, as our hero’s mother is, then it was by the protestants. If you were Indian or Japanese then it was the Hindu and the Shinto radicals that gained political power and persecuted intellectuals and scientists.

Illyria is a hi-tech world with virtual reality for escape and robots being developed and produced to free the inhabitants of dependence on uneducated religious, and therefore dangerous, guest workers from neighbouring countries. They outmatch any society in the world for war machines. The post-traumatic stress of the older refugees has meant they are fundamentalist militant atheists and rationalists, introducing laws intolerant of anything that cannot be scientifically proven. The younger generations though are realising the shortcomings of pure scientific materialism and can see the similarity between the intolerance of their politicians and those of the theocracies surrounding them.

Enter George Simling, hero or maybe better anti-hero, the primary first person narrator of this story. We do have snap moments offered of the first person experience of some other characters, in particular his robot lover, and his mother. He is a nerd in a society of nerds, deeply isolated and dissociated from the culture of “the City”, as it is called. He gets involved with some of the milder rebels and moves towards the more radical militants of the younger generation. But his passionate love for one of the newest versions of pleasure robot deflects him from participating in violent political action.

We get to see some aspects of the internal life of the “Syntec” pleasure robot, Lucy, as she comes to sentience, to a sense of a self/identity beyond her programming. This was some of the best writing. George gradually notices her growing sentience; he decides to take liberate her when the self-evolving programming of other robots leads to unpredictable behaviour. Some just walk off, but when a police robot becomes a mass killer a law is passed that all robots will be rebooted and set back to their default programming every six months thus wiping their memory and their evolutionary progress towards sentience.

The latter part of the story then turns into the after-story of one of the endings of Blade Runner, when Harrison Ford runs off with the beautiful robot, but without the four year life span. In the medieval religious world of the City’s neighbours the robots are demons they proudly destroy as proof of their religious fervour.

Again like good classic sci-fi this story is a metaphor exploring deep philosophical questions relevant to modern life. In this case the central problem is how do you find spiritual depth as an atheist. As George journeys through the Outlands, first with his disguised robot then by himself, he explores the different religions he meets, trying to find satisfaction for his scientifically trained, inquiring mind.

The Holy Machine edges almost too close to cliché in places but it is saved by the writing, and by the emotional intensity of the protagonist’s journey through the world of medieval religion versus so-called atheist enlightenment. Occasional readers of sci-fi will definitely enjoy it; more accomplished readers of science fiction will either not get past the beginning with a sighed, “here we go again” or will enjoy the twists it takes in setting a lot of standard science-fictional ingredients in a relatively unique world to explore important and interesting philosophical and human questions at the core of atheism and religion.

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