Church
of the Adagio
By
Philip Dacey
Rain
Mountain Press
New
York City
ISBN:
13 978-0-9897051-4-1
95
Pages
$15.00
Review
by Dennis Daly
I
don’t know about you, but lately life’s gales seem to gust past me toward the
thin-lipped, unforgiving horizon. I’m always looking for that bloody slow
button. Philip Dacey offers relief by setting up his Church of the Adagio in
the artificial spaces that creativity engenders. His poetic moments linger
until they don’t. Time stops and starts as anticipation surges through the
connecting nerves as you climb over the profane and the sacred stanzas, easing
into and then merging with the lines. It’s damn reassuring. He makes it so.
In
Llama Days, a serendipitous poem plotted out in formal verse, Dacey considers
the many facets of wonder encompassed in a brief meeting of unintroduced
species, a parsed parley, which changes the very nature of time twice: first,
the convocation itself suspends the protagonist’s disbelief, and second, the
poem, itself emerges out of artistic (read daydream) time. Here’s the moment of
decision in the heart of the poem,
But
llama? I’d never noticed one before,
though
no doubt my surprise at seeing him
was
matched by his at seeing me—or more
then
matched, he being lost, freedom become
a
burden twice as bad as any bars,
so
much so panic struck and he turned back,
high-stepping
it onto the road, two-laned, tarred,
and
I saw the headline, “Llama killed by truck.”
Dropping
the rake, I raced to rescue him,
Who
now stood frozen, straddling the centerline…
Attempts
at political poems crash and burn all the time. The more self-righteous the
poet the better the chance of failure. True believers rarely produce first rate
art. There are exceptions however. Dacey’s poem News of the Day, for instance,
takes three historical examples of man’s inhumanity to man, cedes some freedom
to formalist techniques, slowing down a river of natural anger, and creates
three hardened jewel-like pieces. He sets his inspired words into two rondels
and a sonnet. The Hiroshima rondel is beyond exceptional. The last stanza burns
into you,
The
room reshaped itself around me, night
disguised
itself as day, and words, undone,
turned
ash. Gone blind by ecstasy of sight,
my
eyes read fire. When spines began to run,
I
turned the page and fell into the sun.
Another
curiosity in this book is the way Dacey moves almost seamlessly from formal
poetry of the strictest type ( rondels, villanelles, sestinas) into languid free verse and then back into
formality. The relaxed prosy narrative of Dacey’s free verse poem White Trash
lures you into an ongoing joke with very serious undertones. The poet opens his
piece matter-of-factly,
When
middle-class blacks
moved
into my family’s neighborhood
in
St. Louis in the Fifties
and
we and all our neighbors
moved
out, the property values
soared.
Lawns greened, junkers
disappeared.
I realize now
I
was white trash.
Maybe
I’m still white trash.
My
parents never told me.
Did
they know? Do they know now?
I
like having a clear identity,
if
not the one I’d have chosen for myself.
I’d
long ago accepted the notion I was
gutter
Irish…
My
Allen Ginsberg Story, Dacey’s humorous poem of admiration, rocks one with
fastidious details of stage props and prescribed paraphernalia. One doesn’t
usually associate the word fastidious with Allen Ginsberg. And here lies the
rub. Ginsberg apparently acted as a diva before readings with assorted ecentric
demands. The myth of artistic spontaneity slows down and breaks into component
parts in this piece. Ginsberg leaves nothing to chance when it comes to adding
honey to his tea. The piece’s form, free verse lines, as Ginsberg might have
written them, almost adds another layer of irony to the poem. Here are some
lines from the heart of the composition,
Ginsberg
saw me looking at the traffic jam
of
paraphernalia and smiled. No doubt he knew
the
effect of his phone call—beyond bizarre, honey
as
an emergency. But now it seemed the act
of
a consummate pro, perfectionist even, showman
not
about to let an accident break a spell.
I
thought of Whitman, whose “spontaneous me”
didn’t
stop him from revising some poems for decades.
He’d
agree that to place a honey jar and spoon
amidst
that crush would ask for a disaster.
Still
smiling, Ginsberg said, “You see what I mean.”
Leaping
between the arts of dance and writing Dacey’s poem Nijinsky: A Sestina describes both the medicinal and the madness
inherent in the famous dancer’s life. It turns out that Nijinsky was also a
talented diarist whose words soar as they detail ruin and degradation. Dacey’s sestina in homage to Nijinsky is a short-lined
poem with odd end words that Najinsky sputtered out nonsensically at one point
in his life. But there is no nonsense in Dacey’s poem. The piece is a
triumphant pas de deux between the poet and his subject.
One
of this collections unusual pieces, The Cockroach Ball, skitters in with
beautiful phrasing and organic unhesitant rhymes. Dacey uses the villanelle
form here and it is lovely. Along with the obvious humor, the poet expresses
his rather wondrous sensitivities. The poem works! Cockroach love in the midst
of poverty—who would have thought it possible?
My
advice: worship at Dacey’s Church of the Adagio for the very best in
contemporary poetry. And do it as soon as possible.
****** originally appeared in the Fox Chase Review.
****** originally appeared in the Fox Chase Review.
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