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| Paul Pines |
Message from the Memoirist
Poems
by Paul Pines
Art
by Marc Shanker
Dos
Madres Press
Loveland,
Ohio
ISBN:
978-1-939929-28-0
135
Pages
Review
by Dennis Daly
Tick
Tock Tick Tock. Hickory, Dickory, Dock…. The various concepts of scientific
time tell us almost nothing with their deconstructing conundrums. Nursey Rhymes
do conjure up a sense of play and curiosity but then abandon us to the
immediate. Only when time intersects with the eternal or the pinned-down specific
does meaning appear, gleaned from the residue of the fiery crossover or the accelerated
collision. Paul Pines, in his wonderfully illustrated poetry collection
entitled Message From the Memoirist, uncovers precious pieces of memory from
the dreamscape of mind and transmutes these quark-like particles into summonses
that evoke the true nature of fundamental things. The spectacle or rather
spectral results can be unsettling. Or exhilarating. Even funny.
In
tracing his expansive memories back to the “time before thought” Pines,
presumably dressed in a cowl and carrying a torch, leads us through a
primordial darkness. Shades appear and vanish from our reach. A cock crows and dawn’s
light drenches with creation all who have passed over the River Lethe again.
Early
in the collection, in his piece entitled Toward the Creation of a Perfect
Science, Pines considers the importance of memory to the present, as well as
the positive attributes and the capacity for natural healing that society also
assigns to forgetfulness. The poet puts it this way,
One
forgets and then
When
one remembers
It
seems so important
Not
to forget again
I
want to say that
Forgetting
is a merciful act
But
when what is called
Feels
essential to being
Who
one is in the present
I
am not sure
We
all live through what
we
see and don’t see
When
older people lose a lot of weight, one of two things could be happening. Pines
dwells on the positive in his poetic meditation entitled Yesterday’s
Conversation. As time speeds up and the present merges into memory and
archetypal moments the poet’s response becomes more and more physical. I
sympathize. We’ve done this before. We can beat this. Consider these lines,
I see myself shrinking
Not like an old man
but
slipping back into the young one
who
ran through Coles Woods
the
day after his wedding
and
think,
“You may be in denial,
but look at you go!”
I
will once again lift weights
put
on a glove to field grounders
observe
overweight guys
on
the basketball court at the Y
and
scream,
“I can run rings around these suckers!
In
the end
I
want to laugh all the way
to
where ever it is
we’re
going
A
Message from the Memoirist, Pines’ title poem, begins as a narrative with the poet’s
persona reviewing the efficaciousness of a soon-to-be-given lecture on memoir
writing in the early morning hours. Evolving into natural imagery until a
central, a core template seems to emerge. The piece introduces a subconscious nesting of
fractals. Here is the conclusion that doubles as a beginning,
… what’s re/membered
is made whole
patterns
from which
all
patterns
are
born
the field
in which we
are embedded
embedded
in
us
the
Genius
who
begins to whisper in our ear as soon as our lips
touch
Lethe
and we drop
screaming
into the
world
If
we are not looking in the right direction our creative function from the “fields
before thought” might enter our souls in such a way that the end result
resembles possession, demonic or otherwise. One recognizes this possession
immediately because of its referential patterns. The patterns complement what
we already know. In his poem entitled The Field Theory According to Mel Blank
Pines alerts us to the deep comedy hidden our origins. He uses Mel Blank, the
legendary voice of cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. The poet spins possession into a telling
vignette at the end of the piece’s first section. Mel Blank’s son recalls,
a
moment after
an
auto accident
and
two weeks
in
a hospital bed
he
remained
unresponsive
until
a neurologist
asked
him, How
you feeling Bugs?
and
Mel answered
What’s
up Doc?
Ties
between the world of forms and human kind are many. Symbolism plays its part.
Pathos too. Toward the end of the book Pines places a prose poem entitled
Remembering the Memoirist. He raises a lantern on the psychology of time and
emotions embedded in that concept. The poet relates a narrative fragment that
illuminates the beginnings of a creative life,
…Fifty
years ago,
grieving
my father’s death, I listened for messages to quiet
the
explosive anger and desperation of a boy who found
himself
homeless. In a tenement on 9th St. & Ave. B on a
winter’s
day sans heat or hot water, maybe a few chicken-
hearts
in the fridge, I sat with a Ouija board on my knees.
The
furnace in the tenement basement, like the one in my
heart,
no longer burned. The hood of my sweatshirt cover-
ing
my head, I cried out to whatever voice might rise from
the
cave within. Scared of what the future held, I framed
the
question: What will become of me?
Many
years ago Wolfgang Pauli, the famous physicist and pioneer of Quantum Theory had
a vision of The World Clock, a contraption of wheels and pendulums supported by
a large black bird and emitting pulses. The experience gave Pauli a deeper
understanding of his scientific work and a psychological feeling of well-being.
Pines
references this World Clock in his poetics and Marc Shanker interprets it in
his accompanying illustrations. As the reader pages through Pines’ provocative collection,
led by his young persona in a hooded sweatshirt (no cowl
this time) illuminating the awful truth, it strikes one that these pieces and
their intersecting memories make up a clock not unlike Pauli’s. Pines’ poem Epitaph
for Icarus III has this passage,
a
dust mote
his
presence
fills
the space
between
sleeping
and
waking
spirals
through
Time-
out-of-mind
to
land softly
re/minds
me
to
listen for
what
follows
Remember
to take the time (steal it if necessary), let this book unfold, and soak in the
compelling and quantum landscapes of master poet Paul Pines.
Great review of an even greater poet!
ReplyDeleteOutstanding review. Whets the appetite.
ReplyDelete