THE MELTING POINT Broadstone Books poems by Robert Fillman

 


THE MELTING POINT Broadstone Books  poems by Robert Fillman

Reviewed by Tim Suermondt

The poet Adam Zagajewski had a lovely definition of poetry, calling poems “a moment of lucidity.” And the poems in Robert Fillman’s fine new collection of poems display those moments with consummate skill. This review can’t cover all the mature magic in THE MELTING POINT, but let’s take a little look.

Many poets write about their school days, their parents, and the life they live now as parents themselves, but Fillman’s work on these themes is one of the best I’ve read.

His poems of school days are best exemplified by the wonderful “The Day that Baseball Taught Third Grade,” some of the teachers a Mr. DiMaggio and a Mr. Williams. But the true poignancy of the poem is when it ends on Mr. Buckner who will forever be remembered as the player who let an easy ball get by him, whose almost broken legs prevented him from bending down far enough and helped cost the Red Sox a World Series. Yet he wins when he tells the children mistakes will happen to everyone, even those with good legs. I appreciate Fillman’s awareness of the fragility of life for children too which he catches most movingly in “Boy on a Train” and “Things Like this Happen.”

Parents can come in for a beating in poems—they’ll always take some flak—but despite the differences of growing up in a life he wasn’t entirely comfortable with, a life of drinking, smoking and hunting, Fillman doesn’t berate, displaying the maturity I mentioned earlier. He looks upon his parents now with forbearance and affection, while still questioning and probing that life in poems such as “After the Fallen Deer,” “On Not Hunting Crisby Land Again this Year with my Kin” and “I Have Never Held a Gun—” / never wanted to look down/ a sight.”

As for the poet’s family, I like the daughter who’s not afraid to get on the father, especially to watch his drinking and the son who’s admonishments are of a quieter variety, all while the father is questioning himself—is he doing the right things as a parent, will his children manage the line between being aggressive and being passive, and in a most human and humorous moment, will his son ever forgive him for not bringing the boy’s karate belt to his karate lesson?

And despite all the doubts, how great it is for the father and son to go down the water ride at the amusement park, together—“a boy just looking happy to be alive.”

He writes so well of his neck of the country, the Long John Silver’s Restaurant, for his birthday no less, a diner that went belly up—the pathos (and that’s the word) of its demise captured in “SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED FOR GOOD”—the trips to the WAWA supermarket to pick up bags of ice to soothe his wife’s health condition. Iceman, you bet. Fillman’s poems of and to his wife are beautiful, proving there’s enough in the every day that will keep a poet occupied and writing The last poem in the book “There Should Always Be Two” is one of the best love poems I’ve read recently—those grapefruits and oh that pie on the kitchen counter!

Fillman also, most interestingly, includes three poems inspired by paintings by Rembrandt, Jackson Pollock, and Andrew Wyeth. At first glance they seem a bit out of place, but, no, Fillman has threaded them well into the book, and the atmosphere remains, even enhanced. The poem that I liked the most is the Wyeth “Abandoned Boat”—here’s the perfect ending: “Here a way of life is stranded/on the shore, like a lost bucket/ of oysters baking in the sun, the blue flesh of barefoot soles/cold against a wet, slatted floor.” That “slatted” I might steal for one of my poems. And since we’re all on a journey, lost and found in one form or another, it’s a good move to bring Robert Fillman’s THE MELTING POINT along with us, poems from a poet worth paying attention to, a poet we’ll be reading with pleasure and for insight for many years to come.