Hard Up By M.P. Carver

 

Hard Up

By M.P. Carver

Lily Poetry Review Books

223 Winter Street

Whitman, MA

ISBN: 978-1-957755-50-2

25 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Calliope rules the world of heroic poetry. Even collections of short heroic poetry motivated by injustice. Whatever the intent of the poet, this muse waits for her opportunity to intervene, to alter, to charm. When reading M.P. Carver’s latest chapbook, Hard Up, one delights in the counterpoint between musical expression and poetical grievance. Carver’s (and her muse’s) ability to transcend down-and-out situations with humor and the necessary concomitant irony inspires. It inspires so much that the political point of her art becomes secondary to her admirable persona and descriptive magic.

Carver’s opening poem, At the Public Housing Complex, or, It Wasn’t All Bad Until We Ran Out of Sky, picks out moments of joy and possible goodness in a smelly, derelict environment infested with mosquitoes and bats. Her detailed attention to reality and blunted expectations impress. Even Carver’s tone evinces complexity by mitigating its sarcasm with conflicting facts. Consider these telling lines,

I remember the landlord

would come rolling in

for a visit in a shiny car

each Sunday and park it

in our rusting sea

of jalopies. He didn’t kick

anyone out for paying

late and got broken

appliances fixed right

away by his son-in-law

who came quick to hit

on all our single moms.

In her poem Why Do Teenage Girls Travel In Groups of 3, 5, or 7?, Carver conjures up the magic phenomenon of mall rat. The poet’s mnemonic shopping mall appears as it originally was, exuding wonder, brightness, and promise. Its starling-like denizens, the teens, commanded respect as they assembled, disassembled, and assembled again in concert, all the time avoiding their nemesis, the mall cop. In time, of course, the underside of this brave new capitalist world would wreak havoc on these innocents, a fate the poet duly notes,

…We were little gods of our

well-appointed domain. We didn’t have money,

but we could bum around and be swept up

in our tidy, colorful, shopping world just the same

as everyone else. Better, we knew every corner.

Knew, too, the old men, 20s and 30s, even 40s,

who hung around too long, trying to find the girl

whose home was worst, trying to look cool to an unwise

young rebel. This was before we got minimum

wage jobs like our parents, learned what it meant

to be broke and care…

The eye-catching centerpiece of this jewel-encrusted collection, My Friend’s Mom is CFO of Some Private Equity Holding Company; My Mom sells Rings at the Mall, says a lot about a daughter’s admiration for her mother. Carver describes the retail process, as her mother practices it, more like a dance or dalliance. She, in effect, translates capitalism into humanity, a novel alchemy without question. The poem concludes this way,

My mom makes the sale seem

like some half-remembered dream.

Not the dream about falling through the ice,

but the dream pulled out and fussed over,

‘til it’s so warm it shines.

Oddly, but wonderfully, Carver teleports Mencius, an ancient Confusion philosopher, into her poem entitled Welfare. Mencius, it seems, believed that people were essentially good. Now there’s a thought. His proof for this insight entailed his belief that even a common criminal would go out of his way to save a baby perched on the rim of a well. Carver points out that today’s criminal, schooled in our twenty-first century culture, might consider conditional implications. The poet, tongue in cheek compares the two eras,

… You could save a baby then, without

everyone asking What the hell? Who are you

to save that baby? There’s paperwork associated

with that baby. Do you know how much that baby

is worth? Mencius’s criminal lived in the Warring

States period, a good well-defined time for folks.

Criminals were criminals, peasants were peasants,

the rich were rich, yes, even then, and anyone

could just walk around thoughtlessly saving babies.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Carver ruminates on the ability of these very wealthy types to book future rocket ship flights to Mars aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX in her piece Safe Travels. Her gentle and full-smile sarcasm strikes home again and again. I find this poem strangely comforting. The poet notes how even her actions mimic the behavior of upper class when among them. She says,

I won’t make it to Mars,

but after a poetry reading

at the BPL the other day

I found myself in the IN crowd

at the afterparty at the Copley,

where a waiter brought me pillows

of pretzel skewered on plastic sticks

and I didn’t even look at him,

though he could have been

my best friend, my student,

or my mom who used to cater

weddings at Spinelli’s, at the head

table with the biggest tips.

Carver’s poetic grievances, despite their earnest and valid points, have no hard edges. Whatever you consider your station or caste in life, everything about this accessible, mini-book charms. Invest your time in reading Hard Up. Believe me, it’s (pardon the expression) worth its weight in gold.