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.
