Poetry by Dennis
Mahagin
Paper, $12.95
122 pages
ISBN 978 1 60864
051 5
REBEL SATORI PRESS
www.rebelsatori.com
Review by Susan Tepper
Review by Susan Tepper
GRAND MAL Book
Review
What makes Dennis Mahagin run? Run, as in jet engine propelling tons of
steel down a runway and up into the sky.
From his opening poem GRAND
MAL W / GROWN UP, it’s clear things are out on the table:
“Back then there was Grandma, / stuffing your thoughtless
pie hole / with a freshly-bought / Ivory soap cake, / after you just popped off
/ to your impressionable siblings / at breakfast, a wisecrack / about the sweet
/ peach ridge panty cleft / on February’s / Sports
Illustrated / swimsuit cover model— /… ”
GRAND MAL can
be frantic, it’s often funny, often strung out, yet the craft here never
wavers. The poems hang together the way
a talented musician knows to assemble dissonant chords, making them something
powerful and profound that will move people; provided it’s done without strain
or artifice. For many years Mahagin was
a bass player and song writer— no surprise!
Music punches up each of his fractured poetic lines, so when they
coalesce into lyrical scenes they move and shout and lament from that deep well
in the land of the down and out: the almost dead; or dead for all practical
purposes.
So why Grand Mal? Medically speaking, Grand Mal is a seizure
characterized by 4 phases (there’s an epigram explaining each Phase as it
delineates the book’s 4 sections).
Mahagin writes in BANISHING THE SNAKES:
“It’s a go-fast world, and green / is the color of my
disease— / … / I’ve done that / Riverdance
sidestep, / caught the flak of dripping fang / that makes you so dreadful
sick; / and I can tell you: no driftwood / wishbone stabbing stick at arms
length / will work on this bitch it’s strictly up / close and personal, under
your thumb / in a fire nozzle grip, until she opens wide, / blasting poison
like syphilis piss / on a slush bank…”
(from Phase 1).
Sub-dividing the book in this way allows the poems a
forward momentum that tightens narrative tension, while at the same time
maintaining the Grand Mal as its
driving metaphor. He writes in
FARE: “The Laotian impresario / at the
outcall agency / recommended her / as a star in his stable: / “She go slow— she
so / con-sooo-mate… pro.” / Now, as she slips on / the glistening condom / with
her mouth / in a frisson of python, he bats back / the eyelid splash of rushing
purple dusk /…” (from Phase 2).
So what makes Mahagin run? Perhaps the demons of his past, present, and
the always uncertain future, which is part and parcel of what makes poetry such
a compelling art form. Some can channel
these demons better than others. Mahagin
puts it transparently out there, saying to anyone who happens to amble by, for
a read: “Stuff they give / to empty you
/ out, / makes sleep / tough, / getting up / to go, crapper / to sack , and
back / …” from ENDOSCOPY (Phase 4).
GRAND MAL is the second book by this prolific poet. I eagerly anticipate more.
—Susan Tepper
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