Pickled Dreams Naked poems by Norman Stock

Pickled Dreams Naked

poems by Norman Stock

NYQ Books

New York, New York

Copyright © 2010  by Norman Stock

105 pages, softbound, $14.95

ISBN: 978-1-935520-30-6

Vera Pavlova was born in Moscow. She graduated from the Gnessin Academy, specializing in the history of music, and is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, four opera librettos, and lyrics to two cantatas. Her works have been translated into eighteen languages

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

the smelly feet of poetry

the running nose the ripped trousers

the bleeding pimples the disfigured faces

of the sick is what poetry

is trying to get at, the sonnet about nothing at all that is beautiful

disorganized elbows and old people asleep

the covers covering them the comforts of infants

is what poetry must make itself out of, there isn’t anything else

This is the poem Prosaic from Norman Stock’s volume of poetry.  Poets may or may not agree with Stock’s definition, but it certainly is a thought provoking eight lines which may or may not help one evaluate their own or others poetry. In fact, it is possible the entire book will be liked or not liked, help or not help evaluation of poetry or one’s own lines.

Here is another poem entitled At a Boring Poetry Reading the reader may or may not find humorous or insulting:

They read the audience to death.

These poets use live ammunition, their words, to weaken us.

Are they trying to put us to sleep or are they trying to keep themselves up

by droning on and on? Instead of listening, all I’m doing is waiting for them to stop.

The applause will be like glass breaking, the glass they are enclosing us in.

It is as if they tied their shoes in front of us just to show us they could tie their shows

      in front of us!

O save me from this scatterbrain orderliness, this posture of beheading.

Will this reading never end? Will I have to listen forever

or can I find a chink in the wall of my own mind that I can crawl into, just to get

      away from this disaster, this dying, this voicelessness?

Now this makes me wonder what kind of reading Stock gives and how his audience reacts to his performance.  In fact, how does any audience react to poems read by poets other than those of higher stature, for example, Collins, Oliver, Ostriker, Ashbery, or others? 

Well if you think Stock complains too much, this book is really one of numerous complaints as in Money Song:

money money everywhere

in the sky and in the sea

everywhere, it’s just money

falling from the leaves and trees

all the different currencies

down they come and up they go

it’s a constant undertow

everywhere I look I see

every kind of currency

it’s too much to get and spend

will it ever have an end

only in the grave where you

will have spent all that you’re due

Stock’s view of women is not always, shall we say, politically correct.  In The Tall Woman of Dreams he writes a woman so tall she is invisible—does mean women should be seen and not heard?  Or, as the final line states “…the woman whose size was infinite and who was all over/everything and everywhere”   means they [women] are all pervasive and intruding?

Then again read the night about me restless where the poet completes his three couplets with “the distance and the slowness and veering/her up, so she will not be seen or noticed or known

Now let me say there has been some praise for Stock for being wry, wacky, humorous, and having sardonic wit—these quotes from the back of the book.  And if you like that kind of writing, you might enjoy his offerings.

________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene

Author, King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street Press)

Author,  Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva Press)

Author, Fire Tongue (forthcoming, Cervena Barva Press)

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review Online Poetry Journal

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthologies 7& 8

Publisher, Muddy River Books