Mass Transit
Drawings by Joan Farber
Poems by Michael O’Brien
Pressed Wafer
375 Parkside Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 111226
IBBN:978-1-940396-04-0
$12.50
by
Wendell Smith
Mass Transit
is a collection of some 25 graphite portraits by Joan Farber interspersed with
21 poems by Michael O’Brien. At 4 x 5 inches it may be the world's most petite
coffee-table book, but it more than holds its own with larger examples of the
genre. This is not a book to be read; that is, it is not a volume to be
finished and stored on a shelf beside other books you've consumed. It needs to
be left hanging around on an accessible surface, picked up and tasted, put down
and picked up again—savored for its recurrent appeal to the appetite of your
attention. Anyway, that is how my wife and I used it while it was on our
kitchen table for a couple of weeks and how I came to appreciate its flavors
Although
trim and dignified in its design, this little book has a casual structure. The design
forgoes page numbers and places each drawing or poem on a right hand page with
the facing page blank, so a reader encounters these statements, whether visual
or verbal, individually without direct reference of one to another and is free
to cross reference the drawings and poems at random so they form a mass of
meaning not a linear narrative.
The
drawings need to be seen to appreciate how completely Ms. Farber has mastered
her pencil. The drawings vary from quick gestures that capture expressions in a
few dozen lines to complete renderings: the difference between one subject’s startled
thought and another’s meditative consideration. The faces in these drawings
trigger questions, "what was she thinking?" and other associations. When
I first saw this drawing,
, my
mind reflexively said, "Rembrandt."
As
the drawings vary from gestures to more complete portraits so the verses vary
from notes:
kneeling
bus
sighs,
yields
to more complete descriptions:
A
small, pot-bellied women in a bright green
dress
speaks antiphonal, incomprehensible
sentences
by the Seventh Avenue subway,
possessed,
testifying, warning, rocking
in
place with the voices, then repeating
decimal,
ghosts that feed on speech. Nearby
a
man, head raised, eyes closed, is drinking
the
sunlight. He takes his time. His thirst
is
great.
The poems
are best read, as one would meditate upon a drawing, until the image blossoms
in one's imagination as a character with a story:
opens
her Times like
logical
argument
shaking
the pages as
if to
be rid of the
worst
of the news
The words honor trouble:
patience
of the lost, going
through
their ruins: ageless white-
haired
high-browed black man in the
59th
St. station, wild
eyes,
nowhere, opening &
closing
of filthy Bible
like
a valve. like breath
and transience:
her
smile detaches itself
from
this girl's face
and
from her benevolence
to
hang in the
air
for a moment
and
then fade as
she
boards the #11
bus
one gray morning
I don’t think O’Brien’s poems should
be subjected to the enhanced interrogation of a close reading. As I’ve said, I
found them best when I absorbed them as I did Farber’s drawings, slowly letting
my thoughts improvise along with them. When I did, the book became a
celebration, an acknowledgment that we are, all of us, a mass in transit and
the company we are keeping, as it is presented here, is a worthy one.
A note on Pressed Wafer
Pressed Wafer was founded in
Boston by Daniel Bouchard, Joseph Torra and William Corbett and was originally
9 Columbus Square. It moved with Corbett to 375 Parkside, Brooklyn, New York in
2012. While you can order individual books from, Pressed Wafer subscriptions
are available for $100 a year. In addition to the publications you receive for
your subscription, you will also get all the backlist titles available. What a
deal. I discovered Mass Transit
because I became a subscriber this year. The backlist books I received for
subscribing meant my investment came to less that $10 a book. So far those I’ve
read have been as engaging as Mass Transit.
As I said, what a deal!
