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| Poet Rick Mullin |
Transom
Poems
2016
By
Rick Mullin
Dos
Madres Press
Loveland,
Ohio
ISBN:
978-1-939929-76-1
65
Pages
Review
by Dennis Daly
Dismal
things embedded in a city-scape of soaring architecture gaze outward
like Gothic demons into the crisp sunlit clarity of Rick Mullin’s
poetic universe. Mullin notices them there and paints their
likenesses onto the pages of Transom, his newest collection of
ground-breaking poetry. Unlike some of his grander books such as
Soutine (a stunning verse biography of a neglected artist) and
Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle (a wondrously detailed
retelling of Charles Darwin’s epic journey), Mullin scales down his
subjects to pedestrian or, more to the point, commuter proportions.
As
a consummate formalist Mullin uses measure and rhyme in a fifteen
line sonnet-like invention he calls a Third Sancerre. Appropriately
enough the name suggests a French wine region noted for its elegant,
yet very drinkable, wines grown in flinty, mineral rich soils.
From
his very first poem, At Century 21, Mullin frames chaotic details and
turns them into art. The poet remembers a troubling scene where fate
chooses and rejects its victims indiscriminately. He sets his
tableau at Century 21, a department store that survived 9-11, located
across from the World Trade Center. What often gets brushed off as
unexceptional low-drama incidents evolve into high tragedy.
… A
woman cried as all
the
contents of her briefcase scattered
over
Dey Street. I assume she worked
in
Tower One and would have made it in
by
9. And then the transit cruiser parked
on
Broadway hit its lights and faded in-
to
smoke and mirrors and a sense that mattered
more
than any rational surmise.
Notice
that the measure picks up steam because of Mullin’s effective
enjambment technique. Form and material complement each other
perfectly here.
Another
early piece in the collection, Ferry Weather, projects timeless
classicism (The Odyssey, which the poet’s persona is reading on his
way to work) as well as tragic hints (the World Trade Center) onto
the stunning but everyday imagery of New York Harbor. A tug follows
the poet’s ferry, cutting its wake, which then bleeds into a
blue-green palette. The poet praises the clarity of this September
day—like the infamous day of September 11th.
As he watches the tug, it
… rumbles
through an image in the book
that
carried me, unconscious, from the train.
The
giant-killer channeling a brook
of
weedy ghosts. But, oh, the sky again!
That
unforgettable cerulean lake
Of
clean electric air that spells September.
Apparently Mullin
is not impervious to psychoanalysis. He questions his own disquiet
level or lack thereof after he misses his train station in his poem
entitled After Little Falls. Was he reading a good poem or did he
just fall asleep? And, since he forgot his cell phone at work, why
not panic like anyone else would instead of exuding a solid front of
apathy? The poet considers the conundrum and its potential
resolution,
… So
why the smirk?
Your
nonchalance is irritating. Show ‘em
something
normal like anxiety. Oh, well.
Someone
would have let you make a call—
you
don’t look crazy, staring at the swell
of
taillights bleeding in the rain, the wall
of
autumn, lost in the enfolding gloam.
Blue
Jay, Mullin’s suburban song of paradise lost, delivers full frontal
comedy as well as a twist of irony to the collection. Before ceding
his property to the progeny of dinosaurs, and making clear his
position on the unfairness of his own wretched fate, the poet
introduces the invader of his world,
Oh
floppy dishtowel blue jay in the yard,
most
vicious of the garden birds, most summer;
who
understands suburban life is hard,
who
hates the robin and the neighbor’s Hummer;
who
scares the children in the plastic pool
and
tears through my tomatoes—criminal,
you
fall from grace and crap on my Toyota.
Political
poetry doesn’t do much for me unless it approaches the intensity
and the not so subtle recklessness of an Ossip Mandelstam piece (I’m
thinking of the “Kremlin mountaineer” poem). Mullen’s poem The
Aggregate achieves that level. The poet dates his poem November 9,
the day after the general election. He sandwiches the poem with a
dazzling opening image and a finale that cuts through a morning walk
like a machete. Mullin knows what he’s doing! The poem begins this
way,
Somewhere
out there, not so far away
from
all the inconsolable commuters
solemnly
interred beneath a day
they’d
warded off on personal computers,
wakes
the shadow of catastrophe
and
rage…
For
pure magic you can’t beat The Peppers in December, Mullin’s piece
about very little, or perhaps quite a lot. The poet’s wife brings a
bunch of dried out peppers from the kitchen and mysteriously places
them on his writing desk. That’s all. There is no more. Except, of
course, in Mullin’s imagination and egomania and music. Consider
here the poet considering,
Was
it the pressure of the holidays,
your
hectic preparations that consume
a
month? Whose judgment of what stays
consigns
memento
mori
to my room?
Ignominy.
The sheer effrontery of it all!
And
not a word! A motherly reproof
so
unbecoming of a wife, this slap
with
no report but elegance and truth.
I
am the husband, now, of husks.
With
this collection Mullin adds the poetic portrayal of everyday hubbub
in a way that engages and compels to his stash of impressive artistic
achievements. This extraordinary poet never disappoints.
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