It’s Not Love Till Someone Loses an Eye By Clay Ventre

 

It’s Not Love Till Someone Loses an Eye

By Clay Ventre

Nixes Mate

www.nixesmate.pub

ISBN: 978-1-949279-47-4

50 Pages

$18.00

Review by Dennis Daly

First books of poetry rarely surprise. Clay Ventre’s initial collection, It’s Not Love Until Someone Loses An Eye, does. His first-rate love poems are off-beat and oddly self-demolishing. He chisels each quirky narrative to innovative perfection and then keeps on chiseling. The new, miniature worlds created by Ventre’s persona and his persona’s lover highlight reality’s instability and logical absurdness. But that’s alright. Creators (read poets), after all, are (for good or ill) gods and goddesses by virtue of their productions, and they make sense by rearranging the raw material of chaos.

“Across a crowded room” love’s magic defeats distance and verbal communication in Ventre’s piece entitled Soiree. A broken semaphore of compelling motion causes contact between two lovers and opens an ever-expanding, uncanny zone of passion and ardor. Ventre concludes the poem by describing this newfound lover’s haven,

the party was over

the guests having shrugged

themselves to indifference

and disappeared in a

haze of ennui and

disappointed sex

leaving them a vast

and empty space

they could finally wander

across as lonely nomads

and find each other—

read her book together

and agree that the weather

inside them was the same

The battle of the sexes starts small with afterthoughts and little motions that signal cataclysmic changes. Ventre’s poem Infinity War is well titled, with surprises at every turn. Here the protagonist god, albeit newly created himself, sets a pose of dominance by announcing the superiority of his divine passions. His consort pushes back as she fashions their future together. The poet puts it thusly,

She said

It’s not a competition

and he saw now that

she had been carving

out of some

as yet undiscovered stuff

a miniature world

for them to inhabit someday

—It kind of is

He shook from his

Closing throat

When dreams and reality clash, addition results, a detritus, not deliberate, but needing to be dealt with in a concerted way. In Ventre’s poem The Impossibility of Some Situations the lover’s expectations of his beloved’s largesse grows exponentially to the tune of twelve small elephants. His lover arrives in some distress, and she denies culpability. Loneliness and longing take over and the protagonist puzzles over his next move. Here he explains his conundrum and cedes his own future over to his fantasized beasts,

when I woke up from the dream

they were all here and

now they won’t leave me

They can’t stay here

She said

I know

He said

But they won’t leave

Well

She said

It’s them or me

He looked down at the smallest elephant he had taken

to be their leader and waited for a sign

It came in the form of a wink

timed

to the sound of a closing door

Love’s danger often slips into softened tokens and pleasure’s intensity, both underestimated and overlooked. Ventre’s title poem It’s Not Love Till Someone Loses An Eye reminds all mere mortals of their frailty in the face of God-given fervor. Right from the get-go mankind serves love’s desire under full threat. The poet opens his poem by powering up his persona’s beloved,

I should warn you

She said

Two of my former lovers

were dragged to their

deaths by wild horses

Sometimes a breakfast joint fills the whole world with satiety and delight. But when one tries to reduce it into component parts it somehow loses its luster. In his poem Breakfast All Day Ventre’s protagonist converses with God (the Almighty One) on the virtues of his favorite diner. God pushes back in the way that God always does. An omelet, the music, and the rain become foils in this delicate argument. The protagonist’s beloved becomes the salve. Here God tones down (somewhat unfairly) the man’s satisfaction and hyperbole,

That diner

God said

Is just a cemetery with a pond

in the middle to drown in

they fish the bodies out and bury them

in the surrounding hills

I know

He said

Also

Continued God

To get here

You climbed into a car

Full of men with scarred faces

I know

He said

But the omelet was perfect

Courting demands putting one’s best foot forward or at least a recognizable and familiar foot, soothing to the judgmental beloved. Of a Feather, Ventre’s poem of fervid accommodation or, perhaps, rapt identification, succeeds wildly in devolving all oppressive expectations and conjuring up a down-to-earth lover’s tryst. The poet opens his contemplation of same-feathered birds this way,

Don’t come near me

She said from the

other side of the door

I smell like a dumpster

I have no joy in me

And I’m tired

so he walked for 1000 miles

and presented his sad

dusty shoes to her …

Love’s logic demolishes all competitive philosophies. That’s not to say that it promotes health or happiness. Obsessions usually don’t. In Ventre’s epilogue poem, The Godless Night Kitchen (Remodeled), the poet laments love’s process, but savors the result. Or is it the opposite,

He finds he and she add up

to each other

and in the morning he’ll wake

before her when

someone comes to him and

tells the truth of what

an unfinished symphony

they are

And that all hearts are designed

To harden and crack.

There are birds in there

That’s how they get out

The good news is that somehow most lovers, knee deep in cranberries and jackhammer dust, do survive. Mutually assured destruction still works, and artists of all stripes, as Ventre’s stunning poetry collection attests, navigate between the twin dangers of self-immolation and fame. And more to the point—creation and love triumph.