What do you hope for when you open an unknown book of poems? Intelligence? Passion? Music? Maybe you've lost hope and stopped opening poetry altogether. Maybe poetry has always been dead to you.Journeyman is Thomas's first book "with a spine," but he's been working his craft for a long and profitable time. Born in Washington, educated at Marquette and Cornell Universities, living now in Seattle, he is the poetry editor for Point No Point: A Blue Moon Reader, and teaches at a variety of schools.
In another brilliant metaphor, Thomas says that "Language is like Jimmy Stewart" in the movie It's A Wonderful Life. Thomas is "Deconstructing Bedford Falls" by noting Jimmy's parallels with language: they stay at home but yearn to get away; possessive words like "mine" and "my" are just like property at Potter's bank; the angel's change of reality operates like imagination; and paradoxes produce understanding for both.
Thomas audaciously writes an amplification of part of the Odyssey in his long poem "The Sirens' Song" and succeeds in penetrating to the truth of men's desire for women. The subtle sexuality of Homer's sirens becomes in Thomas's stanzas an overwhelming vision "redolent of sex" that drives Ulysses wild. Ulysses, alone amongst his crew, has not stopped his own ears with wax and has had himself tied to the mast of his ship so that he could hear the sirens's song, yet not turn the ship towards their shore and destruction. Thomas's fascinating insight is to depict how Ulysses would experience this sexually. The sirens' song promises complete sexual compliance:
Ulysses cries out in desire, but his men just tighten his ropes, adding to his torment. Yet as the ship leaves the sirens behind, their song changes tone into the voice of his mother. "I shuddered then, as if I were King Oedipus / recognizing in his aging wife his aged mother."
Are all of Thomas's poems as excellent as the ones I've mentioned? No, but almost all are good, and every one worth reading. Is Thomas developing from journeyman to master craftsman? Will he be a major poet? Read him. Support him. Then we'll find out together.
An Ear to the Ground
Lives That Are Fit to Print
Reviewed by Cydney Gillis
Free Press Contributors
Illustration by Gail Williams|
Presenting Writers from 2 Coasts Edited by Scott C. Davis Cune Press, 1997 |
No book goes to press without its own behind-the-scenes drama, but a new volume of short essays entitled An Ear to Ground: Presenting Writers from 2 Coasts has had more than its share of publishing heartache, late-night cajoling, and floating cash. Released in August by Seattle's independent (that is, non-corporate) Cune Press, the book is a collection of 75 emerging writers whose first-person stories, portraits and political tracts are devoted to the theme of "local truths." Touching, if at times uneven, these essays speak not only to the diversity of American culture but the paltry state of American publishing on the eve of the 21st century.Ear To The Ground is the brainchild of publisher Scott C. Davis, who knocked on many New York doors with his own writing before realizing in the early '90s that corporate buyouts had ravaged America's publishing houses. Top-selling formula trash was in; new literature by unknowns was out. In 1994, fed up with this trend, Davis founded Cune with money from his carpentry business. At first, he published slim books by Sean Bentley, Jamal Gabobe and other Seattle writers before embarking on a larger project that would roll ingenious marketing and original writing into one very artful package.
The idea of Ear To The Ground was to sell a national audience on new writers. To do this, Davis recruited relative unknowns from 12 major cities so that ETG could be marketed regionally as a book by local writers. He then assigned the task of using landscapes or personal portraits as a lens for examining relationships to place, class, color and, ultimately, identity. The result is a whistle-stop tour of laughter and tears, from a family reunion in Cairo to a drug-dealing corner in D.C. to a difficult ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite. Presented A-to-Z with portraits and personal profiles, the contributors include activists, teachers and temps - plus three celebrities who signed on for the cause: Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; Czech playwright/president Vaclav Havel, and Oscar-winning dramatist Horton Foote (To Kill A Mocking Bird, Tender Mercies).
Though the mix of beginning and seasoned writers creates a wild disparity of tone and skill - from slow reminiscence to stirring commentary - Ear To The Ground is a fascinating and quietly disturbing read. On one level, it's a study of writing in which the best essays are the ones that develop, rather than engineer, a shift in thought or emotion. While reading Barbara Nimri Aziz's "Move Over," a critique of Western feminism, I discovered the many ways I had been duped by American depictions of Arab women. In "Searching for Common (sense) Ground," Kenneth Carroll uses a pointed childhood memory ("'You're a Black Jew,' said my five-year-old brother") as a means to trace racial tension - and identify common ground - among blacks and Jews in Washington, D.C.
Later on, Gary Lilley walks readers through the streets of D.C. to compare the benign rivalries of his childhood with today's drug-dealing gangs. His observations would be news to most Americans. "These young men hit the street for the same reason: to take care of the family," Lilley writes " ... If a forty-hour week on the present minimum wage could pay the rent and buy food, many of them would push burgers."
Class-consciousness is a strong undercurrent in Ear to the Ground.
But it is the writers like Lilley who stay close to scene and story that best express what Davis was after. In "High Heels and a Yellow Pickup Truck," private investigator Cheryl L. Schuck draws readers into the mysteries of an L.A. rape case. Her narrative is seamless and riveting, her conclusion dramatic. The victim turns out to be a prostitute and the charges are dropped, but justice is not served. In "Coming of Age," Sharon Streeter's elegant portrayal of an old Parisian woman is even more satisfying. "Madame Vincent" seems like a nuisance - until the moment when Streeter tries to lift some baggage and realizes her own impending frailty.
It is this scratching the surface to find connections that makes Ear To The Ground so rich. Regrettably, Davis also included pieces that are so flat as to be transparent. Though these lapses in judgment keep Ear To The Ground from being "millennial," it is an authentic, thoughtful book. What's sad is that Davis can't get press because the media sneers at do-it-yourself publishing. This is an important reason to seek the book out. Despite its weaknesses, I cried all the way through Ear to the Ground. It's just something that comes over me when I'm reminded of my humanity.
-Cydney Gillis is a Seattle-based freelance writer currently gathering material at her day job at Computer Forensics.
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Contents this page were published in the September/October, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright (c) 1997 WFP Collective, Inc.