[REVIEW] strange theater, by John Amen

112 pages, $14.95

Review by Brian Fanelli

In his essay “Litany, Game, and Representation,” poet Tony Hoagland says that American poetry is informed by “new tensions, new understanding, and new possibility.” He adds that American poetry currently has no preference for “narration, description, or confessions of the autobiographical self,” and poems of the “new poetry” shoot off in dozens of aesthetic directions. In many ways, John Amen’s latest book, strange theater, is very much of the “new poetry” that Hoagland defines. The collection contains different aesthetic directions, prefers the surreal over straightforward narrative, and though many of the poems are dedicated to people, the poems generally resist the confessional and autobiographical.

There were shades of the confessional in Amen’s previous collections, but strange theater relies more on strange and unusual images and poetic leaps of imagination. In the beginning of one poem, “yr opportunity,” there is an image in the opening stanza about scorpions crawling across someone’s palms on a Saturday and waltzing, dragging along violins. In another poem, “the son we never had,” there are hints of confessional narrative in the opening line, but the poem, like many in the book, turns to the uncanny and the surreal, perhaps as a way to address more complex issues or even memory.

the son we never had
crawls through our kitchen
linoleum cracking beneath his impatience

he studies us as we sleep
sifting through our trophies & urns
clutching his banister of space

he wanders the dim corridors
glimpsing a bedroom that might’ve been his
streaking invisible prints on panes & ledges

While the poem is rooted in unusual imagery, there is also something very much reality-based about it, and the images are stark and at times, haunting. Of course, the opening line makes it clear that a baby did not actually crawl around and sift through the couple’s belongings, but whether the poem is based on a dream or an imagined scenario, the images are striking in their eeriness, including the sound of linoleum cracking, or the baby studying the couple as they sleep. Furthermore, even though the baby is technically not real, the presence of what could have been is very much felt in the poem, specifically in the tercet about the baby glimpsing into the bedroom and leaving invisible prints on panes and ledges. I would have liked more detail about the couple and what exactly happened, but instead, the poem focuses on the son never had.

The end of the collection contains a few poems about music, which is no surprise, since Amen is also a folk singer and has released two albums. One of the closing poems, “folk singer,” opens with plain language and an image reminiscent of the Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis, also about a folk singer. In one scene, Davis, with little money and only his guitar, trudges through the frozen streets of Chicago, on his way to play his songs for a music exec bigwig, who ultimately rejects him. Amen’s poem is similar to the character and film, especially the opening stanzas:

of course you’re suffering
that goes without saying
alone in yr own private tundra
staggering through the snow

the face of some Beatrice behind & before you
head & heart those masters of spin
weave form the unknown a threadbare headline
silence that gray country
where you arrive & arrive already judged

At least the character in Amen’s poem has some hope, primarily that his Beatrice will one day see him again, so they can eat, dance, and have sex, as hinted in the poem’s concluding lines.

strange theater is Amen’s most experimental work yet, other than the book he co-wrote with Daniel Y. Harris, The New Arcana. This latest collection illustrates Amen’s comfort writing in a variety of forms and his willingness to stretch the limits of image, sometimes making great leaps from line to line, while also showcasing an ease in transitioning from the exterior to the deeply interior and introspective, from the straightforward to the surreal. It can indeed be considered the “new poetry” as Hoagland labels it.

***

Brian Fanelli is the author of the poetry books, Front Man and All That Remains. His poetry, essays, and book reviews have been published by The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, Paterson Literary Review, Chiron Review, Oklahoma Review, Blue Collar Review, and other publications. He teaches at Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania and is finishing his Ph.D. at SUNY Binghamton.