While it may not focus on a "high" theme, The Trailer Park Papers by Danielle Vantress does focus on people's journeys, whether or not they go anywhere. Her introduction begins:
Somehow, introducing The Trailer Park Papers is like shoving an uneducated, socially awkward, embarrassed adolescent in front of a crowd of hip teens and asking her to say something cool. The Trailer Park Papers are not cool. They are not necessarily even poetic--at least not in the sense that they display a profound love for the language they beg to speak their heart with. There is not a single counting of beats here. No attention given to iambs. No guided rhymes or carefully crafted couplets. There is in actuality perhaps no craft here at all--save in the unreasonable survival of the "I". The Trailer Park Papers are an experiment in survival. They are an experiment in the tracking of a people who, in the process of writing their own stories, erase themselves. Who in the act of "living" destroy themselves. They are an experiment in the dubbing over of the screams, the wails, the outrages and, ultimately, the pleas of a people who, in efforts to survive the sick belligerence with which drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse, and insanity consumes the human spirit, have sold their voices for a momentary reprieve from the real.
Woah. This is heavy but I appreciate the lack of punches pulled. Also, this is what we can expect from the chapbook. Many of the poems are named for people, some of which reoccur as the pages go.
Shiner
What broke was my heart--
not my chin or how you pushed it
with your first through my face
until it seemed I had no lips to pout with.
It was my heart that dropped--
not me onto the stairs' cement
where, kicking, you towered over
with all of your bulk
with which once you had loved me.
my teeth wanted a knocking.
Give me two black eyes.
"It's what you're not that I can't stand"
what I could never be and myself.
I still think of you always
still love.
Think only of before
I found myself crumpled on steps
heaving heaps of disbelief and
forgiving with what is small of me.
Years love tumultuously.
While the content is raw, I disagree with the introduction in that these are not carefully crafted. It may not be care in the form of metric precision, but I believe the voice present is made to be true to the subject matter. It is certainly not contrived. The spaces between phrase fragments indicate pausing, perhaps heaving sighs. There is a certain breathless resignation of the speaker to their life, ready to go through with the motions rather than agitate against the inevitable.
Maple Syrup
Been back just a little over a week
and already he's "missing" since last night.
The city crawl'll get him every time--
thinkin' he's over it.
But how do you "get over" total painlessness
and the humm?
I can smell the burning tinfoil through just the thought of it.
That brown snaildrip trail and the bubbling bitter.
Then there's the puke--
unless you're used to it,
Wonder if he puked today,
that would be good--
how getting sick borrows time from the "Flu".
You ask what it's like
and all I can think of
is a big green couch:
a weightless arm raised above my head for hours--
wheat waving in a field of sun--
contentment within a fearless dream and floating...
That, and the nickel-sized cigarette burns
scarring my body like worms.
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