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Time Travel Reports
by Charles Fishman
Timberline Press, 2003
$8.00, 27 pages
ISBN: 0-944048-24-2
Reviewer: William Neumire
Charles Fishman’s most recent chapbook, Time Travel Reports (Timberline Press, 2003), culls an eclectic sampling of news clippings from Genesis through 2002 and fuses them into a montage of commentary on time, religion, and suffering. The twenty-seven-page collection tackles the density of material via Fishman’s incorporation of several idiosyncratic perspectives; from the biblical Adam-in-retrospect to the porcupine man of "Three Modern Tragedies" to the southern boy of "‘Incident in North Carolina," the seemingly cumbersome topics have such specific and peculiar speakers that the book comes off without losing the reader’s trust.
The chapbook begins with the poem "Adam Remembers" and Fishman wastes no time in taking a religious stance:
Eden was built for failure and for punishment
(p. 1)
Unlike the traditional story of sin and guilt on the part of mankind, the initial poem turns the interrogation on the god of Eden, and this interrogation becomes a method of treating suffering and calamities throughout the book.
Yes, tell me, where did Cain’s wives come from?
and their children’s wives? From which immeasurable distance
did they slither, bringing their heavy breasts and their proclivity for murder?
(p. 3)
In contrast to much of the post-confessional/quasi-confessional poetry of today, these poems are cold and distanced, as if emanating from an objective outsider to time itself. The narrative style writing is fraught with ecumenical and indirect accusations. These are not brief lyric poems with cute morals. On the contrary, there occurs an anti-moral lesson of suffering just happens, which leads to the Darwinian survival tone noted in "Three Modern Tragedies."
Surely, the teens would lie to save themselves
(p. 12)
The poetic form is broken by sections and often employs the three-section poem (six of the ten poems, and asterisks break "Incident in North Carolina" into three sections as well) to the point of hinting at too much divinity. This employment of tri-sectioned poems coupled by the frequent use of caesura reinforces the idea of brokenness, as told in "Adam Remembers."
This god loved
covenants that, later, could be broken.
(p. 3)
Although "Three Modern Tragedies" appears closest to the center in pagination, the following poem, "Incident in North Carolina," seems to play the pivotal role. Unpredictable as it may be, the retrospective bitterness toward senseless suffering which resonates throughout the collection is uttered most succinctly by Vernon when he uselessly retorts,
If I’da had a gun up there on the hill, it might have been different.
(p.17)
Fishman’s frequent use of the epigraph (eight out of ten poems use an epigraph) seems a tactful choice when the reader considers that almost all of the poems are rooted in a newspaper article or historical document, and as such the epigraphs themselves become a sort of found poem, such as the epigraph for "St. Catherine of Siena."
I am she who is not. And if I claim to be
anything of myself, I should be lying through my teeth!
(p. 7)
After the initial spate of religion there are more subtle returns to religious incarnations, such as with the plague poem, "When Night Fell."
Nor could hymns
be sung in cloisters nor death knells be rung, for the dying
hated reminders.
(p. 6)
In "Three Modern Tragedies" Fishman takes a more secular look at the random sufferings of the universe:
then the life inside her fell through time, through
quarks, black holes, and nebulae, through galaxies
X-rays, and cosmic dust: a new star emerged in space,
bathed in his mother’s blood."
(p. 13/14)
On first reading, the flow of the book is impacted by the journalistic tone of the poems, which are full of brokenness and truncations as a result of employed section breaks, caesuras, asterisk breaks, and gaps in time. The beginning of the book occupies itself with hammering out truths, poking flaws in the systems of religion we have all become accustomed to in one way or another:
The god we knew was not the only god
(p. 3)
Later, the poems become noticeably smoother in texture, with the “D" consonance of "Three Modern Tragedies": “would…god…head…dead" (bottom of p.14) and the later assonance, “jackets…hailed…last" (top of p. 15). Internal rhymes become evident here as well: "intend/friend" (p. 15).
What would all of time be without humor? The bitter humor of "Incident in North Carolina" strikes a memorable chord in the middle of this collection. The epigraph reads, "A forest ranger faces a trial in Federal District Court on a charge that he had his men bulldoze a large hole and bury a man’s mobile home and barn in it." Amusing in its own right, the epigraph packs even more punch when the first line of the poem continues, “I suppose the barn, too, was mobile." (p. 17).
This poem introduces another aspect of this collection: the bitter and retrospective look at time:
If I’da had a gun up there on the hill, it might have been different.
(p. 17)
This view reads hand-in-hand with a sense of suffering dealt to citizens by an indiscriminate history, as noted in "A Field of Stone."
It was before
history stopped hurting us
(p. 21)
The imagery of the book is dark, whether humorously so ("Incident in North Carolina"), religiously/sacrilegiously so ("Adam Remembers") or more secular ("When Night Fell"). Given the darkness and tribulation central to the book, it is important to note that the final poem ends on the hopeful rescue of Leonardo Diaz:
But his voice-- retrieved
from the far reaches of memory and delirium--
sets a small fire burning and the phone glows
in darkness. She will rescue this lost one:
he will have all the minutes he needs.
(p.27)
There is salvation at the end of the chapbook but crucially it is of human power and not supernatural intervention:
No,
it is not an angel or alien: she who addresses him
and asks if he could use more time is earthbound
and human
(p.26)
Ultimately the book breaks down the vastness of time and suffering into the blessedly individual perspectives of each of the poem's characters, which offers the reader a terrific tension between macrocosm and microcosm.
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