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Pitchblende
Bruce Boston
Selected and Introduced by Michael Arnzen
Illustrated by Marge Simon
Dark Regions Press (2003)
88 pages
ISBN Number: 1-888993-37-5
Reviewer: David Lunde
I.
In "White Space: Speculative Poetry," the title poem of his 2001 collection White Space, Bruce Boston writes:
There is so much white space
in most books of poetry
that when you come upon
a poem that speaks to you,
or better yet sings,
you can find yourself
falling into that white void,
tumbling into a vision
played out with paper and ink,
words racing past you,
images dancing around you,
until you land
at the end of a page,
hard or soft or in between,
or better yet in some way
you have never known before,
a place that you never
knew existed.
Taking you to that place, surprising you, is what Boston excels at, and his new collection Pitchblende is no exception. Here the place may equally be located in the suddenly not-so-everyday, as in the "Surreal Laundromat" where
A man comes in with a load to wash.
Blood-covered knives and chains.
Bloodied clothes and tennis shoes.
He uses lots of softener.
or in the marriage bed, as in "Curse of the Devouring Goddess' Husband":
He is the elongated nadir
of her casual and fabled couplings
with the weaker sex.
At least once each fortnight she consumes
and regurgitates him whole,
primed for future emasculation.
or even more intimately, in one's own body, as in "Freakish Confirmation":
After X-raying my spine
my chiropractor blinks,
and blinks again.
"You have two extra ribs!"
she tells me. "And one
extra sacral vertebra!"
I am a freak of nature.
A mutant under the skin.
A skeletal overachiever.
That one in a million
and a half kind of guy.
Although generally considered a genre poet because most of his work appears in genre magazines and much of it incorporates elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, Boston's talent transcends any such categorization. Each of the poems so far quoted would be equally at home in a "mainstream" publication, as would many of the others in this volume. That's not surprising; the evidence of his broad historical and contemporary knowledge of English poetry is everywhere in his work-- in his formal experiments with stanza patterns, rhyme schemes, and refrains, or in structural innovations such as the lists of word definitions given at the end of each stanza of "Pavane for a Cyber-Princess." It is also seen in allusions (often playful) to earlier works, or quirky takes on traditional themes.
On top of that solid basis, Boston is blessed with an extraordinarily fertile imagination that makes reading a collection of his poems an expedition into unknown territory filled with hazards and wonders. He is also involved in an obvious love affair with the English language. His poems are full of stunning images such as these from his marvelous "Pavane for a Cyber-Princess":
She lusters like satin spar alabaster.
………
when the pillow's creases have left
a transient cicatrix on her stolen cheeks,
……..
with a storm of kisses so very gentle
they could break a clenched fist.
and this from "The Day the Earth Stood Still":
Yet the night, it stretches long,
like a panther fresh from sleep.
or this passage from "She Was there for Him the Last Time," a poem filled with such imagery:
she was there like running water and the boast of the wind
like the crescent of a bell clapping
the rush of the adder's strike
or the hiss of brushed suede
she carried the hint of cataclysm
and the blemished hush of age
Occasionally, as in the following passage from "The Lesions of Genetic Sin," the author seems to have gotten carried away by language to the detriment of sense:
loosen your collar your tie
& let the bruised & bloodied vocabularies
of the urban night descend between
your cool shirt & warm belly
like hinged scraps of living meat
leaf up through the poles of a dead telegraphy
& let your body lie like a lingual corpse
(mummified to fibrous desiccation
& ossified to sledge-splintered bone)
impaled on the pinnacles of a brassy skyscape
but even here it is fun to go along for the ride.
Boston also delights in word-play, as is evidenced in "Like an Addict Glowing":
The Fool lives all alone
in a mansion built from canon
fodder of the day...
II.
Because this latest collection of poems was not assembled by Boston himself but selected by an editor with a particular interest, it seems necessary to comment not only on the poems themselves but also the process by which they were chosen and its intention. In his introduction Michael Arnzen explains that "I had a title and a purpose first: Pitchblende would seek to present a "blend" of Boston's dark material, reflecting the breadth of his talent in the horror genre." He had previously defined pitchblende itself:
"Pitchblende is radioactive. It's a mineralized form of uranium oxide--black and hard and dangerous. It looks something like crystallized coal cracked right out of the gates of hell; it's darker than tar and stronger than time and its lethal nature is sneaky and invisible and inescapable once you've touched it. Killer rock.
A fitting metaphor for the rock-solid poetry of Bruce Boston. It's scary, powerful stuff. And it's got a half-life that will outlive you. This poetry stands the test of time."
Wow. Does the poetry live up to this billing? Yes, and no. Arnzen's description seems too one-dimensional and rather misleading. Many of the poems are considerably quieter and more thoughtful than one would expect from this, while others are humorous, though it is humor with an edge. Having not read the Introduction until after he had read the poems, in an attempt to not prejudge them, your reviewer was a bit startled by it.
Arnzen uses the poem "Flesh Blood Bone" as a keynote for the book, in order to give it "thematic coherence," and groups the poems under headings provided by the three words of its title. Is it a horror poem? You decide. Here it is:
If the lines of a poem are its bones,
and the words in those lines are its flesh,
then its blood must be the rhythm it sounds,
spoken aloud or read on a page,
that gives each poem its breath.
If the days of our lives are their bones,
and the way that we spend them their flesh,
then their blood must be the lovers and friends
who fill our days and our lives,
to give each life its depth.
If the rocks of the Earth are its bones,
and the fauna and flora its flesh,
then its blood must be the wind and the rain
that swirl across the sea and land
(poisoned each day in a cool bloodless way
as if tomorrow were only a jest).
When my flesh and your bones,
my bones and your flesh,
lie down side by side in a bed,
desire is the blood that warms us both,
through the chill of the night,
for the darkness ahead,
so our bodies can love and rest.
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