I am Poof the tragic dragon.

Review of Eugene Ostashevsky’s Iterature

128 pages, perfect-bound
ISBN: 1-933254-07-6
distributed to the trade by SPD/Small Press Distribution
$10 / $12 in stores

 

I have to applaud Eugene Ostashevsky if not for his imagination but for his complete domination of rhythm through form and rhyme. It is a playful and childish figure throughout Iterature and unique in its success amongst contemporary poetry because it does not a) annoy b) become cliche for the sake of sound. But this is because EO’s thematics harken to the nothingness of being, so as the poems do actually become “meaningless” over the course of the book, (take the last page of the book, “CHOIR FOR PENGUINS: Floop floop/ floop floop/ Flickoooooo/ Flabadibadilloo/ Floop floop”), it only rubs the reader’s nose in EO’s everything-is-nothing point. Look at a poem called “The Martyr:”

Some people think that death is really gruesome
but they are not the ones that died and then grew some

I was killed for my faith by a mob
Blood ran down my face
                                 I spat white teeth

I was lonesome at that particular present
I had expected God but he wasn’t present

I wished my life were at some other minute
I hated this one     I was beaten in it

I was prone in the ooze of the Nile Delta
An ibis 8 my heart
                            I did not belt ‘er

A heron 8 my toe I did not kick ‘er
Flies blackened me nose to pecker

My iris
Became papyrus

Clouds moved in from North South West East
like a hand closing into a fist

A blowing went through it     the fist, a tuba
A part of me stayed on the ground like a tuber

another part flew aside like a goober
I became II like tanks for scuba
That I flew felt really uber
it moved its extremities, dancing the juba

and sang

 

     In “The Martyr,” the rhythm, or what I like to think of as EO’s distinct speaking voice, is first notable in these lines: “ I wished my life were at some other minute / I hated this one     I was beaten in it,” and then registers again when a shift occurs: “A heron 8 my toe I did not kick ‘er/ Flies blackened me nose to pecker.” EO is successful because he plays with spacial arrangement, albeit minutely, but such tiny nuances in space achieve so much more than most contemporary poetry I’ve read that transforms experience and perception into image fragments enclosed by the white space of the page.

“The Martyr” illustrates EO’s affinity for the rhyming couplet, as well as his play with sound within the realm of absurdity, and the great & awkward rhythms that come with his distinctly EO way of tinkering with form and space. Most of his poems appear, on the surface, light and humorous, while the philosophical ideas brood & are visible in the dark corners of EO’s humor. The rhythm of Iterature, which I thought at first was awkward, fit neatly into place after reading the first couple of poems and becoming familiar with EO’s methods–he teaches us how to read his poems, and from such abilities becomes visible a flux of understanding: the tentative beginning, the sure-footed plowing-through, and then the slightly-bored gloss-over as Iterature delves further and deeper into the meaningless of language through sound. 

Iterature is broken up into four sections based on the time at which EO wrote the poems, and the reader gets more susceptible to the natural rhythms of the poem, he or she grows to expect them. While reading Iterature, I kept thinking of the Rejected cartoons, and how after a series of bizarre but mesmerizing scenes with stick figures and dancing clouds bleeding from the anus, the world the characters have come to know collapses and become more intensely ridiculous than the previous absurd reality. Both Rejected and EO construct an absurd world and then destroy it. Take this excerpt from a section called “Errorism,” where the birds being and not being reflect the nature of the Rejected cartoons:  

 

His third utterance 
went like this: 

                   “rrym chekym chekym
                   chawpa lapa
                   tr tr tr tr tr” 

He had become
a random-sound generating machine.

 

Nature looked upon him 
in her own, natural way.

Birds arrived.
They did not
arrive, they did.

 

Or this excerpt from a poem called “Ballad” which I rather liked despite its nonsensical nature:

 

I could not C
I could not D
I could not E
I could not F

I saw a knight
of special K
he wore a scuba
he was OK

I took his scuba
his face turned blue
I cried, Where are you
Scooby Doo?

 

     Besides the obvious flaw in letting a book taper from sense to nonsense (a point I think Silliman might agree with), Iterature is definitely worth a read because it nearly caused auditory hallucinations of EO’s ridiculous voice. I also came away with a trunk full of bizarre but intriguing EO imagery. From a “broken ampersand” to a “stoned anaconda,” to proclamations of the self like “You just said that because it rhymes!” or “I am Poof the tragic dragon,” EO is at the very least a philosopher/poet jester, and a very entertaining one.