NIGHT & DAY: New and Selected Poems
by P. J. Laska
REVIEWED BY PETER KIDD:
LANGUAGE IN THE MEASURE OF THE TRUE BREATH
This collection
spans some 35 years of Laska’s writings. NIGHT & DAY is a glimpse of
his evolution over that time period, as well as an anthropological study of the
times, the politics, the struggles, and the ever-evolving nature of man and
consciousness. The first section, ANTI-LYRIC, pokes great fun
at our human condition. We spend a wild night with Geronimo, pay a visit to a
café, then, hear crowing about academia.
AT
THE NARCISSIST CAFÉ
Bold and unsharing
the urban sparrow
under the table
covets the too big
crust of bread
The second section, DIVINING THE PAST, is
permeated with the landscape of Appalachia, the smell of coal smoke, the wild
flowers, the broken down downtowns, the women who formed his desires, and the
smoked-filled life of restaurants serving mediocre cuisine back before the days
of “fine dining.” Laska’s widow poems,
often “step tales” told by the widows of dead miners, are poems plucked from
his stint as a social worker in Appalachia. These works strike a delicate
balance between an intelligent wisdom and an ear tuned to hear the actual music
of the Appalachian words and dialect. Laska
has the self-discipline to use his intellect only as tool, which allows the
widows to do the speaking. In the 90’s
Laska joined up with Joe Barrett and Bob Snyder to form the Mason Dixon Trio, a
poetic Bluegrass jug band. They put together a collection distributed by
Soupbean Press Old Martins, New
Strings, a wonderful mix of
the pensive, philosophic Laska, the poet’s poet Barrett , and the romantic,
comedic poet Snyder. After the deaths of Barrett and Snyder, Laska formed
another book by the Trio put out by Igneus titled Mason Dixon Sutra. Several poems from those books are
sprinkled into NIGHT & DAY .
But Laska is no regionalist. His work
reaches back to the Tao and into the pop art of road signs. The only possible
streams one can put Laska’s work into is the Whitmanic, which would include
Hart Crane, sometimes Dr. Williams, and certainly Henry Miller, and the leftist
dissident stream which would include the origins of Ferrini’s roots in the 1930’s
in Lynn, Massachusetts, working at the GE factory. His overview and
intelligence make him so much more than a generational poet. The last section,THE
ABBOTT AND SATIVA, is a magnificent sequence of experimental writing. At times it takes on the appearance of a
polemic, at other times the feel of pure Greek dialogue. It is a word play,
showing how language can be used as a runway to consciousness versus artifact. Its microcosms are portholes to the universe.
In BREAKFAST WITH UNCLE LAO, we, along with the Abbott and Sativa, get
to discuss the word “virtue” and whether it is “dead” or whether “words have an
immortal soul?” I love how the theme of food, be it snack or
an entire meal, seems to be a central theme. In TALKING
CAT, the Abbott argues with the
cat over its food fussiness by saying,
“See what a little bit of civilization has done to you.” There is also
an intimacy in these dialogues approaching the sensuality of true
open-mindedness and succinctly described in THE ABBOTT TO SATIVA.
Talking to you is like taking
truth serum
So you say now, she replied, but
how will it look in the morning?
In his most compassionate way Laska takes on
the old question handed down from Socrates as his final dialogue. DIALOGUE
ON THE SOUL is a conversational
vignette, again set around a meal. He hints at the marvelous world of
non-design and the open nature of consciousness. He implores Dr. Paradisio to plunge deeper
into the questions and nature of being, past the inherited paradigms. I think this collection is an essential book. Laska never panders to the American poetry
scene or the times. He is a genuine thinker with an ear to the railroad tie
about the joys and heartbreaks of living these past 70 years. His poems and
ideas are formed organically, and are not constructs like so much contemporary
poetry seems to prefer. Instead, they
pay attention to the human ear, eye and pace.
Such clear and concise use of language in the measure of the true breath
is what keeps Laska and his work very interesting, important and visionary.
Peter Kidd,
Publisher, Igneus
Press
