Customer Reviews

Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (Poets, Penguin)

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Few books of poetry these days have such a sense of unity as this. Heart is a character that you follow from poem to poem as you might get caught up in the plot of a novel. Each poem stands on its own, too, with engaging and exciting language and a tone which ranges from wickedly funny to touchingly melancholy--sometimes being both at the same time. Stephen Dobyns is one of the best American poets writing today, and here he gives us an incredibly rewarding collection--the kind that you want to lock yourself in your room with and chew on for hours.

I've been a Dobyns-follower for years. His CEMETERY NIGHTS is one of the books that mark a high point in my reading life. And I read a lot. PALLBEARERS is Dobyns to the nth degree -- sly, wise, hilarious. Dobyns and Heart are our modern Berryman and Henry. The man is a genius. If this book doesn't win every major poetry book award, there's something wrong with the system...

Stephen Dobyns, Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (Penguin, 1999)

What a great name for a book. Ain't it? It's what drew me to Dobyns' tenth book of poetry. Once I cracked the cover, his long-limbed, loose-jointed style kept me going:

"Heart considers the nature of fairness--
how some folks get pearls, others pebbles.
A rock falls out of the sky, who it smacks
is anyone's guess--butcher, crook, or priest.
Heart is struck by the unfairness of fairness.
What does it mean to deserve something?"
("Great Job")

The book is separated into three sections. The first and third are the Heart poems, a series of pieces (all in this style, with no stanza breaks, each running about a page and a half) about a character called Heart and his views on life. The middle section, "Oh Immobility, Death's Vast Associate", is one much longer piece in the same style. It doesn't hold up quite as well, for as you can tell from the excerpt above, these poems do almost as much telling as showing, and the longer the piece gets, the greater the chance it will become overwhelmed with its own exposition. The shorter poems, however, often strike the perfect balance. There is a good deal of fun to be had here, and, especially as Heart grows older in the later poems, a good deal of wisdom as well. Fun stuff, this. *** ½

dobyns writes about heart, his search for love and his daily musings on various topics. i'm not a rabid fan of any of the collection, but there are some nice lines here and there.

it's safe to say that heart is a simpleton, not unlike the organ itself, he's not smart like brain, as he confesses in one poem, he's preoccupied by acquiring love, seldom thinking of the possible repercussions: he covers his ceiling with mistletoe in "what good is love unless it's aggressive?"; he visits a beach where he forgoes both swimming and napping "lest he miss some beauty adjust a strap or hitch her halter up" in "the dark and turbulent sea"; he wonders, in "lumberjack shirts and motorcycle boots", if he should beef up in order to attract more suitors; in "flawed language: thought's shadow" he constructs an elaborate metallic valentine, weighing ten pounds, at a blacksmith shop after growing tired of his five-a-day regimen of writing letters of devotion to women, which has thus proved futile. however, he remains, always, at a distance from those that he pursues, even when he visits a whorehouse he prefers to discuss love rather than make it.

throughout the collection, heart's own naivete repeatedly gets the best of him. in "one good turn deserves another", after offering to lug his friends' burdens so they can enjoy a few hours without impediments he's still circling the track months later. another poem finds him encouraging passersby with "great job", after wondering about the discrepancies in alloted fairness; needless to say, they look at him as if he were crazy. in "adrift in the leafy tranquility" heart opens his home to a dragon but soon wishes he were alone when the dragon keeps him up all night with stories about his life.

the poems are all from about a page to a page and a half in length, except for the rambling and utterly hopeless twenty-page meditation on human laziness (and motion) "oh, immobility, death's vast associate" which divides the heart poems into two sections. the pieces are easily digested, but not entirely satisfying -- there's always something to dislike, particularly his overuse of colloquialisms, such as "up the wazoo" and "prick", which only work occasionally (and possibly only in the first line of a poem, as is the case with "after heart's pal frank gets mushed in a car wreck" in "god's poorer particle, i.e., the devil" (other poems begin with a friend getting "nixed by a stroke" and with a lover's breast being "lopped off", so maybe i can only appreciate when death or injury are treated indifferently)). very few of the poems can be read without wincing, which is odd, not to mention unacceptable, though most provide something (insight, a playful line) to balance the scales.

an average work, more interesting for its theme as a whole than any of its parts.