Chants for the Root Cutter

Tim Calhoun

There are two ways I could start this review, and I dearly want to use both. So please bear with me.

(1)

Some years ago in the Poets' Market, in the listing for a magazine I believe is now defunct, the editor cautions against poems that use “easy, false surrealism.” I spent the intervening time wondering what on earth he was on about. I now have the answer.

(2)

There has been a tendency in recent years, say the last fifty, to value the art of the poem over the craft. Poets who take this view of things will defend their stance to the very core with the zealotry of the religious convert, and point to such established (though in most cases equally unreadable) poets as Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and (mistakenly) Bukowski as examples of people who wrote “good” poetry in the same vein. They are completely unable to be swayed, and thus will never become good poets, because they refulse to learn and grow in their art. (Bukowski spins in his grave so much, one thinks, God uses him as a ceiling fan.) Without ever having actually met the man, I would have to say that this book is a pretty solid indicator that the late Tim Calhoun, were to I ever discuss poetry with him, would take exactly that stance in any argument over what constitutes good poetry.

(either intro can be followed by…)

Which is just plain too bad, because there are flashes of brilliance in this small collection of poems. Calhoun does have a surrealists' sense of sound juxtaposition, if only in isolated islands; a phrase here, a line there, never a full poem. However, anything of craft is lacking here. There is no attention at all paid to line breaks, word choice, effect of verb tense, or anything of the like. Various schools of poetry (surrealism, language, neoformalism, concrete, modernism, etc.) fade in and out, often within the confines of a single poem, like faces bubbling half-formed on the skin of Yog-Sothoth, neither allowing Calhoun to form a coherent voice nor allowing (I guess this is a left- handed compliment) a critic to say he is derivative of, well, anything. Or perhaps better to say that he is a derivative of everything, but one who has not found a single style, either derivative or original, which he can call a distinct voice in the wilderness (or in the Goat with a Thousand Young, as the case may be).

One does get the distinct feeling that some polishing and a good deal more introspection could have turned this collection into a great work. As it stands now, thought, it is a muddled mess. The opportunistic poet can steal a phrase or two from here, but it's not something that will beg re-reading year after year.

(Note: I have since found the complete text of the book online. Judge for yourself.)