The HyperTexts
Review of Peter Austin’s A Many-Splendored Thing
by Russell Bittner
It’s not unusual for me to look with suspicion upon a poet who
employs footnotes. My gut tells me
even before I read the first one that I’m in for some wretched diatribe, some
tedious explanation of what the poet really meant to say—at which point I always
wonder why he or she couldn’t have said it clearly in the first place.
Peter Austin footnotes his poetry extensively. However, he does so for an entirely valid reason.
He has the good sense to realize that not everyone is as well-read, as well-traveled and as well-heeled
in two of the world’s most precious commodities—empathy and wisdom—as he is. (A third, by the way, is a
sturdy and comfortable reading/thinking chair, which he would appear to have.) He’s not showing off;
he just wants us to understand why he might’ve chosen certain characters, certain names, certain events
to write a descriptive piece about. The piece itself, even without the footnote? Crystal clear.
And “descriptive?” Peter does us the honor—more seldom seen than chivalrous knights and gracious
ladies in this day and time—of telling us a story with each poem. Rare is the poet who can write good
metrical poetry. Rarer yet is the poet who can write good, compelling metrical poetry that
tells a story. Fortunately for us, Peter is such a rare poet.
To illustrate my point (and I could do this with almost any of
Peter’s poems), I’ve included here the concluding stanzas/sestets of:
“Gisberta”; “Three Sisters”; “Spring Offensive”; “Ella”; “Widow of a Vet”; “The Better Part of Valor”;
and “Behind the School.” These final stanzas/sestets alone should give the reader a taste of how Peter
writes, why he writes, and the brio or élan with which he writes:
When she’d been gagged and bound
(The coroner’s report took time to tell)
They reamed her with a spar that someone found
And, on a three-count, dropped her down a well,
Where, unremarked, she drowned.
* * *
Of those the germs did not destroy,
The crucifix by half was kissed;
And thus it fell that piety
Divided their society
And left them helpless to resist
The blood-lust of the Iroquois.
* * *
Dammit!—you’re no Easter hatchling
But a death-enamoured Gatling,
Hidden in your greeny den
Pecking holes in men.
* * *
It puzzled me, their nephew.
In her past
(Unreadable, unless by wizard’s art),
Had someone nailed her kerchief to his mast,
Then sailed away and left her, crushed of heart?
Or did the hurt that hovered in her eyes
From no one having bothered to, arise?
* * *
Abed he lay for decades, mutely rusting,
Unquietable anguish in his eyes,
While she, between the cooking and the dusting,
Was trying trav’ling salesmen on for size….
That’s her, behind the veil, arrayed in jet,
The sorrow-wasted widow of a vet.
* * *
Forgetting, in her eagerness, his travels
Which rendered her a widow out to grass;
Now, every time she meets with him she cavils
And he, of course, replies with something crass.
His sights are on a beat the size of Gaul,
So she and he won’t ever meet at all.
* * *
That evening in the bathroom, tongue outstretched,
Between extremes she struggled to decide:
Whether to rinse her mouth before she retched
Or nevermore to rinse it till she died.
By Tuesday she’d already been replaced
And boys were swapping jokes about her taste.
Peter goes with his poetry where even (or maybe especially!)
angels fear to tread—and where most sonneteers would never even think to look.
Peter might deservedly throw a copy of A Many-Splendored Thing at all of
those thousands of MFA candidates picking lint from their navels and calling it
‘art.’ To their whines of “What am I
supposed to write about if not about me?
That’s all I know…,” Peter’s poems have a clear—but probably
unwelcome—answer, which can be found in this seemingly innocuous eight-liner:
“Belly Button Fluff”
Poets there are who never have enough
Of serving up their belly button fluff,
As if it were the Hope or Koh-i-noor,
Glinting with enigmatical allure.
How Byron viewed his boogers, no one knows,
Or Dickinson, the lint between her toes;
And why is Shakespeare found on every shelf?
Because he kept his ear-wax to himself.
Is there a bias to Peter’s writing?
Of course there is! It
wouldn’t be worth reading if it didn’t have his personal ethos written all over
it. Peter writes about the sometimes
sordid underbelly of humanity, but he does so in an almost offhand manner, as if
to say: “Oh, and by the way, did you
happen to hear the one about ____?”
What follows is a cunningly apt depiction of the event or person in question,
often caught in some posture or position or situation we’d rather not inspect
too closely. If we indeed pause to
inspect one or the other, we’d still rather not dwell for longer than the crunch
of a cheese doodle. If we did, we
might give up on both the doodles and the species.
A Many-Splendored Thing, unlike the song from which the title
of Peter’s book is borrowed, is about much more than love.
In fact, only Part 3, also titled “A Many-Splendored Thing,” is about
love—although the title of one of the poems in Part 3 (“Folie à Deux”) should
give you a good idea of just how “many-splendored” Peter’s observations on the
subject have been. Part 1,
meanwhile, “The Just’s Umbrella,” is largely social commentary.
It alone is worth the price of admission.
Part 2 (“Olla Podrida,” Spanish for literally “rotten pot,” but
suggesting in our day a highly-seasoned stew of meat and vegetables) is just
that: a hodgepodge, a gallimaufry of
poems on a variety of subjects, all of them “highly-seasoned.”
I have a list of about twenty-five poets I read with enjoyment
on a regular basis—my personal pantheon of poets.
At the top of that pantheon sits one alone:
John Donne. I’m now seriously
considering asking Reverend Donne to cede some space to Peter Austin.
As the late poet, novelist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Richard
Moore rather alliteratively suggests in his endorsement on the back cover of A
Many-Splendored Thing, “Read, reader, and relish.”
[Anyone who wishes to purchase one of Peter Austin's books, or who wishes to correspond with
him, may do so via
email, at peteraustin@rogers.com.
Anyone who would like to contact
Russell Bittner or
learn more about ISMs Press can do so by clicking his hyperlinked name.]
The HyperTexts