Review by RC Edrington
I read very few contemporary poetry collections. I find most of them to be contrived bullshit written by authors who live very complacent and boring lives. They fall into the “I write poetry for the sake of writing poetry” crowd. Then there are others who use poetry writing as an escape from their petty lives of “quiet desperation,” and churn out poem after poem of fiction with obligatory line breaks to make up for their lack of talent in writing prose.
I have stated before, in relation to my own poetry, that the act of writing should be like taking a razor blade to one’s soul to expose the raw truth that lays within. If the reader can’t handle the pus, blood, and mucus that may occasionally stain their whitewashed world… such is life.
One must always write for oneself with the sole purpose of self examination and truth. Otherwise, the poet is merely engaged in masturbation for the sake of an audience ever so eager to pat him/her on the back and welcome him/her to the next circle jerk where they can all sit around and validate each other’s contributions to the great literary scrap heap the small press has slowly become.
After reading this collection, I am fairly confident Rob Plath understands this quite well. Like a surgeon working alone, with hands that reveal a slight tremble for want of a stiff drink… Plath picks up a scalpel and begins to dissect his sinewy flesh, entrails, and heart in an examination of personal relationships and the effects or damage they have had on him. Understanding at all times that while the heart is the first organ to take the impact of a failed relationship, it is one’s own mind that continues to be the true torturer.
The act of poetry isn’t creation. The best poets know this. Poetry… true, honest, and real poetry… is merely the carnage and excrement one produces from a life lived on the edge of one’s senses. That is one of the main reasons I truly liked this collection. Plath is not trying to write poetry. You don’t get the feeling that Plath is sitting at a desk, looking over his own shoulder, and attempting to edit a piece of writing. Instead, you get glimpse after honest glimpse of a man from a myriad of angles. Plath stands before the reader naked and scarred, offering up his entire being for examination.
The first glimpses Plath reveals to the reader are a few poems of intimacy, and dare I say love. There is an edgy gentleness here as Plath offers up vivid portraits and shared moments of women
who obviously played integral parts in Plath’s life. There is a simple beauty in these shared moments. But these poems are few and far between in the early part of the collection, as Plath begins to focus more on the loss and damage these relationships produced, than the actual happiness and comfort they offered at the time.
First-hand experience has shown Plath that relationships, intimacy, security, and the calm comfort of two individuals coming together as one in a society full of selfishness, mistrust, and brutality is only a temporary state. A mere band-aid on a gaping wound. A short reprieve for a man in search of childhood innocence, where his heart “was an apple” and “not a fist dunked in blood.”
For Plath, love is about as permanent as a wisp of cigarette smoke once shared between lovers, and becomes a disease… much like cancer… that eats away life moment by moment in a never ending cycle. Even the “loving” couples that surround Plath are seen to be in a temporary state of reality that Plath knows will come to a screeching halt.
Once I got this far in the collection, I stopped being a casual viewer. I was drawn in poem after poem as Plath began to intimately dissect a four year relationship that almost ended up in marriage. There is deceit, cheating, betrayal, self destruction, drunken binges, anger, and even a touch of suicidal ideation in these poems. To quote from them or any attempt by me to analyze them for you would be a strong disservice to not only Plath, but the poems themselves. Each has its own life and blood beat that the reader must experience first-hand.
In the end, Plath has endured quite a journey and dealt with the loss of love all of us have experienced. There is a strong sense of humanity in these poems. Plath has stripped this collection of all poetical platitudes and literary bullshit, and left the reader with the raw and bare bones honesty of a man writing to come to terms with not only the loss of love… but perhaps the loss of self. We are human and imperfect, yet we continue on through the most painful of experiences that sometimes carry with them lessons we may not have learned in any other way or situation.
For more information about There’s A Fist Dunked In Blood Beating In My Chest (and other publications by Epic Rites Press) please visit the Epic Rites Press website at epicrites.org.
Visit Rob Plath, the author, at mysoulisabrokendownvalise.blogspot.com
Published 2010 by Epic Rites Press
179 pages
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