Howard Barker
I just bought and finished Howard Barker’s brief collection of poems titled “The Breath of the Crowd,” and I am utterly enrapt. Known primarily as a playwright, Barker proves forcefully adept at distilling a story into the smallest of phrases. Austere poetry such as Barker’s truly displays genius at its most fine-tuned; finesse and an impressive command of the English language emerge when one is succinct, as he is and as most (if not all) successful poetry is. He’s wondrously adept at capturing the beauteous deformities humanity is blessed with in the scale of a single page; you gotta love that in a man, no?
I recommend this work to anyone who feels mundane occurrences are achingly sublime. Plus, Barker pairs wonderfully with a cappuccino and a cashmere scarf while wasting the day away in a precociously hipster, divey coffee joint. But don’t take my word for it, here’s a sample:
Prologue
They’d bolt the past into a drawing room /If they could
Smother the yelps of a triumphant reason /In the hems of dresses
And the clots of inspiration mop up /In the flannel of an actor’s shirt
So it behoves us
At moments of false celebration /At moments of imminent colonialism /And selective memory
To reach through
The cities of print /The forests of film /The drowning sheets of bands
Bursting the teeth of the star /Breaking the grin of the celebrity
And bawling over the applause /Which draws the pebbles down the beach / And draws them up again
Describe
Our strata of pains on pains
Our silt of panics
Obscure crucifixions and unpublished griefs
Europe’s deeps
If that doesn’t quite tickle your fancy, perhaps my favorite passage of the poetic ensemble will, one which conjures the same intellectual aura the final scenes in Franz Kafka’s The Trial. In the second to last chapter titled “In the Cathedral” the omniscient narrator wonders if K., the ambiguously persecuted lead character, could “represent the congregation all by himself?” But forgive me for digressing: in the first full fledged poem of collection, humbly titled1, Barker writes:
The man without religion / Haunts the empty church
Dragging his fingers over the bench / And counting his heel on the tiles
He is imagining a state of being alone
What do you think silence is / Only the absence of sound?
Poetry can often times be a fussy mistress to both poet and reader alike, and as such a tempestuous bedfellow it attracts specific people for specific reasons, reasons that undulate with circumstance and age. Which is to say that my recommendations are fruitless in many respects–fodder for the wind–because I just can’t circumvent the fickle nature of attraction, but I’ve personally resigned myself to this poet’s embrace and I hope you find yourself warmed by his rhythmic verbiage as well. I mean, let’s face it: it’s hard to write poetry without sounding like a pompous asshole, and his poetic presence leaves you without the slightest bitterness, merely a melancholy camaraderie (if one is prone to such things).
And did I mention the book was only $4.00, purchased unused at City Lights Books in San Francisco? Yeah, big bang for just a few dineros: love that store.
City Lights Books: Best Damn Bookstore in SF
