A Lark Up the Nose of Time is Vermont based
writer Wayne F. Burke's fourth collection poetry published by BareBackPress. It
follows Words That Burn (2013), Dickhead (2015)
and Knuckle Sandwiches (2016). A fifth volume, tentatively entitled
Poems From The Planet Crouton, will shortly
be forthcoming. Some of the poems have previously appeared in fine small
press publications such as Meat For Tea,
The Rat’s Ass Review, Zombie Logic Review, The Bees Are Dead and dozens of others.
There
are 75 poems in this collection which are divided into six sections. The poems
are typically confessional & 20-30 lines in length and use a rush of
anecdotal detail in simple, highly accessible language. The words hug the left
margin and cascade down the page without the relief of stanzas. The narrative,
free verse poems are reminiscent of Bukowski but Burke puts his own particular
spin on the humbling tales of a flawed man.
In
the interview which follows at the end of this review, Burke was asked if he
makes any shit up. He shrewdly replies, “On rare occasions, yea, but more in
the way of exaggeration than lies. I mean, the poem is not a transcription of
so-called REAL life, but an act of creation. It can go wherever the mind takes
it. I am not writing autobiography though I use my life experiences as a sort
of foundation or template or buoy maybe, something to anchor the imaginary
stuff to.”
After
graduating from college in the late 1970s, Burke has worked in a wide variety
of jobs, “Jobs,” he cynically quips, “that someone in America with a degree in
liberal arts is deemed qualified for: truck driver, laborer, janitor,
dishwasher, cook, moving man, machine shop operator, store clerk, substitute
teacher, security guard, oil rigger, census taker, gas station attendant and
others.” More recently, Burke has worked as a Nurses Assistant and after
returning to college in his 50s, as a higher paid Practical Nurse.
His
wide life experiences have enabled Burke to write insightfully about the human
condition but he remarks that we all are unique and have a story to tell: “The
work has given me subjects and/ or anecdotes to write. It is part of my
story—everyone has a story. It is what we have—all we have—that is essentially
our own.”
Burke
stresses that he wasn’t on his death bed when he began to get it all down, “My
heart operation at 58 did not prompt me to start writing again—I had started
about a year before with a do or die attitude, that it was time, now or never…I
finally found the FORM, poetry, and exploited it."
The poems appear to be quickly and urgently written which give the collection a raw, spontaneous edge. But in an email this morning, Burke expressed clearly the pain-staking difficulty of his writing process, "The first draft of pieces may be 'quick' but my god the sometimes torturous struggle to get the thing into shape--get it to a point where it can easily be read--where the music of the language is just so--that is never a 'quick' process. Screw, chip, clip, prune, cut, smooth, flatten...Can go on & on. Freakin' forever."
The poems appear to be quickly and urgently written which give the collection a raw, spontaneous edge. But in an email this morning, Burke expressed clearly the pain-staking difficulty of his writing process, "The first draft of pieces may be 'quick' but my god the sometimes torturous struggle to get the thing into shape--get it to a point where it can easily be read--where the music of the language is just so--that is never a 'quick' process. Screw, chip, clip, prune, cut, smooth, flatten...Can go on & on. Freakin' forever."
To
give you a heads-up about what’s in the book, here’s a brief overview of the 6
sections:
DIRTY SUN
These
poems take us back to Burke’s childhood in the late 1950s and 1960s, to a time
when kids were allowed to play in trees (“Bomber”) and take crazy, sometimes
deadly risks (“Disgust”, “Kamikaze”), when ice creams cost a dime (“10 cents”),
when bullying (“Posse”), overt racism (“Schwartzie”) and pedophilia (“Bill”)
were rampant, when people paid lip service to religion (“Holy Moly”) and were
sexually naïve (“Babies”), when fists could be meted out to resolve
neighbourhood disputes (“Fat Bastard”) & inter-gang rivalries (“Sphincter”)
, a time when kids played impromptu ball games (“Ballplayer”) and when mentally
sick people were placed in institutions rather than being left to fend for
themselves on the streets (“Looney Bin”).
Burke
writes about his childhood with great affection and without passing judgment on
the people or events. He simply records what he saw & can recall- piling on
the images, with the occasional use of direct speech to add to the poem’s
authenticity.
The
poem “Bill” showcases Burke’s use of understatement and his grim verbal irony
from this period:
Bill
stepped
off of the town bus one day
and
onto the field
where
we played football
and
told us his name was “Bill”
and
that he had watched us
from
the bus
and
that
if
we would let him
he
would be our manager
and
try and arrange games
between
us and teams from
other
towns…
He
wore glasses and had a long
horse-face
plus white shirt and
black
slacks on a bowling-pin shaped
body;
he
came by every day afterward
to
watch us;
he
said he would be our score-keeper
and
that he would write stories about us
and
have the stories published in the
newspaper…
At
the dinner table my Uncle
asked
about Bill
and
I told him what Bill had said
he
would do for us
and
the next day my Uncle
showed
up at the field
and
told Bill to get lost and to stay
the
hell away from us
and
me and the other kids
did
not know why my Uncle
was
so upset or
why
he had told Bill to go away
because,
we
all agreed,
Bill
was a nice guy
A
very very nice guy.
(reprinted
with the permission of the poet)
RIPE BANDANNA
These
poems cover Burke’s early working life as a house painter (“Brad”), fry cook
(“Vane”), laborer (“Nips”) and a carpenter’s assistant (“Roy”). These are
essentially portrait poems of the men who have employed the young adult Burke. The
speaker, presumably Burke, is usually drunk or hungover, projectile vomiting,
getting stopped by the cops or getting the crap beaten out of him.
The
poem “Lights” is characteristic of Burke’s gritty, detached, matter-of-fact
style:
Lights
We
got stopped by cops
in
a show of blue light
and
a cop told my cousin
“step
out of the car”
and
made him walk a straight line
touch
his toes
then
his nose
and
my cousin,
as
shit-faced as he was,
somehow
passed the tests
and
we drove off
to
the club
where
we picked-up two girls
and
then drove up to the mountain top
with
them
and
parked;
the
wind howled around the car
non-stop
the
lights of the town dully glowed
in
the valley below;
my
cousin and his girl went for a walk.
My
girl had bow-legs
and
a pigtail;
she
unzipped my pants
then
pulled hers off
then
straddled me
as
I lay back,
then
she sat and guided me
inside
of her and
then
moved up and down
and
lifted off
as
I shot
and
the wind wailed
and
the car rocked
and
down below the lights winked
on
& off.
(reprinted
with the permission of the poet)
A LARK UP THE NOSE OF
TIME
The
catchy title of the collection derives from the opening poem of this section. It
is a road trip poem which describes a journey taken by Burke and his two
friends Ron & Steve from Kansas, to Saint Louis and Daytona and eventually
to Ottawa.
This
section is perhaps the best in the collection as it offers more considered
adult perspectives on life- the misunderstandings, the stuffed-up relationships
between people, the physical pain, the terrible loneliness, the boredom, the
loss of direction and purpose in life.
The
poem “Fall” uses the concept of pathetic fallacy in an extended metaphor of swirling
leaves to describe Burke’s mental unrest and his brooding sense of
procrastination:
Fall
trying
to decide what to do with myself
I
sit
on
a park bench
in
the sunlight
to
think
and
I get caught
in
whirlwinds
of
yellow and rust-colored leaves
rushing
from one side of the park
to
the other
like
a mob storming a Bastille
but
then
lying
down just as quickly,
spent
apparently,
until
they get up
and
renew the rush
only
in a different direction
obviously
confused
and
unruly;
a
tornado of them whirls into the road
and
is run through by a truck
and
scattered;
they
are a spiritual force
mainly
though
make a clatter on the sidewalk
like
tiny horses’ hooves
scuttling
like
the clouds
across
the sky,
not
sure where they are going
either.
(reprinted
with the permission of the poet)
HAIKU-YOU
This
is a series of 9 haiku poems. My favourite is the macabre:
my
jacket
hung
by the neck
until
Spring
POLITICS, POLITICS
Here
you’ll find four anti-Thump poems which reflect Burke’s alarm about “the joke”
of a president America has elected, “who loathes his own constituents/ and is
using the dumb-fucks/ to gain power/ in order/ to glorify his ego” (“Herr
Trumpf”).
SPARE TOOTH
This
last section is an eclectic mix of poems which include a portrait poem about a
high school buddy (“Lou 1954-2016”), advice about life (“Advice”) and his
family’s recollections of what Burke was like as a toddler (“Baby”).
Yet
after you’ve read this section a number of times, you get the impression that
these poems are meditations on the general malaise and hollowness of contemporary
living. They chart Burke’s underlying discontentment with life, of feeling
trapped by the fakeness of things (“Oasis”), where the allure of alcohol
(“Drink?”), fast cars (“108 mph”) and women (“Knock Knock”) has largely waned.
Burke sees himself as a “dumbfuck” (“Dumbfucks”) and driving in his car he
feels a brooding, unshakable sense of ennui (“Straight”).
In
the last poem in the collection “Spirit”, this unbearable sense of hopelessness
and dread & loneliness briefly lifts:
Spirit
the
spirit flew in
through
the window
and
down my
gullet:
I
love it,
it
tells me
that
there is hope
that
there is a future—
but
the night, I said to the spirit
it
is so dark,
and
I am all alone;
and
the spirit said that
it
knows all about
the
dark and
the
lone,
and
does not think much
of
either.
(reprinted
with the permission of the poet)
As in his earlier work DICKHEAD, this is a varied collection of first person confessional
poems. The book is structured roughly in terms of the chronological age in
which Burke appears in them. The
poems are easy to read and you have to admire Burke’s tenacity in getting
this shit down. My only criticism is that although I do not require glasses to
read, I found the font size (9) a tad small for my liking.
AN INTERVIEW WITH WAYNE F. BURKE 8 JULY 2017
I recently asked Burke a shitload of questions about his writing. The following is what he provided- the use of paragraphing is mine:
I started to try and write a poem when I was nineteen and at my 3rd college. My college roommate was the first guy I ever met who admitted to writing poetry. It was though his influence that I started to write verse--it was through him that I learned what I know of writing poetry, not from a professor or class I took though there was a high school English teacher and a professor at the first college I went to who were very encouraging. The English teacher is one of the dedicatees (oh boy) of A LARK. I did not write anything that I or anyone else recognised as poetry for four or five years. After I graduated from college, my 4th, I went to work and poetry got lost in the shuffle. Not completely forgotten, but kept on a back burner.
I started the series of jobs--I have written of--truck diver, labourer, janitor, dishwasher, cook, moving man, machine shop operator, store clerk, substitute school teacher, security guard, roughneck (worked on an oil rig), census taker, gas station attendant, and some others--orange picker, bartender--done before I graduated college. Jobs that someone in America with a degree in liberal arts is deemed qualified for. Six years ago, after working for 9 years as an LNA (Licensed Nurses Assistant), I went back to college and got a license to work as an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) an occupation I am still practicing. Whew. That's a long list. Makes me tired thinking of it. The work has given me subjects or/and anecdotes to write. It is part of my story--everyone has a story. It is what we have--all we have--that is essentially our own. In my late 50s, and occasionally before, I started to put down, as I understood it, MY story.
Do I make things up? On rare occasions, yea, but more in the way of exaggerations than lies. I mean, the poem is not a transcription of so-called REAL life, but an act of creation. It can go wherever the mind takes it. I am not writing autobiography though I use my life experiences as a sort of foundation or template or buoy maybe, something to anchor the imaginary stuff to. I feel I am getting off track, if I was ever on one, and have no business explaining my work. I am mystified myself about how it comes out, knowing only that it is work and persistence, writing something everyday, not a poem, but something, and applying myself with a will--I am going to have to read the thing, as well as whomever, when it, the thing, comes out in print.
My heart operation at 58 did not prompt me to start writing again--I had started about a year before with a do or die attitude, that it was time, now or never--I had figured myself for a prose writer and scholar and critic but was only 2nd or 3rd rate critic, scholar, prose writer... I finally found the FORM, poetry and exploited it. Previous to late 50's I was an artist but without a form. I did publish 2 books of criticism, essays, short stories, and book reviews (which I continue to write), because that was my idea of what I was supposed to do as a sort of "gentleman of literature" to which I aspired, and still do to a limited extent. Someone like Ford Madox Ford or W.D. Howells or even Edmund Wilson, who were arbiters of taste and could kick out reviews, essays, novels, what-have-you, at a moment's notice... Oh boy, I've really gone off the track now. Unsure how to get back on... Some guy using a chainsaw outside my window, really ripping into the wood...
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