Thief In The Interior*
Phillip B. Williams
2016
Alice James Books
Farmington, ME
82 pp
$15.95
Reviewed by Clara B. Jones
“I love my brother who wasn't a
brother of mine./Walking in an alley alone at night I bury my
hands/in my pockets to appear brotherless, bordered/by the decay
blowing from the stench.” Thief In The Interior, p 41
In separate articles, critics Natalia
Cecire and Paul Stephens recently addressed the difficulty of
defining “experimental” or “avant garde” writing.
Quoting Cecire, “'Experimental,' when applied to US writing, means
many things, but tends to aggregate a relatively (but only
relatively!) stable set of critical expectations, including, formal
disjuncture, a sense of political or ethical commitment, and an
association, but not strict, identification, with the experimental
sciences.” To the extent that there might be consensus about this
statement, it seems clear that, because of its inherent
qualifications, experimental writing, in our case, poetry, may exist
along broad continua of formal, motivational, and (loosely) empirical
deconstructions. One of a reviewer's charges, then, is to highlight
the aesthetic and pragmatic landscape(s) of a given text, in
particular, the extent to which the text conforms to and deviates
from, Formalism's (and, Modernism's) conventional standards and
guidelines.
Philip B. Williams is a young, gay,
African-American poet whose star has risen rapidly. The reader is
referred to his divedapper.com interview for an intimate and
comprehensive account of his accomplishments and opinions—about
poetry, politics, and himself as an artist. As the poet says to Kaveh
Akbar, his interviewer, all of the codes embedded in Thief In The
Interior have not been broken yet, and, speaking as one
sympathetic and admiring reviewer, I completed the book with a
feeling that the writer might have been playing games with me or,
perhaps, that he had taken on too much. For sure, I do not intend,
with presumption, to be in Williams' head or to have figured the book
out. Instead, I intend to provide a subjective view of the text,
hoping that my schema is not unrelated to what I consider its common
and recurring themes. Thief In The Interior made me think of
Jungian Psychology's references to archetypes (sexually and
physically vulnerable individuals, Mother, Father, Pain), to a
“collective unconscious” of empathy over confrontation, and to
the heterogeneity and complexity of the human psyche (“Because when
I write 'tree' I mean fire/of autumn.”—p 7).
This poet's fundamental humanity is
demonstrated by his commitment to a respectful re-framing of
conventional structures and forms, particularly, the sonnet (see, for
example, “Sonnet With A Cut Wrist And Flies” on p 20: “a man
found in the wrist who wanted out but who/put him in?”), as well
as, his reverence, even, spiritual, treatment of subject matter that
verges, seemingly, on awe (“Turn your face that way where light no
more/transfigures you than darkness makes a need for/transfiguration.
Yes, the scar above your eye.”—p 52). I first encountered
Williams upon reading his outstanding poem, “Canticle To The Tune
Of A Waistband's Snap,” featured in Boston Review in
2015, a complex and probing treatment of identity and culture. After
this experience, I was eager to know more about the poet and his
work.
Williams is not an angry poet in the
tradition of writers associated with the Black Arts Movement (e.g.,
Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka). Indeed, some of his
poems are heartbreaking (see, for example, the long-form poem,
“Witness,” comprising part II of the book: “When Rashawn
Brazell went missing,/the first trash bag of his body parts/hadn't
seen his head, didn't know where/it could be.”). The title, Thief
In The Interior, may, itself, represent a conscious or
unconscious crie de coeur, telling us that outside events have
torn out the author's guts or his soul and that these forces have,
also, disrupted the lives of innocent or victimized black bodies and
minds. Throughout the book, Williams employs innovative forms and
word structure to communicate emotion indirectly, rather than,
literally. The 14-line sonnet form, itself, is, apparently, repeated
(many times, many ways) for it's reference to the (14) Stations of
the Cross. Without overtly religious components, Thief In The
Interior is a reflective homage to struggle and survival (“When
he lifts his hands/lightning scythes below./From his weary
blues/blues spill out but nothing around can/define how.”—“God
As A Failed Figuration,” p 13).
Williams' responses to crimes and human
failures are always tempered by a respect for life forces capable of
almost-detached analysis and of basic respect for the capacity to
confront reality head-on (“I was told I could turn my back to
them,/the sickle-mouthed angels who rummage/through the church
dumpsters looking/for wings or food.”—p 48). In my opinion, none
of Williams' poems is sentimental, and very few phrases or lines,
including, only one whole poem, fail (“A Survey Of Masculinity,”
p 60, though the poem, “Apotheosis,” following it, on the same
topic, is stunning: “The bats have come down, wooden/and sterile,
to greet the joints, to rearrange/teeth and thoughts.”). Another
sign of this poet's skill, imagination, and reverence is found in
his repeated use of mandala-like (Jungian) drawings depicting a
symbol of the universe or the whole. Indeed, one sign of the book's
cogency and depth is it's elevation of individual cases and, often,
personal themes (gay, black, mother, male, father), to universal
status by presenting them as particular events, as well as, general
templates (see, for example. “Of Shadows And Mirrors” on p 76).
An aspect of Post-modern experimental
writing is contradiction, as well as, rejection of binary categories.
These characteristics are expressed in Thief In The Mirror by
way of juxtaposition of Romance and Conflict, Strength and
Vulnerability, Whole and Part, Many and Few, among others (“He
has/a bag that holds found edges/jagged as a stag's/horns or smooth
as/a single pane smashed into/smaller panes...”—p 5). Though
Williams deals with often grotesque material, one can quibble with
his assertion in the above-noted interview that this collection
exists in the realm of grotesque literature, if what we mean by that
is literature that is comically or repulsively distorted
(google.com). The book under review cannot be compared to the work
of, say, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka, or Bobbie
Ann Mason. Thief In The Mirror, also, cannot be classified as
satire or (the) absurd.
Nonetheless, as the cover image by
James Jean suggests, Williams' themes are both Ordinary and Extreme
(e.g., “Door To A War I Never Knew”—p 47), ones that cause
approach-avoid responses, as well as, some degree of depressing
curiosity. Indeed, Williams told Akbar that he was depressed for
quite some time after completing this text. Beyond the possible
relevance of my own interpretation(s) of Thief In The Mirror,
there is much more to assess and to unravel therein, such as,
references to rappers and rap songs, use of iambs and soft rhyming,
the significance of role models to young black men, resilience of
human emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, copious use of literary
devices, etc. This book deserves a large audience and conforms to at
least one of Formalism's rules—“interpretive power” (Helen
Vendler). The collection is at once a group of fine poems and a
stimulating puzzle. One can only look forward to Williams' future
work.
*Originally published in The Curly Mind, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment