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The White Crack poems by Vivekan Don Flint, edited by Louis Flint Ceci Beautiful Dreamer Press, 108 pages, trade paper $4.00 + $2.00 S&H Review by M.J. Arcangelini When his lover, Vivekan Don Flint, died from a brain tumor in 2000, Louis Flint Ceci was left with his grief, his memories of their life together, and Flint's poetry. Flint had been working on a volume for publication, but had been unable to complete it before he died. Ceci picked it up, with the kind of dedication that can only come from deep affection, and carried the project through to fruition. Working from Flint's outline, he assembled the manuscript, reconciled various versions and re-writes of poems, and added a few written just before Mr. Flint's untimely death. He then wrote an introduction and provided notes on the poems and the editorial process. The result is The White Crack, and I'm pleased to say it was worth the effort. Flint's poems speak in common language, of common experience viewed and understood with an uncommon clarity which reaches toward the transcendent. These are poems by a man who seems to have viewed the world as a classroom, life as an ongoing process of learning and his, the job of writing out the lessons. Many of the poems in the early part of the book are landscape or nature poems. In these Flint's freshly rendered images lead to new insights into both nature and the self: a mushroom is described as "something that's mostly / water held in thrall / by a really subversive idea." ("Mushrooms and Grass"); and an agate becomes "the essence of a tear / that never dries" ("Agates"). In "Complexity (Bolinas Ridge)" he writes: Imagine how complex it must be, the mathematical formula describing a roughly woven blanket lying across the amber grass on a steep seaward hillside deepening into dusk; now imagine the whole world as an elegant math problem we'll die trying to solve.This leads him to both an abstract certainty of the existence of God, and the concrete certainty of the world in front of his eyes. He concludes: The real problem is, the error of "me" is so very easy to make; then, before you even know it, you have "us" on your hands, and you also have "them" to deal with, too.This is the kind of conclusion Robinson Jeffers might have drawn from his observations of nature: the idea that "nature" on its own is admirably, if coldly balanced until man, or perhaps man's consciousness, is introduced as an inevitably disruptive force. But Flint's sense of "nature" is more compassionate, more welcoming, and as a result his conclusion is a challenge to action rather than Jeffers' sense of resigned defeat. The White Crack of the title is in Utah's Canyonlands and merits two poems, differentiated by the presence of "The" on one. Here Flint experienced a turning point, an epiphany of sorts, which is as simple and obvious as it may be complex and unreachable: "just maybe / it doesn't need to be / only about fear, / after all" (from "The White Crack"). In poems about his family Flint fits concise images around imprecise emotions, as in this opening verse from "Broken": I came bearing my father's gender; he came bearing wrenches and socket sets and an air of omnipotence that began to wane almost from the start.Such emotions often unconsciously define our actions without a connection being made--Flint finds and acknowledges those connections without assigning blame. In the closing pieces, written with the knowledge that he would not live much longer, the "poetic" imaging of the earlier poems gives way to a precise depiction of events and an almost desperate need to pass on what he has learned of life while he still can. From "Life Goes On (July 20, 1999)": Everything changes once you've lived the longest moment when death is a presence and no longer just the most frightening thing you could imagine happening to someone else.These last few poems recall the honesty David Ignatow brought to his final work (Shadowing the Ground, 1991)--no surrender and only a grudging resignation which acknowledges, perhaps even welcomes, the inevitable--while refusing to let go of life until the last. What Ignatow described as "seeking transcendence / but loving bread." The final poems also form examples of the poetic process in action: the short "Headache (November 30, 1998)" is followed by the longer "Life Goes On (July 20, 1999)," which alters and entirely absorbs it; and then "Rewrite #108 (Juice)" which takes process as the starting point for a poignant farewell. In both cases we can see the shift in his work. As though he were afraid that placing images in the stead of his ideas might be too ambiguous now, when he needed to be very clear. Had he lived longer he may have further polished these final poems and brought them to a finer honed presence on the page--but he could not have made them any more clear. Two more volumes of Flint's work, including one of erotica (a topic only briefly touched on in the current volume), are pending. Copies of The White Crack, and subsequent volumes, can be ordered online at www.vivekan.org/bdp, or by mail from Beautiful Dreamer Press, 1857 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041-1019. |