Gerard Ian Lewis wrote:
>
> Dockery, have you ever posted a serious commentary on any poem?
Sure, here's some /serious commentary/ on a collection of poems of mine
from
1993, Topical Studies #5.
''...TOPICAL STUDIES Rick Howe's well written zine focusing on
mini-comics.
This issue includes an indepth (three pages) review of Troy Hickman's
Tales
of the Pathetic Club series, about five pages of shorter reviews, a
healthy
letters section (discussing more than comics), artwork by Howe, Jeff
Zenick, Michael R. Neno and Larry Johnson, and more. This item comes from
the collection of Dale Lee Coovert AKA artist Andy Nukes.
Specs:
- 5½ × 8½"
- 48 pages
- condition is very good, complete and intact, no tears or markings
- published by Rick Howe, 1995
http://poopsheet.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=810542
Cover scan:
http://poopsheet.ecrater.com/5160/460ae89956170_5160n.jpg
William Dockery's New Poems
To The Magic Store, just released by William Dockery, is a publication of
modest pro****tions, consisting of a cover illustration followed by seven
pages of poetry. A t that, there is something aesthetically effective
about
this simple ''minibook'' design. Having issued a series of similar books
over the last several years, the author undoubtedly has aquired a certain
proficicency with them.
It is probably a question, since one is not sure how else to explain it,
of
/fitting/ or /filling/ - yet not overfilling - a book of this size with an
appropriate amount of material, such that one might experience in it a
satisfying ampleness, notwithstanding the smallness of its format; at the
same time expression must reach completion in the allotted number of
pages,
and not leave the impression of gaving been aborted, or that necessary
articulations were left out. Judicious resort to ellipsis may indeed be
helpful in this regard only providing it does not signify impoverishment.
[Which is not the same thing, really.]
It is indicitive that the book proceeds at what seems, at once, a
comfortable, unhurried pace; at the same time it is more than the
negligible
sort of labor which one might expect in the everyday course of things to
have done in fifteen minutes or so.
In style and temperment, William Dockery's poetry is a little like that of
John Berryman - cf., The Dreamsongs. A basically sensitive but slightly
discombobulated awareness wending its way through hazes of intoxication;
the
nieghborhood milieu. [''..when I was staying/ at the boarding house/
across
from the park,/ I hated those bells/ and I hated that place./ At the same
time I loved it.''
In essence the theme is search for self.
Now, self, in the way in which a poet like illiam Dockery understands it,
is
essentially a myth; in other words, a kind of story in which self is
revealed and delinated to itself. In fact self cannot appear except
through
the mediation of external places and people. But the im****tant thing is
that
these must be interpreted as having transcendental implications which
might
not be apparent at the level of quotidean experience. So this is what is
meant by the poet entering his neighborhood or social milieu in search of
self.
Myth of origin [how self first learns to recognize itself]; golden age,
debacle. These are some of the typical mythic components in life. To keep
this on a simple, general level. Of course much subtler comprehensions are
also possible. For example, a typical mythification involves a division of
life into periods. When I lived on such-and-such street, life had a
certain
quality; I had these experiences, was aquainted with these people, et
cetera. Then I moved somewhere else and it wasn't the same; a period of
life
came to an end. Thus life may be seen as a succession of /periods/ of
greater or shorter duration; each more or less distinguished by objective
referents [dates, addresses, names of people], each revealing distinctive
mythological demensions as well.
In To The Magic Store the poet is viewing such a period retrospectively.
It
is a Proustian /rememberance of things past/ in a way; things are
remembered
together with their psychological associations, producing a sensation of
mythological awareness. [It is not necessary to spell it out with
elaborate
detail. The point is simply to intuit how a set of associated names and
images creates the effect of milieu or era.]
Viewed retrospectively, there is of course an emphasis on dissolution.
People drift away, some die, and eventually the milieu dissolves. The tone
of the book is predominantly one of loss and mourning. In one case the
poet
later revisits one of his main friends - the ''speed junkie'' musician
Hugo - and finds ''he'd been burned in a terrible disaster,/ in a
wheelchair
and speechless.''
With its emphasis on the downside of the cycle, To The Magic Store
corresponds [mythically speaking] with a decline and fall - maybe not of a
/golden age/, since more or less there is only one full-blown golden age
in
a lifetime, but of some lesser epicycle which never the less exhibits
analogous phases of flouri****ng and decline.
Curiously enough, there is no ''magic store'' explicitly mentioned in this
book. Given the preoccupation with loss and mortality, a suitable title
might have been To The Cemetery. Indeed, the climactic verses tell of
taking
a girl to a graveyard - ''to see the grave of the guy who died./ We sat
there in this graveyard park,/ with a six-pack of beer./ he looked
fragile/
as she drunkenly cried./ She looked open/ to my sensibility...''
But then, as the poem concludes:
I can still remember
her laughing at my poetry
didn't feel so good to me
after I'd been up all night
pouring out my feelings.
I thought she was interesting,
she turned out
she was just a little female fool.
Was not able to put all the
components
of my life in place...
my mythology was incomplete.
But the title might have a different and more Proustian meaning. The
mythology of self, unfulfilled in initial experience [where to be sure
such
mythologies inevitably represent inconclusive aspirations], might be
prolonged through acts of memory; where by poetic ''magic'' they may be
perfected and ternalized - notwithstanding their preliminary frustration
in
mere cir***stances.
Perhaps this might shed some light on the mystic quality of a poem like
The
Ballad of James Collier. A line like ''I hope some of them are left'' is
perhaps best taken at face value, that is, in its natural sense. Other
parts
of the poem allude to ghostly reunions - perhaps in some transcendental
world where the past continues as a permanent reality - ''In tiny
detail.'' -Rick Howe, January 1 1993
--
"Last Dream Today" written by Will Dockery and Brian Mallard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSpYx8sSFP0
Brian Mallard - guitar
Dan Davidson - bass
Josh Railey - drums
Riley Yeilding - trumpet
Sir Charles - saxophone
Will Dockery - vocals
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