Re: "To The Magic Store...." -- poetry review by Rick Howe

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To The Magic Store / Review by Rick Howe
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http://pennyspoetry.wikia.com/wiki/To_the_Magic_Store_by_Will_Dockery
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Will Dockery's New Poems
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To The Magic Store, just released by Will Dockery, is a publication of
modest proportions, consisting of a cover illustration followed by seven
pages of poetry. At 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 acquired a
certain proficiency 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 having 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 indicative that the book proceeds at what
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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.
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Style
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In style and temperament, 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 neighborhood milieu. [..when I was staying/ at the
boarding house/ across from the park,/ I hated those bells/ and I hated
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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 William
Dockery understands it, is essentially a myth; in other words, a kind of
story in which self is revealed and delineated to itself. In fact self
cannot appear except through the mediation of external places and
people. But the important thing is that these must be interpreted as
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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.
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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 acquainted 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 dimensions as well.
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Content
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In To The Magic Store the poet is viewing such a period retrospectively.
It is a Proustian /remembrance 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 flourishing
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 internalized - notwithstanding their
preliminary frustration in mere circumstances. 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.
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-Rick Howe, Topical Studies #5, January 1 1993. Used by permission.
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I noted the article of this on PPP today, where you'd corrected the
typo.
I went into your own article, and cut the review there down to the first
paragraph, adding a link to the "Magic Store" article at the end. I hope
that's OK; if not, of course, you can "Undo" it.
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I'd like to add this one by Rick, a review of a poetry and art chapbook
by
George Sulzbach:
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https://web.archive.org/web/20170925073614/http://unitedfanzineorganization.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/6/0/4560933/topical4.pdf
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Rick Howe's small press zine Topical Studies #4
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Now that, my friends, is critique.
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I sure miss old Rick Howe, we were room mates for a spell back around
1993 or 1994...!!!