The following is an excerpt from my review of Sam Gwynn's "No Word of Farewell." (His title, by the way, brought back such strong memories of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" that I searched my LP collection for it, then ended up buying a cd of Paxton's best.) A longer version of this review will appear in "Light," I think, or else in the Seattle Times. I'd be glad to hear comments not only on Gwynn's book but on my work here, and perhaps I can improve it before it appears in print -- if I can remember where I sent it.
“No Word of Farewell: Selected Poems, 1970-2000”
by R.S. Gwynn
Story Line Press, $16.95
In his valuable introduction to R.S. Gwynn’s “No Word of Farewell,” Dana Gioia speculates that it may be due to Gwynn’s recent experience as a cancer patient that the “dark side” of his imagination has become more evident. Perhaps. But even at its darkest, his verse swings with a verve and wide-ranging allusiveness that can be dizzying. The reader laughs until – and while – it hurts.
Consider “Before Prostate Surgery,” which parodies Ben Jonson’s famous elegy to his son:
Farewell, thou joy of my right hand, my toy;
My sin was too much use of thee, old boy –
At least the old wives’ tales would have it thus,
And I am too downcast to raise a fuss
Or much of anything, to put it simply.
The echoes of Jonson work in different, indeed opposite, ways. The comparison of the loss of sexual potency to Jonson’s loss of his son serves to give some perspective; we sense that the poet understands that this possibly life-saving surgery is not, after all, the worst that can happen. The comparison also, however, makes a stark and harrowing contrast between the poet’s life up until now and the life ahead. While Jonson lost a youth, the speaker in this poem contemplates the loss of youth. He can make fun of himself, but turn after turn brings him back to the prospect of his loss. Declaring himself “too downcast to raise a fuss,” the word “raise” reminds him of what else he cannot raise; after three end-stopped lines, the fourth one hurls us forward into that unwelcome realization. Yet unlike Jonson, Gwynn can conclude with a hopeful prayer:
And pray, that in the deft hand of a lover
From death to life we might thee yet recover.
Implicit in this concluding couplet is a clever albeit sacrilegious pun on resurrection. He has in fact already used the word “erection” earlier, in a rhyming position, no less. By echoing Jonson’s prayer at the grave of his son, Gwynn can voice his own heartfelt hope without crossing the line into self-pity, and without misappropriating the Christian tropes. Meanwhile, we laugh at the use of Elizabethan language – the language of courtly love – to talk about the sin of Onan; the traditional context of such elevated diction contrasts hilariously with the, well, unelevated object to which it is addressed. This is dark humor of the best kind – not schadenfreude but, rather, a light to shine through and against the darkness.
Elsewhere, though, Gwynn’s humor illuminates the darkness and shows us just how really dark it is. His widely-praised “The Narcissiad,” generously excerpted here, mercilessly sends up the contemporary scene of self-indulgent, self-promoting poets. No doubt anyone who has followed the careers of today’s grant-getters will recognize many of the figures satirized here. But one needn’t be able to name names in order to recognize the types and laugh along with Gwynn’s deft, rollicking iambic pentameter couplets. Here is our first glimpse of Narcissus:
From the jacuzzi, wreathed in scented foam,
He steps with his blow-dryer and his comb
To face the altar where all things are clearer,
To wit, his dressing table and his mirror.
All the details point up his vanity, and we get a glimpse of his shallowness when we learn that for him “his dressing table and his mirror” have the significance of an “altar.” Gwynn comes down heavily on “mirror” (an essential element in the story of Narcissus, of course) by placing it at the end of this long sentence; our first full stop brings us an extra moment’s contemplation of the word, and at the same time, because the couplets keep the rhyming words in such close proximity, we still hear the echo of “clearer.” The irony of “clearer” then dawns on us, becomes, so to speak, clearer.
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