The title of Jan Dean’s 2014 collection in the “Pocket Poets” series published by Flying Island Books (a joint project of the Association of Stories in Macao and Cerberus Press in Australia) is taken from a line in a short poem called “Wonder” (p.74), near the middle of the collection: “Why do people lament decay / and crave constant renewal? / While paint peels graffiti sings / the wonders of evanescence.” These lines capture the spirit of this collection by a poet with an artist’s eye who always seems to have both eyes open to the wonders of evanescence.
Early in the collection (in “Janus,” p.16), Dean writes “Why do people say back in the day / when lots of good stuff happens at night? / Were we wiser after or before? Shall we / take the closest exit or ask for more?/ Why not stay and see both sides?” The accent falls on staying (or “stillness” in the later poem) to see, to follow the light:
…Hail opposites: yin/yang,
drought/flood, light/dark, young/old,
life/death and the middle is fine.
We could be flowers with heads tilted
as we follow the sun’s path across the sky.
In “Facial Paralysis in the Year of the Cow” (p.24), Dean writes “some of my friends are poets // others are artists / and some have yet to decide – / solve the puzzle: which / is which, and are you challenged? / we all are every day…” (p.28). The middle is not just “fine.” It is where we are, and that is where Dean finds the wonders of evanescence. In “Birthdays” (p.50), she writes “…Why not / leave the mystery in its glitzy / wrap to scowl and taunt / until resistance fades / and like us, must move along.” In “The Gallery” (p.85), she writes of “…A past I could have been part of” and “art openings I didn’t attend.” But the past is not the particular absence on which she dwells: “While last night’s revellers / stayed away I discussed paintings / with their maker and Anne, the proprietor / who lived upstairs in an apartment / where she smothered all surfaces / with great Australian art, and the walls / ceilings, fridge and cupboards yielded in ecstasy” (p.84).
Yielding in ecstasy is a recurring image, related to the wonders of evanescence – resignation without despair: “if clocks ran faster / and calendars flicked years / into the future / creators need not suffer / they’d know success sooner // slam doors / at your peril – lose sky / between your fingers / gain dirt amid your toes / and learn to grovel” (“Potpourri,” p.90). Learning to grovel skates close to despair, but, as in “Splash, The Art of Water” (p.94), “…From the drip / drip, drip of a tap to the roar of a waterfall / just when we fear it most, water surprises us / with the hush of waves to lull us to sleep.” We must return to water, she writes – not a counsel of despair but a statement of fact.
One of the things I most appreciate about this collection is the weight must carries without becoming simply oppressive. Like Laozi, Dean looks to water for insight into power – and she locates the power of water in art.
This is clear, I think, in her “dwelling on cicadas” in “White Noise” (p.112) where “omnipotent” applies to “a translucent shell caught in a spider web, a miniature / version of empty samurai armour, serene and fearsome. Bulbous eyes stare into space…” (p.114). The eyes have it – nowhere more powerfully than in the poem with which the collection ends, “Artemisia Reflects” (p.116). In the voice of Artemisia Gentileschi, she speaks of Caravaggio’s power: “…If love for his own / gender gave him such tenderness, more power // to him. His shadows danced, deep as the abyss / between me and my accusers, my torturers / and inventive as a former lover’s tales” (p.118). And, more tellingly, of Judith: “In my painting she does the job she was compelled / to do, leans back from the blood, while her knife / sinks into his neck making the division // that sets her people free” (p.120). She speaks of “a Judith sequence” and ends with “Painting, life and death are all about stealth. / I have embraced the brushes and the blood. / As for this last, Death bring down your cobwebs” (p.124).
This calls to mind another poem that embodies the creative tension in this collection (“Eternal Life,” p.40). There the poet is so taken with the tattoo of a young woman on a train that “isn’t static like others I’ve seen” that she abandons the temptation to anchor herself by “pondering / high art verses low” and “unsure whether it’s a bird or person / in an ecstatic dance, I blurt / the figure seems ethereal, // waving my arms above my head. / She laughs waving hers wilder / nodding it represents eternal life.” A dance, yes, and it ends with the tension characteristic of the book: “She says it took three hours of pain / which sounds divine exchange / although familiar in theme: / Pain and suffering for the sake of humanity” (p.42).
Dean’s collection is one of many small wonders in the “Pocket Poets” series (to borrow the title of Anna Couani’s collection) published in Macao and Australia under the direction of series editor Kit Kelen, with Chinese translations by a talented group of poets and translators associated with the University of Macao. The bilingual presentation makes this series an excellent introduction for Chinese readers; but it is also a treasure trove for English readers who have not yet encountered the rich and diverse community of contemporary Australian poetry.
Paint Peels, Graffiti Sings is a wonderful place to join that dance.
Reviewed by Steven Schroeder, Chicago
Jan Dean. Paint Peels, Graffiti Sings. Flying Island Books, 2014. ISBN 978-99965-42-76-3.