Siva in Rags
A.J. Kaufman
Book review by Gail Gray
Relentless imagery hurled at you at a harrowing pace. You read Siva in Rags either holding your breath or huffing and puffing in the exertion just to keep up with the pace of a mind constantly on fire. I don’t know how A.J. doesn’t go supernova. The man, the mind, crescendos and climaxes in a meticulous meltdown of our complex multi-layered staggering cultures. He attacks the pages as if they were holding back the answers. He delineates the loves, the failures, the endless pursuit for meaning, the windows, closed, soaped, broken, or shuttered, offering glimpses into a brain who observes, embraces the all and the most infinitesimal detail at once. That’s one of this man's gifts, this streetwise philosopher, this distiller of every nuance from many many corners of the world, this chronicler of the disenfranchised, the seeking, the stumbling, who crawl on their knees in a quest for answers.
In this collection of seven poems we have the reflections of a poet and the doubts of immortality through words. In fact, this whole volume reflects on doubt, even as the words themselves negate this very concept in the mind of the reader, if not the author.
I tried to write an objective review, as an editor, as a reader, but I can’t. I can’t be objective; these poems touch each and everyone personally in a different way. Kaufman is a conjuror of the most dangerous kind. He summons our own inner needs and demons, the shadows dragging their fears and angers through the gutters like stained cloaks, and then just as rapidly summons our most deep-seated longings. They reach long-armed into prismatic dimensions hoping for succor…. for comfort… for love…what was that? I forget. I need a cigarette.
Vivid commentaries surge forth from his lines, they dance and jive and jig to his rhythms and cadence. You know this man’s a musician even if you don’t read his bio, but as you read pieces like, “Siva in Rags” and “The Street Always Follows the Streetlight” you discover he’s an avatar as well, so deliriously awake he sees all and is compelled to write it down to wake us up too. Before its too late.
Perhaps that’s why he always seems in such a hurry.
Here is just a hint….
“The Street Always Follows the Streetlight”
The darkening lights of St. Antoin’s cemetery swirl
line up
& crack
their
fogwhip
pockets
as the street always follows
the streetlight
& the needle always follows
the vein: the vein
that wasn’t there
I ate lunch at the padre’s grave
lit up
the cemetery lamp
lit up
the Havana
followed the lover’s
silhouette
groan
threw the bastard
a sonnet
on his tombstone
the letters were gold
as his soul
was just crow’s clipped wing’s
single
handclap”
I don’t know Poznan or Vesuvius. But I know how words can take you places and sit you beside people you might never see in person… better than any video, better than any virtual tour. Because that’s what he does. He brings you the soul as well as the streets. Kaufman does that.
Kaufman doesn’t need to bully words to do his bidding….they’re waiting in line, crushing the crowd-control barriers, throwing rocks at anyone holding them back…
waiting, waiting for Kaufman to invite them to the party, without a doubt.
