Fire And Rain – Selected Poems 1993-2007 Vol 2
154 pp
RD Armstrong
book review by David McLean
Small press legend RD “Raindog” Armstrong has produced here an exemplary poetry book. It's part two of an anthology of fairly recent poetry which ends where I started writing a little more seriously and getting things published, somewhat chastening for me. This volume takes 99-07.
It's heartening and disheartening strong work, like he says
Wake up! The train’s a-coming
It don’t make no stop here
Not for you not for no one.
(“On a Tear”)
It discourages sometimes, admonitory and acerbic, there is giving and humanity in it, the voice that tells you “look, you are fucked” is often your best friend, a poem that only says, “look the stupid hummingbird is so pretty,” so love life, is often a deceptive enemy and the voice of a lazy aesthetic ideology that tells poets to contemplate their own “craft” and excellence. Each of these poems is a well-crafted poem, but they are reservoirs of knowledge and passion, this poet is a teacher too.
I am glad to have my Uncle Tamale
in the family, especially now
during these dark days of winter
as families bask in their abundance
and those of us with little or naught
struggle to retain both perspective
of the events around us and a sense
of dignity and humanity while so many
around us struggle to let the beasts
inside them loose.
Adios, tio.
(“Tamale Solstice”)
I hear that very clearly, I don't eat too well every day myself. A tamale would be fine then. And this teacher is also very much a poet; though he is an underground icon in many ways, the very next poem shows us perfect grasp of what seem to be mainstream poetic technique
Sebastapol
Shimmering eucalyptus trees
Rustling in a foggy breeze:
Image shaken loose from
The house of memory by
The smell of three eggs
In the frying pan.
(cited here in full)
Yet the house is like a real house, where somebody, not the academic poet's hired help, is frying eggs. I get the feeling they're pretty tasty eggs too.
Mostly one feeling this collection gives me, often pretty plainly expressed in poems here, is that Armstrong, also an artist, is creating meaning for himself as he goes along, the book, as microcosm, is the mirror of the macrocosm, the man Armstrong and the human, me or you, is using the medium of words (maybe canvas and stone too, I don't know) to create a reason to be, a locus, a place to exist, in what we all know is ultimately nothing, but who cares? And yet he does not deal in comforting illusions, the words are responsive to the physicality, and the confused social and ideological take on that, around him, and they take responsibility for the fidelity of memory. By which I mean, these poems don't give the feel of being lies.
They are passionate, aware of the darkness, yet full of life
As I am hunched over the sink
noting the swirling poetry
of my decline
I think, listen Hemingway
before you cock the hammer back
and squint into that oncoming
oblivion
you better stop and observe the
simple gifts that life drops
on your front lawn
Unless you are dead already
or in some kind of middle-class coma
you’d have to be pretty stupid not to notice
all the poetic moments around us
even hunched over the sink
on a Friday morning
as it swirls down
the drain.
(“Poem Written While Hunched Over The Sink”)
And this is surely what poetry is, or should be, a sort of theodicy for existence, without even a god to apologize for. Like Plato said in The Timaeus, however shitty life is it's better than never having even been alive, and thus got to decide that it's shitty.
Armstrong sees acutely what happens around him, in and to others, and there is cynicism of course
Reading the definitive words
From the mouth of the self-
Proclaimed revolutionary
It always comes back to
Who has legitimate claim
To the bragging rights:
Sex drugs/booze and the quest
For the perfect poem
…....
However if you ignore what is written
And remember that poetry is the
Miracle of small things made large
Then you will continue to celebrate
That notion in your own quiet
And persistent way
(“The Quiet Revolution”)
But there is a passion for poetry and a sense of solidarity with those who need beauty to face oppression and the fundamental existential disappointment of the arrogant brevity of life.
H slowed the bird down —
gave Time a clean shot.
Time took it from there.
YardBird Burns Still.
(“YardBird Burned”)
And there is humor
Yesterday I had a
Fantasy of creaming
On the TV set while
Old tight-lipped Tom
Brokaw was mumbling
On about the ramifications
Of the sex scandal in the
Catholic Church
(“Any Excuse”)
Not so unprecedented behavior actually , I knew a guy once who was reading a newspaper on the toilet and saw Clement Atlee's photo there. I assumed he had wiped his ass with it, when he asked me “Guess what i did?” but no, turned out he was driven to express his contempt by “ejaculating vehemently” over the ex-Prime Minister's smarmy mug. This freaked me out a little, so does this poem.
Armstrong combines many strands in an easy and accomplished way that lets the reader feel that this poem belongs close to a poem of rare empathy and beauty
Poems are everywhere
They reach out to me
Like desperate beggars
But they might as well
Be whiffs of smoke as
Anything else because
Since you been gone
There seems to be no reason
To hold onto these poems
For longer than a moment
No reason to archive
Anything since you
Been gone
(“Numbed for John Thomas”)
And politically speaking, he is always right on the ball, as a poem, this one in full shows,
American History Lesson
To remove the
Butcher of
Baghdad
We
Became the
Butchers of
Baghdad
In this world, what Armstrong sees as keeping him going, the motivator, is the aesthetic sense, that which poets like him can give the reader, maybe just as a shadow of what he felt
No what keeps me going
Is the simple act of drinking
A cup of coffee or breaking bread
Or seeing a cloud unhinged in the
Evening sky as if
For the first time
(“What Keeps Me Going”)
Armstrong, we can probably call him Raindog at this point in the review, writes with some evident sadness, some humor, of himself being a pack rat
Old tools
25 year-old clothes
I can’t wear anymore
Books and tapes
Everything under the sun
And nothing of real value
Except to me
A life time of junk
Waiting for a destination
(“My Legacy”)
Not so, the man is a poetic pack rat, storer of words and images life gave him which we get here to finger through, if we deserve to or not. So buy this book, it will give you something worth something, a rare poetic gift that seems for once to have landed on the shoulders of a decent normal guy to bear as his burden and treasure, albatross and holy grail, and catch him on tour with another small press legend, Todd Moore, in May.
Like another man says
Aboard a shipwreck train
Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too.
