NEIL
LEADBEATER Reviews
Comprehending Mortality by John
Bloomberg-Rissman and Eileen R.
Tabios
(Locofo
Chaps, Chicago, 2017)
It seems fitting that Eileen Tabios, a prolific writer
of experimental poetry on what is fast becoming an epic scale, should have
owned a dog who happened to share the same name as that of a Greek hero of the
Trojan War, the central character and greatest warrior of that other epic,
Homer’s Iliad. With this chapbook, Achilles (for that
was the dog’s name) has himself entered the literary canon. His passing in 2017
prompted Tabios to write a poem in his honor—it is the final poem in her
collection titled Hiraeth (Knives,
Forks and Spoons Press, 2017). In this chapbook, the lines from this poem,
which are taken more or less in the order in which they appear, have been
placed in bold print and additional text has been added in a collaboration
between Tabios and Bloomberg-Rissman. The text has been referred to as an
assemblage / homage, that is a combination, grouping or arrangement of detail
culled from various sources to create a work of art made by grouping together
found or unrelated objects.
Helpful and informative notes on these sources are
included at the back of the chapbook for readers who wish to gain a greater
appreciation and understanding of the text. These sources are wide-ranging and
include political, literary and musical references and references from
photographic images.
The chapbook opens in an atmosphere of wonderment. Who
has not at some time in their life considered the vastness of the ever
expanding universe, the impossibility of trying to measure it or contain it;
who has not wondered at the unique pattern of every snowflake? Surely there is something amazing about the
bigger scheme of things.
The
assassination of the Honduran environmental activist, Berta Isabel Cáceres Floras, murdered
in her home by armed US-backed Honduran government-backed death squads on March
3 2016 after years of threats to her life quickly changes the mood but
defiantly makes the point that her death was not in vain:
She spoke too much truth to power—not
just for indigenous rights, but for women’s and LGBTQ rights, for authentic
democracy, for the well-being of the earth, and for an end to tyranny by
transnational capital and empire. Since her murder, it’s ever more clear what
her community says: Berta did not die, she multiplied!
A
visual poem accompanies the line The
past is thick, and the present thin:
Entes… Entes…
GHOSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTRAIN
Readers
will make of this what they will. For me, it conjures up the impression of a
train crossing a long bridge with a series of arches. The train is full of beings, entities…it is
the journey through life.
In
another piece of text, reference is made to Nathaniel Mackey’s book Bass Cathedral which is made up of
letters from a musician and composer called N. to a confidante he addresses as
Angel of Dust.
The
poems and prose poems that make up this collection may appear on the surface to
be diverse but there is much that connects them together. References to space
(the sky, galaxies, the universe), physics and science—in particular radiation
(Fukushima, black cones), mathematics (measurement, intuitionist mathematics),
jazz (Misha Mengelberg, Eric Dolphy, Han Bennink and Nathaniel Mackey’s Bass Cathedral), human rights (Berta Cáceres), journeys
(Katsumi Omori: “I must go to Fukushima,” Charles Darwin’s journey on H.M. S.
Beagle, our own journey through life), grief (Pushkin grieving for Beauty, the
Hondurans for Berta Cáceres, Tabios for her beloved dog and compassion (a
bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all the Buddhas) are the main
threads which piece this tapestry together.
Even
though all twelve of the lines [plus one symbol] from the original poem in Hiraeth are quoted in bold print, four of
them [plus that one symbol] remain freestanding. With lines like Absence is a singe and But love is also / a source of difficulty
words may not be adequate to express the depth of emotion that these lines
convey. It is enough to leave them be.
Comprehending
Mortality—a title which calls to mind
Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality (written from a somewhat different
perspective)—is a sustained reflection on the state of being subject to death.
The cover art of a bronze object “Owl on a Frog” [ca. 1620] cast in Austria but
housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Jack and Belle Linsky
Collection, 1982, is a fitting illustration of how frogs fall prey to owls and
how death comes to all of us at the end of our lives.
In the end it is our fragility and the vulnerability
of our planet that is our Achilles heel. We need that encaustic—that
preservative wax—to protect the fragility of paper. Recommended.
*****
Neil
Leadbeater is an author, essayist,
poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and
poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and
abroad. His books include Librettos for
the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014) and Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press,
2017).
