by Peter Davis
Barnwood Press 2006
Reviewed by John Deming
Hitler’s Mustache: The Review
We can generally agree that even if Jason Lee (as Earl) brings the mustache back to the mainstream—if the mullet cascades its way back into our hearts, if modifications to jeans command perpetual flux—there’s one look that will take at least a few hundred more years to find its way back: the small, sub-nostril’d bar code stache.
I generally roll with the ethic that the imposition of Adolf Hitler on a work of art is a logical fallacy: the classic signifier that an artist is out of ideas and relying on Hitler’s evil to carry the workload.
But Adolf Hitler the man plays at most a bit-part in Peter Davis’s debut, Hitler’s Mustache. There’s no penetration of World War II or Nazism, just a lot of surface-level, large-scale metaphor on the part of Hitler’s famous fashion statement—the black square of hair itself and nothing more. Yet inevitably the very thought of Hitler ghosts the whole book—perhaps too much so, leading to the ever-lingering question: is he taking the issue too lightly?
I don’t think he is. That question, and the overall craziness of the concept, had an interesting effect on the online poetry world; people were at least a little stupefied by the book as chunks of it surfaced in nearly every online journal in the land. Read through it, though, and you’ll find Davis, in his own way, allows for the pang of murderous evil. However grave the tone of each poem, our narrator sees mustaches everywhere (even the mustache on the cover is represented as a barcode, for your metaphorical pleasure): “She ordered a cup of mustache from the mustache who worked behind the mustache.”
It is without question that Davis has bitten off more than he can chew, though of course the largesse of his topic was part of the point. More a distraction than an obsession, the mustache stands in for anything unsettling or uncomfortable—and anything obsessed over to the point of mania and absurdity. Here’s one of my favorite passages, from the prose poem “Hitler’s Mustache: A Mustache Confession”:
I feel like a bad mustache a lot of the time. With
no friends, and for good reason, greedy and mean
and not worth the time…Who knows about masks?
Not me. I’m moving at the speed of light and the
occurrence of seeing light gets mustache, etc. I want
to tell something about myself, but, mustache.
Most of the book is at least as confounding as this passage, but that’s the trouble: it maintains one level and becomes repetitive. The word “mustache” is scattered across every poem, so repetitious it becomes vapid as a blank line in a Mad Lib. Apart from “mustache,” Davis peppers the almost pleasant poems with occasionally violent images, perhaps to justify the weight of relying on Hitler for a whole book (“lopping off lots of little fingers”, “pianos made of skin”).
There’s “Hitler’s Mustache: The Ode,” “Hitler’s Mustache: Frank ‘Mustache’ O’Hara,” “Hitler’s Mustache: The Sestina,” “Hitler’s Mustache: The Journey Tribute Band,” “Hitler’s Mustache: Mustache Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Mustachio.” The poet proves himself both clever and versatile. But rather than emerging as a rapt, engaging obsession, this mostly floats on top. Hitler’s mustache, rather than an embodiment of unease, starts to feel like an attempt to anchor a bunch of unrelated poems, like the obsessive need for direction alone.
On his blog, Davis describes Hitler’s mustache thusly: “an emblem of the complete folly of his ideas and an example of the anomaly that is seemingly always in our mist.” I’m okay with this, even though I didn’t need to be reminded of “the complete folly” of Hitler’s ideas. I also don’t mind this, from the book itself: “Hitler’s mustache is the comet that nobody sees because everyone is watching its furry tail.” Okay, let a vague sense of Hitler terror sweat through the walls of the book, fill the holes in your life—it’s an idea at least.
But idea-wise, Davis crosses the line here: “The Mystery of Hitler’s Must Ache.” Surely everyone has a “must ache,” right? In its sweetness, the metaphor suffocates.
Still, the fact he had the stamina to maintain his mustache-talk for 80 pages at least calls to mind Ashbery’s notion of “the perfectly plausible accomplishment of a purpose.” Hitler’s mustache was in there when this poet was writing this manuscript, and it wasn’t going to go anywhere until the manuscript was done. The mustache is a crutch, but not so much that it prevents all lyric moments from shining, as in these lines from “Hitler’s Mustache: The Basic Situation for the Clandestine Mustache”:
A grueling gargle gurgles up from
the lagoon mustache.
In your memory, the childhood
moment in which you discovered
a number of live frogs trapped
in a drainage thingy behind
a school. You lifted the metal grating
and pulled a few frogs out.
This is an aggressive first book project; any use of Hitler is a gamble, surely Davis knew this all along, and the result is a peculiarly obsessive book. I know this sounds like bullshit reviewer-speak, but now that this is out of the poet’s system, I’m very interested to see what he does next; he’s undoubtedly skilled enough to rely on tone as the anchor for a book rather than everyone’s preconceived notion of terror. The mustache just becomes too deeply symbolic and ultimately, a distraction. Whether he works best with series and obsession or with spontaneity remains to be seen, but some new poems he’s posted on his blog outrun pretty much everything in Hitler’s Mustache. Look at “How Today Becomes a Creepy Spider”—obsessive repetition flavors the poem. Davis presents a unique voice and perspective, and perhaps more importantly, a willingness to pursue some peculiar impulses.
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If you’re wondering what a “pajamaist” is I can tell you for sure that it is a kind of grand metaphor; it has to be, as Matthew Zapruder makes the following important disclosure early on in the titular poem:
Over the past few years, several small books in quasi-encyclopedic and dictionary-like formats, many written by women, including Haryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary, Jen Benka’s A Box of Longing with 50 Drawers and Marisol Martinez’s After You, Dearest Language, have helped prompt a rethinking of how books of poems are structured. Historically, encyclopedias and dictionaries have not been known to be the refuge of feminists. It’s perhaps too much to call this trend a movement, but these books give those musty formats a much-needed kick in the butt.
It’s been more than three years since Kevin Young was robbed for the National Book Award by an okay C.K. Williams book. But surely awards are really only a luxury that serve at best to point people in the direction of decent literature, and if nominating Young’s 190-page epic for the broken-hearted Jelly Roll: A Blues pointed readers in Young’s direction, then the literary dictators did something right. Jelly Roll is among the best books written this century (21st); it reminded us that our nation’s most organic art form (blues) means more than a 1-4-5 chord pattern: it means accessing a certain tone, means beating the things that are beating you, sometimes only by acknowledging you are being beaten—arguing as far as the 5-chord will take you, but maintaining a sense of self-deprecating humility:
Bill Zavatsky is an excellent bench player for the New York School, and one of the strong points of Hanging Loose’s team. Left-handed as that is, I mean it as a compliment. Can we say for sure where the ’96 Yankees have wound up if Charlie Hayes had flubbed that ninth-inning pop-up? Where would Earl Weaver’s Orioles have been without John Lowenstein, or the mid-80’s Mets without Rusty Staub? OK, don’t answer that last one. Zavatsky’s strength is the hard-earned knowledge of second-stringers gained from his ten years as a jazz pianist playing in obscure clubs.
