by Rauan Klassnik
Black Ocean 2008
Reviewed by Melinda Wilson

“Great, Black Wave”

Most everything about this book is dark. It contains five sections, each with a cryptic title: I. Wounded; II. Death; III. In the Shape of a Storm; IV. All Night: Forever; V. Holy Land. Though there is little hope that these grimly titled sections will contain heartening poems, one still turns to the first poem with an open mind. Here are the first two lines of the first prose poem: “There’s a child in the ditch by the side of the road. She’s the source of every drop of blood.”

It’s difficult to see how this opening could be anything but horrifying, murderous and haunting, but there is something under the surface at work. The idea that every “drop of blood” is spilled from one body is an idea that connects every human, even in the face of tragedy. Rather than feeling isolated, it vindicates the notion that we’re fettered to one another through common human suffering and experience. We are often ignorant of our reliance upon one another, our human dependence, and sometimes, it takes extreme calamity for curtains to be drawn.

Interconnectedness is an important principle for Klassnik. Also in the first poem: “…Over the long, dazzling fields they come: one small piece of time, chained to the next, howling and deep. They stomp and they spit. You belong to them.” These lines end the poem, and they’re wonderful. Time is scary, unknowable, constant, and we are in some sense enslaved by it, Klassnik offers. There is nothing we can do to stop it. The same idea is at the core of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great”—I maintain the year’s greatest song: “…and it keeps coming till the day it stops.” The concept is both harrowing and qualifying. We have a simple choice: give in or press on. Deal with it or check out. Let’s hope we are inspired by the challenge, let’s hope we are arrogant enough to believe we deserve to go on.

The few clement moments in the book are crisp: “Tomorrow we’re going to wrestle in the tall grass and laugh.” They’re also unexpected and nourishing. The narrator is somehow able to think of the future even when there is no imaginable escape. The sentiment behind Robert Creeley’s scene, “the darkness sur- / ounds us, what // can we do against / it, or else, shall we & / why not, buy a goddamn big car…” is present in many of Klassnik’s poems; there’s dread, but he’s not always ready to surrender to it.

Though the lives of many are not quite so afflicted, Klassnik is able to enrapture his reader no matter where he or she is coming from. He uses images and experiences that every individual is sure to connect with. For instance, after difficulty or in dole, we look to a shower to be refreshing and fortifying; however, often showers can feel like an extension of the depression, a wet way to wallow in our misery, to indulge in self-pity. Klassnik writes: “I’m slumped in the shower: marbles glinting like chimes made of bone.” There is a moment of pain while the narrator waits for the water to relieve, but the focus shifts to something more reflective and internal: “…Pain, someone told me, turns to rain. My heart’s filled with grass, clouds, and children crying.”

Things are bad in this book, and it works. It strikes an impeccable balance of helplessness and action. What are disappointing are the narrator’s crude moments. At several points in the book, there are surprising turns of bawdiness as in the second poem: “A rat climbed out of her cunt (or maybe her asshole).” Yeah, why the parentheses?

Well, most suffering and violence is okay in this book. It makes its point. But when animals are used to make a point, I’m unimpressed. For instance, “People mean well. Then they grab your dog and beat him to death in front of you.” No matter how wronged one feels by life, by God, by people, leave the dogs out of it. Leave the bleeding to the humans, even the human children.

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