by Bill Rector
Proem Press 2008
Reviewed by Matt Soucy
Bill Vol. 1
Bill Rector’s book, aptly named Bill, follows Bill through contemporary America, focusing on experiences in health care. Bill talks about Bill in the third person; he is alternately doctor and patient, insider and outsider, in a series of poems that speak like prose. Rector does an effective job of forming Bill into an idea that applies poignantly and broadly to the alienation of the American middle class.
Every poem runs into the next, building the character and world of Bill. Readers are first introduced to the emptiness of modern life and modern medicine; in “show room,” Rector makes a smart and direct analogy, using anti-depressants and America’s love of cars:
I guess what Bill is saying
is that there’s something emptyin the way we regulate our moods,
something clunky under the hoods
we drop when we go out.
Our health care system has become another thing to consume, to regulate our happiness as opposed to actually improving our quality of life. In this piece and others, Rector suggests that life has become intrinsically worthless in America because we put a dollar value on it.
Rector is not one-dimensional, though; he also shows moments when medicine fails due to the crushing inevitability of death. In “Her Husband is near…”, Doctor Bill becomes totally insubstantial while waiting with a family for the death of their father:
Her husband is near
death. Bill
changes shape constantly…… – Bill’s
the snowflake that drifts
past the gray tower,
mind’s eye
he is
the stomach he doesn’t have
for the three sons who dropped everything to fly
in from the East
There are forces we control with economy but there are, and always will be, those forces of nature we cannot control. Poems like “The Anatomy Lesson” display the practice of medicine as little more than macabre theatre. Nearly all of Rector’s takes on health care in America are touched with cynicism, but he offers an intelligent and thoughtful variety of views.
As Bill progresses, the emptiness and insecurity of health care branch out into all corners of American life. Bill is left seeking the most basic communion within himself and between himself and others. There is the feeling that one must come before the other—but which remains a mystery. As Bill wanders without an identity (other than his plainsong moniker), he lacks morality, direction, purpose—maybe even existence. (It’s notable that the poet’s full name doesn’t appear on the book jacket or in the book, except on the copyright page.)
The whole text is straightforward, bordering on inartistic. However, there are moments presented that certainly transcend the everyday undercurrent of shallow, insecure American life. When Bill gets hit in the face with a line drive, Bill, covered in blood, refuses to show pain:
Boys don’t understand
how a man can stand
not to let pain
show. Howthe mouth is a scar
that never cries
Never nevereven when it can tell
what’s coming
until it’s too late.Not even the heart bleeds like the face.
Rector references baseball, shooting, fishing, cars, politics, war, farming, and many of the images and ideas associated with the hardworking core of this country. He successfully avoids the pitfall of being blindly critical of such “American” traits. Bill is a curious and willing participant in these scenes.
This is a good book of poetry for non-poetry readers. Although Bill is too obviously Rector’s mouthpiece (Berryman’s Henry he ain’t by a long shot), it’s refreshing to read poetry from the point of view of a common man who deals with real-life value judgments daily. It’s more gestalt than deep delving, but the pace and consistent focus creates increasing intensity and suggestive meaning as the poems roll by.
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