Book Review : "The Tormented Mirror"

The Tormented Mirror by Russell Edson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

MANY years ago, I found Edson's "The Wounded Breakfast" in a used book store and loved it. His crazy-quilt surrealist poems really influenced me in my own writing. He and Donald Bartheleme were my early off-the-rails mentors, though I never met either one.

And so, now I come--belatedly--to "The Tormented Mirror", expecting more of the same delight. Well, life is full of disappointments, isn't it? I'm not sure if it's him that's different, or if it's me, but while this collection had its moments, it dealt too repeatedly with the themes of old men and women, babies, and bodies and bodily functions. Was he getting soft in the head?

To be sure, there are some wonderful lines, like this opener from "The Stuff of Dreams":

"There was a man who had distilled a tiny woman from several dreams."

With disheartening frequency, though, Edson keeps wandering off into stuff about breasts, rectums, "deltas" and so on. It had me picturing some fogey in the rest home, writing this stuff down, contemplating his regular-or-irregularity, and waiting for 4 o'clock so he could eat Salisbury steak in front of "Matlock" in the day room.

Not really recommended.

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New Baby

Our new baby,
a darling of the Universe,
grows tusks and unionizes.
Now, feedings are disastrous, injuries frequent.
Now, everything must be negotiated, from emotional forays to bottle temperature.

An intermediary is sent in,
but gets into the baseboards
and turns the TV into a homing beacon for her bitchy friends.

All we wanted was a child,
a sentient bit of fluff to dandle and imbue with various undemonstrated virtues and qualities.
Not tusks that send dentists howling into madness.
Not wildcat strikes with their attendant rancor and bloodshed.

Please baby, we say.
Please be normal.
A telegram arrives, from our baby.
We are terrified to read what it says.
______

for "Different Perspectives" at Real Toads.

Big Bucks

The woods being full of hunters,
some deer escape to a televised quiz show.
Who wrote the swing classic "Sing, Sing, Sing"?
The deer do not know.
(It was Louis Prima.)

The deer prefer Glenn Miller, 
though they cannot afford to ride the Chattanooga Choo Choo
unless they win big in the next round.

Who composed "The Song of the Volga Boatmen"?
The deer look at each other.
One of them dips his antlered head and buzzes in.
"Unknown," says the deer. "It's a traditional Russian piece,
popularized in the U.S. by Glenn Miller."
Correct! Bonus round!
In what year did his version hit #1 on the charts?
"1941," responds the deer. Too easy.

Later on, a herd of deer board a train.
They read a magazine and then they're in Baltimore.
The bucks clatter their racks on the Phoenix Shot Tower.
One doe asks another, who wrote "In The Mood"?
Joe Garland and Andy Razlaf,
but she is not smirking for knowing the answer.
______

for Sunday Muse #81. 

Problem Solver Hat

Let me put on my Problem Solver Hat;
you, the Leotard of Cosmic Awareness.
At the Millinery of Magnified Presence
I purchase the Fez of Authentic Living,
the Tam O' Shanter of Burnished Truth,
and the Toque of Conscious Benevolence.

At the Holy Haberdashery,
you shed the Muumuu of Self-Doubt
and don the Necktie of Numberless Eternity.
To this you add the Cummerbund of Creative Existence,
the Skorts of Peaceful Intention,
and the Jeggings of American Luminescence.

Exhausted, we tumble to the Divan of Divine Passion
but find ourselves encased in cocoons of unending cloth.
I murmur to you from under heavy layers of gauze
and you reach for me through geologic strata of material.
How can this be?
The frustration is maddening!
What to do?
Let me put on my Problem Solver Hat...
_______

for Just One Word at Toads.

Elk

image by jason limberg

When elk look into their future,
they see their partners, the wolves.
Under gray cotton skies, they find the custodian lost in the woods,
pushing his bucket and mop with difficulty over roots and divots.
When elk speak, they can see their breath,
but the custodian hears nothing, like new dust arranging itself.

When wolves look into their future, 
they see a wounded custodian lagging behind.
The desperate, unsteady sway of keys on his hip
energizes their legs like an artist giddy over the right model.
On their tongues the wolves carry a palette
and with it they paint hunger, satisfied.

When custodians look into their future,
they see rocking chairs secreting themselves among the elk herds.
When wolves circle, the elk stamp their hooves nervously,
their eyes spy-hopping above the horizon like prayer flags.
When wolves kill, custodians return amazed to their mothers
as the huge heads of the elk swivel on the scent of evening.
______

for both Wordy Monday and Art Flash at Real Toads.

Athena and the Air's Machinations

My lungs speak, one to the other,
all night while owls tap at the window
sending Morse love poems to Athena.

They know I don't trust the air--not since Athena left.
I wear this bulky space suit everywhere, even into my dreams.

A fixer with a burlap bag gathered the owls and brought them back,
along with window glass, some putty, and a frame.
Now my lungs discuss the view, plan pilgrimages, and pointedly exclude me.

Athena loved the poems I could breathe out at will,
but wearied of my ladder collection and habit of communicating only by hieroglyph. 
Now everything is lungs, owls,
night, space suits,
and the stilling of the back door still redolent 
with Athena's scent and the trackless void of my own exhalations.
_____

(belatedly cos my I was off the grid) for Sunday Muse #79.

Six Penny Poem

"The Architect by Erik Johansson

https://www.erikjo.com/

"Six Penny Poem"

I have written you this poem

made of lavender,

various weathers,

and six penny nails.

I've forgotten how to love, that's true

and never could accept the stuff.

Still, if your body were paper milled from butter and birch,

I would be flocked there and on the vines and boards

of a slant-lit garden.

This is a poem for absurd things, sweet things

last bloom and first frost

a poem for things I could not otherwise say,

a poem for you.
_______

for Sunday Muse #78.