As promised: something about Robert Moore's Museum Absconditum. (I'll most likely find myself doing a follow-up post to this, as I finish reading the interview in Meeting with Maritime Poets by Anne Compton, but here goes Part One). There are things that Moore does consistently (in both of his collections) that are worth mentioning (as assets) -- the play with language, the juxtapositioning of the poignant and the absurd, the meaningful jostling alongside the meaningless, the play with form (especially rhyme and use of line breaks), organizing the poems into five sections which is, for some reason I have yet to define, quite effective (perhaps it contributes a dramatic effect?) -- and I will, with difficulty, point out what I think are its weaknesses (difficult to do because I think weaknesses in good poetry are often only a matter of perspective).

What Moore accomplishes in Museum Absconditum is something that probes ever more deeply into belief and nonsense, memory and fiction, the inevitable and the avoidable, and sadness. He shows us saints, mythical figures, new insights into the characters who inhabit children's stories. And it is more thematically cohesive than So Rarely In Our Skins. The conversational use of language mixes with the sometimes elevated diction and figurative language(even rhyme) so seamlessly (something I did not find in Sanger's Aiken Drum). And there are moments of sheer elegance. Not to mention the unexpected images.

To show you what I mean: the following is one of the poems ("Pale rider") from Museum, picked almost randomly to illustrate some of my points (yes, they are consistently that good). You can see the play with diction, use of line breaks, and the elegance of a sure, subtle paradox . . .

In westerns, the shot that always gets me
features a figure on the horizon line,
back to the light, shivered by distance
and dry desert heat.

The above quoted lines feature a camera shot which is being compared to a gun shot. I like that. Also, the combination of shivering and desert heat would seem to be a contradiction. Yet that's exactly what happens to the image of a figure in the distance on a hot day. And all the 'f' and 'd' alliteration sounds dry and hard-packed like desert earth.

There are breathtaking lines as well (also from "Pale rider"): "soft as the memory of water / in an empty riverbed." The poem goes on to compare a pocket, a holster, and a heart to effect. Wonderful.

And sometimes in this collection the turning of the phrase, a line, that creates the hinge is so subtle you register its effect with the intake of breath. But, just in case subtle doesn't appeal to you, there are moments of intensity as well.


Toronto aubade by Robert Moore

Death is certainly not a gentleman on a wet street,
turning away, face half gone, stepping forever

through a doorway, back perfectly drained. Here
grey light gathers to fish out bone, umbrellas

pass through one white hand. But it is the breath
you're holding, the one which weathers before spoiling

the heart inhumed under all this big-chested traffic. Like
the first designs the dead had on this lakeside city

one green afternoon after a rain, fingers hung for a moment
from an alder branch. Boots long since versed

in the beatitudes of rot.


There is something so intimate about these poems, yet the speakers are often delightfully elusive. And the recurring, gentle playfulness with regards to mortality is captivating. These lines from "You get older," for example: "You get older and your children prepare themselves / to lean over your grave the way you leaned / over their cribs. It's the same look of tenderness / only viewed from the other side."

Death plays a big part in this collection, actually. But the preoccupation with same is neither morbid, self-indulgent, nor strictly ironic. Rather, it is a witty romp with various aspects and implications of mortality . . . with some poignancy thrown in for good measure. In fact, I'm frequently reminded of Dickinson's approach to mortality while reading these poems; poems which are so different in style and tone. The similarity lies in the witty approach to the subject, I think.

Wit and playfulness abound in the following (notice the rhyme, for example, and the repetitive beginning for each stanza) . . . and isn't there something rather sorrowful in the ending?:

The dead by Robert Moore

Maybe they light the path with stones,
press the shadow-sides into lifelines
to remind them of the way.

Maybe they know how it all turns out
but simply refuse to say.

Maybe the moon is the only vowel they trust themselves
to use, stars a direction they're desperate to lose.

Maybe they've finally learned
how to handle their money, given the loss
of their fists.

Maybe they stand outside our windows,
gather together on black lawns to wonder
how they ended up outside.

Maybe they think doors are lids
on boxes of air, that hallways
suffer from too much pride.

Maybe they're hopeless at multiplication
but past-masters at long division.

Maybe all their dreams of adventure
begin and end in an empty chair.

Maybe they keep making the same decision
regarding what a body's supposed to wear.

Maybe when they hear us crying
they lose a little more heart, dig their heels
just that much further in, adjust ever so slightly
the weight of their limbs, trim the ends
of that shadow stopped at the top of the stairs.

Interestingly, one of the things I like about Moore's poetry is how easily one falls into the poem; how the opening lines seem effortless. And yet that (the opening line, or image) is something, according to Moore's interview with Anne Compton (in Meetings with Maritime Poets), he has trouble with from time to time:

"I have no experience with knowing where I'm going in a poem. It usually starts with a line or image. Then there's the giddy moment of the second line, which changes the chemistry of the first line or image. And the game's afoot, a game that involves any number of blind alleys, false leads, and endless backtracking. More often than not, the second line, the thing that follows the beginning, does so much damage to the first line that it comes near to killing what might have been a poem. It does happen sometimes that you hit upon a series of happy accidents and are able to ride some wave of energy straight through to the end of the poem, to find your way out of the labyrinth in one desperate, intoxicating, headlong rush. That's happened to me maybe twice. The most one hopes for is to end up with enough to come back to."

But weaknesses in the collection? The only one that comes to mind as a serious weakness is, in my opinion, the title of the book which, while apropos and fascinating, acts as a barrier between the potential reader and the poems.

This is probably one of the best collections of poetry I've read in the past two years. I think what he's doing is an original twist on what might have otherwise been tired post-modern tropes. But his poems (with their shocking images and fresh use of language) are anything but tired. And they are more than merely 'ism'-oriented. I find his poems relevant, as unique as poets ever can be (given the past and the future), and wholly worth the time and attention it takes to read, re-read, and re-read some more.

I think I'll leave off with another quote from Moore (about art) taken from the interview with Anne Compton (if you have a chance to read this interview, by the way, I'd highly recommend it . . . one of the best in the book):

"The thing about a stuffed animal is that the part which seems most alive is the part that doesn't belong, which isn't original to the thing itself. It's a curious inversion. The eyes are where the art is, in the gaze that can't discriminate from looking at, looking through, looking beyond you. It's a form of absolute looking. It's the look of the basilisk, of Medusa: If it sees you, or more to the point, if you really see it, you're translated, quick as a wink, from animate to inanimate. If time has eyes, I'll bet they're made of glass."

Something to think about.