Rabbit Punch!
Greg
Santos. DC Books, $17.95 paperback (60p)
ISBN: 978-1-927599-22-8
Help
is on the way for the Anglophone reader in a global poetry world. Rabbit
Punch!, the second collection by Greg Santos, offers an admirable finesse
to the reader who craves good verse.
In an oversaturated poetry “market”
whose only reward, arguably, is bragging rights, and in an age of enforced
specialization, in which most people who write poems are denied much attention,
it might be worth a moment to acknowledge the fact that despite the pretensions
to spiritual authority which often prevail among poets, not all of them escape
the temptation to employ techniques of self-promotion that – depending on who
you ask, of course – collectively go by the derisive term “careerism.” The question whether this is a matter of
degree or kind is probably best settled on a case-by-case basis: but either way,
it’s still true (for example) that frequently in debut poetry collections the
names of the authors’ grad school professors appear everywhere in the book –
below blurbs on the back cover, in “personal” acknowledgements on the flyleaf,
on dedication pages, on copyright pages as journal or press editors, and so on
– everywhere, in short, but in a poem, where presumably a poet simply means it.
And it isn’t that one doesn’t understand
why – but also, it kind of is…. By
contrast, Greg Santos’ candor in Rabbit
Punch! is refreshing. Alongside
touching dedications to his family (“To my wife, Maryn, and my children,
Rosemary and Arthur, you are my muses. I
love you”), we read this:
Rabbit
Punch! is dedicated in memory to Paul Violi, whose humor and vibrant spirit
helped make my time at Columbia and The New School a life-changing
experience. Paul’s laughter and our
conversations are sorely missed.
Not
only that, but the dedication page of the book reads: “In memory of Paul Violi.”
And what’s more, in case there was any doubt, we have this lovely poem:
We’re all Just Passing Strange
for Paul Violi
New York is a
little to the left of the centre of the universe.
Everything is
happening and I’m so there. Where?
It isn’t
important to know how but to just do things.
They all make me
want to write!
Admittedly, I
don’t like it when it’s just poetry thick.
It needs to be
varied.
Suffering from
the morning of the poem.
He felt like God
writing out the bible.
He connected
with their mind set.
He was always
“around.”
He really lived
like a poet.
He was pretty
much a ghost.
As
readers, we appreciate such plainness (which is a complexity, as anyone knows
who’s ever tried it), because it leaves no doubt as to the poet’s commitment: plainness
trumps all merely erudite senses of the supposedly high-minded engagé author. And it’s impossible to miss the crucial
difference between the student and teacher, signaled in this poem only by
orthography, in the first line, where the Canadian spelling “centre” is used,
in a poem dedicated to a man from Brooklyn.
Santos’ poems aren’t just plain, they’re
groovy too. In a few pieces in Rabbit Punch! the poet misses the mark,
by attempting a hi-lo sort of mélange that comes off as awkwardly
programmatic. But look what he can do
when he’s on:
Zombies
Zombies like
listening to The Cranberries
Particularly
their hit song, “Zombie.”
Zombies like the
song because they can relate to it.
They nod their
heads, mouths agape.
“Ughhhhhhhhhh,”
they grunt affirmatively.
Zombies,
however, do not like Rob Zombie.
He is not an
authentic zombie.
He is a live
human who has appropriated the zombie name.
There is no
greater zombie taboo.
Look out, Rob
Zombie! Behind you!
Just kidding.
Or am I?
This
easy, sophisticated (not to mention hilarious) way with pop is so unusual, in
any present writing at all, that it would be tough to suggest a context where
Santos’s work might conveniently “fit.”
For another example, here is his interpretation of that phony type, the
Great Man:
Napoelon’s Hat
Pacing my
hallways
These days I
find myself
Dressed as
Napoleon
I brush my teeth
Dust off my
bicorn
Salute the day
I hum my
imperial tune
In the steamy
shower
My voice a
marching band
The rain outside
Is my adoring
throng
O how I miss you
My glorious
France of yore
A
playfulness that makes light of the ponderous “historical figure” is delightful
here, in its evasion of heavy-handedness, a valuable lesson indeed. Over and over, it’s the enjoyment of it all
that wins through in Greg Santos’ poetry.
Consider a domestic scene in the USA:
Presidential Address
The president
was on TV
and told us all
to keep calm.
Nothing’s going
on.
See, my wife
said,
I like the
president.
He’s not
freaking out
like the rest of
us.
I turned to my
wife.
That man is not
the president,
I said,
knowingly.
No
sitcom, no standup has the drop on this poetry.
How often can you say that?
Rabbit
Punch!
has a certain understated poignancy as well – one that can’t be reduced to mere
topicality, because the poet always evokes a theme out of his subject matter Consider these lines:
Mean Boys
Mean boys,
We do not wish
you
infamy in death.
May you lie
sleepless
in your holes.
May the echoes
of your angry
screams
for attention
from the bottom
of wells
go unheard
for the rest of
our lives.
The
poet glosses:
“Mean Boys” was
originally written as a response to the Virginia Tech Massacre. But then the shootings in Norway
happened. And then the Boston Marathon
bombing. Countless other atrocities are
committed by lost young men every day.
It was rewritten as a poem of defiance towards the “mean boys” of the world.
Of
course, the reader recognizes that the note is disingenuous insofar as the poem
is not really about or to the perpetrators of such atrocities: but rather, it’s
about the condition of modern societies globally that cannot or will not
address the crisis in manners and behavior of its youth, and that in fact the
ones responsible are the rest of us. Meanwhile,
other poems invoke a dailiness that isn’t newsworthy, but that’s the more
affecting for that:
Outside My Window
The elm trees
are making a break for it.
The sun has
nowhere to go but down.
A glacier
shudders.
Children whisper
to their water buffalo.
Ripples on a
dark lake are all that’s left of a struggle.
The dog twitches
and growls in its sleep.
A spider senses
a tug on its web.
The boarded up
corner store has a plank missing.
She wonders
briefly if she would still recognize him now.
This
piece shows a rare ability to locate detail around a central sensibility that
fixes it and thereby lends it significance.
Finally, there is a songlike current in Rabbit Punch! that goes right to the heart with its sheer beauty:
Lullaby
A little way
ahead
winter is come
Do you remember
it ever being so
cold?
Ash trees burn
above white
paths
The sky goes on
with cool
indifference
Wheels of the
train
fall silent
We have arrived
at the junction
All creatures
don their coats
A little way
ahead
winter is come
Here,
syntax slows the spoken rhythm in the mind, with a craftsmanlike handling of
enjambment (“Do you remember / it ever being so cold?”), and brings on a state
in which the reader may once again savor poetry for the kinds of statement it
alone can make.
One gets the impression while reading
this collection that its author has absorbed a way with English which is often
generally associated with Manhattan – and yet upon reflection afterwards, it
seems more likely that what one just read is now the English of bilingual
Montreal instead, and by extension of a distinctive and powerful talent in
poetry, bringing such a language forth to everyone, everywhere. Greg Santos’ Rabbit Punch! delivers the Poem to contemporaneity at large. (April
2014)
Purchase
Rabbit Punch! HERE.
Reviewer
bio: Erik Noonan is the author of the
poetry collections Stances (Bird & Beckett, 2012) and Haiku
d’Etat (Omerta, 2013). He lives in San Francisco with his wife
Mireille.
