Dietrich's referential/reverential chapbook of thirteen poems pays pays plenty of homage to the gentleman scribe from Providence. Lovecraft's presence is evident throughout, from the various epigraphs drawn from his weird tales to Dietrich's general prologue "Necronomicon." The book is also divided into three sections (The Tomb, The Temple, and The Book of the Dead) containing poems with titles like "The Whisperer in Darkness," "The Shadow Out of Time," and "Dreams in the Witch-House." But the reader should not expect to encounter simplistic, derivative work, stocked with ichor and tentacles, "eldritch" this and "squamous" that. What Dietrich actually offers here is an application of Lovecraft to modern reality, the fiction of cosmic horror forming a thematic framework for more personal drama.
In the poem "Cool Air," for instance, the speaker laments how his (retired pilot) father wastes away his golden years in an armchair, sitting enthralled by televised weather reports rather than going out and experiencing the outside world firsthand. And the terrible "It" in the follow-up poem "The Unnamable" isn't "Cthulhu, Ubbo-Sathla, / some ghost from another time, another plane," but rather the senility devouring the father's short-term memories (and preventing his recall of the pulp fiction he reads daily: "Wilbur Whately, warped. / Dexter Ward, deleted. Pickman and his models all washed / out").
Dietrich's concise lines delight with their verbal resonance. The poet's skilled hands transform a crystal ball into an "oracle ovary," turn the act of compulsively sticking the Naugahyde side of an armchair with a needle into "furniture murder." There's cultural resonance here as well, as Dietrich invokes not just Lovecraft but James Bond, The Flintstones, and a slew of horror movies both classic and contemporary. Stanzas such as the following prove doubly enjoyable, for the wordplay itself as well as the chance to catch the filmic allusions:
Foxed to a closet by some badly born Shape,
all bib-alls and bad tan, the babysitter tries
a hanger. You just can't kill the Boogeyman.
Another shower. Perhaps the most
pointed. Naked desire, naked
she.... Mother. Son. Carotid cutlery.
She claws her way through cupboard to secret
sect, finds black bassinet, her child, a stranger
at its side. Within, two terrible eyes.
The collection as a whole paints a portrait of American Gothic, as the interconnecting poems delineate a family saga involving infidelity and divorce (yet continued co-habitation), morbidity and madness. Appropriately enough, the book's closing piece is entitled "Behind the Shutters," a final reminder that haunting is an indoor sport.
Fans of the horror genre in general and H.P. Lovecraft in particular will appreciate the allusive quality of Dietrich's work. But this is also a book that will appeal to any lover of erudite, finely-wrought poetry. Profound and pop-cultural at once, Love Craft is a spellbinding piece of versification.
***
To learn more about the poet and his work, check out his website at http://www.bryandietrich.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment