New
Belleview Press
978-0978989224
$13.99
Beer Songs for the Lonely, a poetry collection from Austin-ite François Pointeau (Denizens of Austin will know him from Whip In, others from his radio program, Writing on the Air.), gets my vote
for best title ever. A reflective
collection about the necessity of adaptation with a trademark twist in the last
stanza, Beer Songs’ subjects refuse
to go gentle into that good night.
Perhaps my favorite poem in this collection is in the first
section, Not Drowning, VI:
Something
strange and wonderful
is happening to me.
They will be
jealous.
They will not understand
-
Please
have the decency to die
at the correct time.
It will be a
communal
judgment of
the community monster
to be
disposed of
as long as
it’s agreed upon as being
the right thing to do for the greater good.
The public
square.
The hanging.
The democracy.
Shouldn’t
one have the decency to drown,
to disappear inconspicuously?
Drown in
whatever fashion you’d like,
however please
drown
whenever you are meant to drown.
As you might expect from the title, there are not a few
drunks in this collection, some just trying to make it through the night, some
seeking oblivion. There is a sad humor in “Fragmented dialogue,” a conversation
taking place in a bar on a rainy day.
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François Pointeau |
Pointeau transforms the prosaic into a sensory buffet in “The
market”:
The market
is the full
circle of life chaotic
from birth to death.
An étalage
of produce and meats which
rises and
falls, alive
with hands that dip from all sides,
Indeterminable
bodies,
fresh and
dried and laid about to see,
to feel
and taste and purchase..
…
It becomes
comic almost:
wholesale
and half-priced and belly-up
the goddess.
…
It is an
orgy of old women closing their eyes
as they feel an orange or a camembert.
Beer Songs for the
Lonely is Pointeau’s debut collection and, in the way of debut collections, it is uneven. However there is much to appreciate in this slim volume. The poet is equally adept with The Big Stuff and the mundane and his is a fresh, unexpected voice. I want to know when the next collection is due to be released.
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