Review of Beer Songs for the Lonely by François Pointeau

Beer Songs for the Lonely
François Pointeau

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.

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.