Book Review: Aaron Belz: The Bird Hoverer

Some books are about putting things in blenders. Some books are blenders. Some poets like to write blender-books. Aaron Belz is such a poet. What does Aaron Belz put in his blender-book, The Bird Hoverer? There’s lots of loneliness, dollops of alienation and isolation, along with the sense that the aforementioned hang-ups are (more or less) a joke. You can guffaw at jokes, and you should: no one that laughs is truly alone. Don’t let the sun catch you crying, as Gerry and the Pacemakers would say. So laughs and loneliness are blended in; what else? There’s nature, another droll thing; birds, apes (definitely post-Edson), parks, zoos, Dads, moons. Belz’s moon is paler than Shelley’s, more likely to wander companionless. This ain’t no day lady died, either, folks; this is the Midwest. This is O’Hara in the corn, and guess what? Lana Turner has collapsed (again)— impaled herself, actually, on an ear of corn. Movie stars, nature, loneliness, alienation—what more could anyone want from a book of verse (wine, women, and snuff notwithstanding)? Enough; let’s get down to business.

Where is the protagonist of this drama? Where is the “I” here? “I” is right in the middle of nowhere; as when in the tone-setting opening poem, The Preserve, we see him settling into oblivion: “Like a dish or a shirt now I lay me down/ on the bench as a fawn paws surreally past,/ and I cuddle my nylon jacket to me in the chill”. This constitutive subject knows no self-regard, has been beaten to a catatonic pulp; thus, only a dish or shirt (inanimate signifiers) will suffice for simile. Dishes and shirts are useful, but this is a uselessness image par excellance; “I” cuddles not a lover but a nylon jacket, is chilled, and comes to rest not on a bed but a bench. Yet surreal fawns make the scene “other”; this is not a landscape but a dreamscape. This is also resolutely American, a pastoral poetry indigenous to us poor shleps dragging ourselves into the new century. Welcome to a land as comfortable as a doze on a bench. Welcome to a nylon-coated universe. What kind of preserve shelters derelicts? What kind of derelict hangs out in a preserve? The American kind does. Is the America we lean on any better than a park bench? Can an artist in this milieu be anything but derelict? Big questions, no answers in the poem—that’s as it should be.

When the loneliness of the preserve gets to be too much, we go to the movies. Who knows—maybe someday we’ll wind up sleeping with a real movie star; we might even find ourselves in bed with Meryl Streep. Wouldn’t you know, someone has already beaten us to it. Our derelict poet now finds himself perusing a love-object “timeless/ Like a Dracula statue in the rain”. Who knew a celebrity could be so grotesque? Who knew that intimacy could be reduced to vampirism? Apparently, noble though we are, we don’t love Meryl for her soul. Or, we’ve always secretly wanted to bed Bela Lugosi. The depths of the American psyche are not to be fathomed; there seem to be more subterranean nooks and crannies than in a (burnt!) English muffin. Transcendence is linked to a stone replica of a blood sucking fiend, analogue to Meryl Streep—she of Silkwood fame, she of earnest emotion and honest chagrin. Either she really wants to bite our necks, or a new snuff flick is about to be filmed wherein Streep dons a hockey mask and a bad attitude. Oh, Meryl. We can’t get higher (or lower) than this, this embrace of what’s easiest, of what is right before our image-combed eyes. Movies are reality, or as close to reality as we can get in 2007 America.

There's lots here that I won’t get to: animals, malls, animals in malls, that sort of thing, and more. Yet, I think that these are the predominant, angst-inflected notes in Bird Hoverer, starkly, hilariously struck: dereliction, dreams, characters, movies. This is not for the faint of heart, or the hard-hearted either; this is for the middle-minded, those always ready for anguished laughter. This is for people who still dare to think about what America means, imploded though it might be. Above all, this is a necessary book because, unlike typical nothing-about-nothing post-avant fare, this book has a beat and you can dance to it. Frank Zappa’s right in there with Frank O’Hara; Eddie Vedder with Russell Edson, etc. Simply: its got heart. I think heart is good. I don’t mean to reject rejection of closure; but a good poem sometimes shuts because its heart is open. In other words, it makes sense. We feel it. Why give that up?

Here's where you can read Aaron's book online: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ab.htm