Review: David Biespiel's "The Book of Men and Women"

This review is provided courtesy of contributor Angela Allen.  Read more of Ms. Allen’s work on her beautiful website.

You’ll have to dig deeply among David Biespiel’s new poems – dictionary, Bible and encyclopedia on hand – to find reason to be hopeful about men and women.

Not that art has to be redemptive, but I like it that way, at least some of the time. Might a few poems out of the 44 in “The Book of Men and Women” (University of Washington Press, 2009, $19.95) be something other than downers?

To be fair, several in the last section of this 80-page volume lift up my heart. Among them: “The Hummingbird” (“I could have touched you as I touch a petal”) and “The Theory of Hats” (“She will come to sit on the porch like a dark sparrow/And let the sun creep slowly onto her hair/And grow old and wonder about the balance of things./And he beside her, sitting, too, distracted in the sun for hours,/ But all the same, both of them, at last, so much warmer”).

Biespiel’s varied and complex collection is the newest addition to the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series. In his mid-40s, he’s a verse giant in Portland. He founded the Attic Writers’ Workshop and is stepping down this year as the editor of Poetry Northwest. He edits and writes the Oregonian’s poetry column, blogs about politics, and teaches. As well, he is a regularly published writer. Many of these poems have appeared in such prestigious publications as The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry and Slate.

So, of course he knows what he’s doing, but will you?

Biespiel is classically educated and never lets us forget it. His historical and Biblical references, Hebrew language facility, and stratospheric vocabulary at times present a thicket of words rather than a slice of truth. For me, his pyrotechnical language often buries the emotion, the epiphany, the sheer joy of getting it. Ah, to let the sliver of insight slip under our skins.

His language – the way he shuffles words into shocking combinations and juxtapositions — is highly musical and dense with sonic beauty, but the emotional connections are hard to identify.

His fourth book after “Shattering Air” (1996), “Pilgrims & Beggars” (2002) and “Wild Civility” (2003), “The Book of Men and Women” features a deep crimson cover with a couple smooching in a café or diner corner (could that be the author himself?). Don’t let that cover fool you. The poems are not romantic, sexy, lustful, affectionate or warm. Biespiel is cynical and rigorously intellectual in his truth-seeking and sooth-saying. His tenderness is as stingy as his linguistic energy is generous.

The book is divided into four sections, with roughly ten to 12 poems in each. The collection matures as you read on. The first section contains such self-involved pieces as “Though Your Sins Be Scarlet,” “Poet at Forty” and “Embouchure.” In these, Biespiel is as relentlessly unforgiving of his own imperfections and disconnection as he is with those of the rest of deeply flawed, “wan” (one of his favorite words to describe man) fellow humans.

From “Embouchure”: “Here’s a peek-a-boo at my feather-light upkeep:/ I’m pickled as a lost keepsake – and dear, I say to myself dear,/ You’re a sub-man, a busy mass.”

Or in the sly “Citizen Dave”: “He’s no mahatma – His theme is mayhem.”

If you love an embarrassment of rich, tonal words, Biespiel is your guy. If you prefer staggeringly artful verbal arrangements to make sense or to touch your heart, maybe he’s not the man.

The final part of the book rewards the hard work of navigating the previous three parts. With the last poems, less narcissistic than the first, we glimpse tenderness and connection. Just maybe there is a place for men and women on Earth, even together.

From “The Theory of Hats”:

“Then to be surprised by joy: Like the last rain of summer,

The big, spiraling, wounded animal of rain

With no place to turn, drumming the brown grass.

Rain falling without meaning but perfectly faithful,

Into the petals of wind and unopened roots –

Such tenderness looked to, like love, but unquestioned.”

Biespiel talks about poetry’s capacity to deliver a peak experience, to slake our thirst for epiphany, to give us an “aesthetic arrest.” His musical language and inventive, jolting juxtapositions can reward the effort to find meaning, but be prepared to carefully and painstakingly deconstruct these poems numerous times to get a grip on their sense.

Another reason to read the book? Biespiel likes birds! Thrush, sparrows, swifts, robins, crows, cedar waxwings – common, citified species – soar through his uncommon language, and for some of us, the presence of birds is uplifting enough.

Angela Allen, a Portlander, worked as the Eastern Oregon Writer in Residence this spring. She is a teacher, photographer, poet and journalist.