Americano
Emanuel Xavier
Suspect Thoughts Press, San
Francisco
73 pp. $12.95
In interview furnished
with Americano, Emanuel Xavier’s new poetry collection, the gay
Ecuadorian/Puerto Rican-American poet relates how his first collection, Pier
Queen—a volume admittedly fluffed with “‘filler’ poems”— found
an audience “somewhere between its strengths and weaknesses.” That phrase
also haunts any critical reading of Xavier’s new work.
Some of the poems in Americano
show an emotional strength and anecdotal verity worthy of a Genet or Ginsberg.
The leadoff poem, “Wars and Rumors of Wars,” bears complex and
uncompromising emotional imagery:
It is said when skin
is cut,
and then pressed together, it seals
but what about acid-burned skulls
engraved with the word ’faggot’
Another poem, “It
Rained the Day They Buried Tito Puente,” reveals hints of the aforementioned
Ginsberg in its layers of visceral atmosphere, in its ability to force the
reader into the proverbial angry streets. In these poems and others, Xavier
comes across as a poet on the verge of uncategorical profundity. His strengths
are surely waxing.
Unfortunately, his
weaknesses often fail to show significant signs of waning. Too many of the poems
in Americano betray the self-conscious voice and the cliché posturing
that are, unquestionably, occupational hazards of his Spoken Word roots. Having
sprung from the Nuyorican seedbed, Xavier can’t seem to help falling back into
the cliché-ridden and often risible patter that has risen from what Harold
Bloom, in the introduction for a recent volume of modern American poetry, termed
“the Brave New World of communal uplift.”
In “Burning Down the
House” for example, we see this passage:
so there will always
be someone applauding
at the next
ball
always catching their falls
always licking their balls
altar boys attending
the priest’s skirt
lost in a club full of
treachery, jealousy, potential saints and flirts
And this, from “The World Before Me”:
I’ve been searching
my soul tonight
lit only by this
candlelight
slowly melting away
knocking it over to
set this prison on fire
(This poem also contains
the line: “living in a church where I sleep with voodoo dolls,” on
unattributed loan from Sara McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery”)
Please. This kind of
fare might (might) fly on Russell Simmons “Def Poetry Jam” but
frankly it has as much truck with good poetry as a nicely bound presentation of
Def Leppard or Michael Jackson lyrics—that is to say: a tangential
relationship at best. Yes, they all spring from a common evolutionary ancestor,
but to to cram them into the same classification is to undermine their
individual validity and forms. There’s a reason “performance” precedes “poet”
in “performance poet;” there’s a reason “Spoken” precedes “Word”
in “Spoken Word”—and that reason is that performance and speech often
necessarily involve considerations that impair the poet’s ability to be purely
poetic. Country music lyrics are poetry at a base level too but only a simpleton
would call Garth-friggin’- Brooks or Hank Williams Sr. a great poet. This is
not dry classicist elitism. The same argument could be made about some of
Moliere’s performance works as well—though the argument wouldn't hold up as
well against most of Shakespeare’s folio. He was just too damn good at
sublimating one then the other. That, and he wrote great poetry).
Slam and performance
are beasts unto themselves, and attention to their demands (in terms of rhythm
and LCD verbiage) cannot help but divert the poet’s attention from what may be
called poetic “root.” In interview and in passages from his work, Xavier
shows he is quite aware of the existence of this dichotomy and is simultaneously
captivated and infuriated by it. The mistake refugees from the Spoken Word
movement often make in trying to complete the jump to print eminence and
permanence is in believing that there is some elitist poetry cadre out there
with a sinister plan to keep SWers from significant publication. (Quite the
opposite is true, industry-wide at this point.) What is out there is a
group of literary editors and publishers who find it hard to foster the notion
that it’s okay for English-speaking poets to have a rudimentary grasp of the
language. Xavier makes clear, both in elegant and poignant phrase, and in his
decision to move towards a more de rigueur (though no less energetic) poetic
style that he has recognized this as an important issue. He suffers cries of “sell-out”
from one side and “weak execution” from the other. But his poetic eye is
sharp (when it’s open); his ear is keen (when it’s not tilted in pursuit of
applause); and his memory is filled with pertinent memories and sapience. I have
little doubt that, if he pays a modicum of attention to “real” poeticism and
language craft (Let’s start with the whole “lay/lie” thing, hmm?), he will
overcome his weaknesses and become a poet of prominence. If he dwells too much
on clichés, rap-shallow rhyme, and the oppressed victim angle, there is
doubt.
Yes, there is much
inconsistency in Xavier’s work, but we should reiterate that the strong work
is peculiarly strong and probably worth a look (an extra plug for the poem “Risk,”
which balances common relationship jargon with riveting memories of violence
against homosexuals—gripping stuff). Though the book is nicely mounted (good
job by Suspect Thoughts Press on presentation), we might be more prone to
recommend it were its price more in keeping with its razor-thin profile. Still,
if you have some money to burn and would like a glimpse inside the fascinating
world of a gay Ecuadorian/Nuyorican former prostitute, this may be the book for
you. There is some worthy matter here.
- CAW
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