Review of "Expectations"
Poetry by Gary Beck
Published by Rogue Scholars Press
New York, 2009
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80 pages w/ appendix, paperback
Front cover: Glossy tan, looks like vellum with many words in type and script, excerpts from various sources; newspapers, history books, historical documents.
Back cover: More of same with inset photo of the author and one poem from the book, Idolatry; an indictment on our Western, consumptive ways. My expectations are set.
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Expectations! We start off with great ones, don’t we? The American experience typically inaugurates our young with a high school diploma, an inspiring speech and a send off. “Go out and do great things! We have high expectations for you all.”
Then comes life and reality tweaks our expectations, sometimes turns them on end or deflates them entirely. What is this phenomenon? How does this happen?
In Expectations, Gary Beck chronicles his own journey through life; shares the coming of age of his expectations. The very first poem, Abandoned, begins with the chronicler abandoned on a deserted road, with only his wits to guide him – he is Everyman, speaking for us all.
His expectations have changed through the disillusionments of his road, which have morphed into numerous indictments of our American sensibilities; I Sing My Land, Idolatry, Extravagance, Profit, Remembrance – each poem is a chapter; a header to this literary textbook on American Social Decay.
Gary Beck takes us through many chapters of his life experience. His imagery and ideas are stark, sharp and impossible to misconstrue; this life holds nothing but false realities, market-derived comforts, no substance. A verse from Remembrance is a fine example:
So suck contentment like a sponge
Hesitate before the final plunge
Hide behind our drab diversions
And pray, pray the universe is stable
Ouch! Many of us struggle with that lurking doubt about the genuineness of the American dream. Some of us are old enough to remember the indoctrination that the world is our oyster, but few would speak up to say, “Must not have been harvested in an r month.” Gary Beck is not afraid to say it out loud and in crisp language. He strips illusion from everything. Here are a few examples of his adeptness:
In Renaissance, he presents tenets of faith that mouth empty promises, impossible to fulfill. Then shows how reason, unconstrained by faith, offers some hope of self-determination, but leads to the same emptiness.
So, where is the hope, the humanity? He sees it in the simplest things; uncovering acts of charity in a proffered can of beer in Charity; the crossing of a girl’s legs in Underground Regrets; the foibles of adolescent education, contrary to curriculum, in Does Noble Caesar Cackle?; the joyous experiments in sexuality in I Still Remember and Discovery.
But, he has also seen the horrors of war; exposed it for the moneymaking monster that it is. He describes the absurdity of viewing war as a sporting event in Recon in Viet Nam, the senseless, sadly unnoticed deaths of his buddies in Grunt, the atrocity of war for oil in Gulf War, the paradigm of war to feed the power mongers and its reciprocal infectious taint of young warriors in Age of Madness.
The crowning work for this reviewer is Fragments of Conception. It is a work of fifteen fragments in which Mr. Beck recaps our history; starting with the first idea, the first word spoken, without fanfare, to bring our weak protestations out of random particles. He presents all aspects of our bleak human existence with such authority, almost prophetic; except he rejects prophecy. All our efforts to create this great life, to control any deviations from the perfect, bring us to these words:
We are beyond the protection of declarations,
fear erases our visions of glory,
our hopes are dairy hopes, automatically nourished,
the intervention of power is a daily visitation,
the silence that breathes in the evenings
is interrupted by screams and lamentations.
He continues to present our crimes, our voracious consumption of everything and each other, then concludes with a note of encouragement, suggests our hope for survival lies in the stars. We have messed it up pretty badly down here. He admonishes us to learn from all our faults and failings and then teeters us on the brink of decision. It’s up to us from here.
Expectations is about expectations dashed; indignant accusations against this American Dream that set such unrealistic expectations in us all. Yes, these are mostly sober words, brilliantly written in Gary Beck’s gripping verse, clearly stating what, for many of us, is only an unsaid dissatisfaction; a nagging thought. It is a heavy read – you cannot turn these pages lightly. But, you should, you know – we all need this exercise.
MH Clay
Mad Swirl Poetry Editor
July, 2010 |
