Review of "Pigeon Theatre"
Poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Published by JTI Press, Kingston, Ontario
Canada, 2006
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270 pages, paperback
Front cover: Gray background; front cover w/ two pigeons, one white, one black, beak-to-beak
Back cover: Black & white photo of the author – bohemian, long hair, round-rimmed sunglasses; quizzical expression, like someone just called his name, or asked him a question – on the verge of response, words are forming in his mind, he is about to speak.
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After a pew pages in, the pigeon reference is clear; the random strutting and pecking of numerous flock members appears to have no pattern or purpose, but lock on to one pigeon or another and a story unfolds.
This book is a diverse collection of poems, short stories, essays and plays. The opening piece, ?After Godot?, is a vignette of characters in a bar, drunken dialogues and diatribes surround our passage, apparently through a back door, ‘til we stumble, head spinning, out the front and onto a very busy street.
The B&W photo of the author on the back cover now offers positive ID of the various characters who speak from poem to story to essay to play. Ryan Quinn Flanagan is the mad bus driver, taxi driver, streetwalker, drug dealer, indignant business-man, indifferent shop clerk, starry-eyed cynic; disenfranchised from all that surrounds our civilized existence, yet speaking with a voice we might call sensible.
Sometime in, he drops his character masks to tell us something about himself; “Where I come from, there are no windows . . . only points of entry.” Yes, Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a blind-born raconteur, newly sighted, trying to describe the tumultuous world he sees around him. Groping for Life’s brass ring, he got two handfuls of the Emperor’s bare ass and, in his ignorance, cried aloud, “Naked!”
Surreal, tender, snide, vulnerable – all these words at one time; Pigeon Theatre is Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s flagrant self-forum where he has discovered, discarded, exposed and defined the important questions:
A Farewell to Clown 8213 brings the clinical discovery of how media manipulate mob mentality. A Taste of Home/Questioning the Machine discards the validity of weighty, idealistic decisions to destroy other cultures to ensure the safety of our own. The Beautiful Battle Cry exposes the empty innocuousness of empowerment. Ethos of a Blissful Fool defines luck.
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These are a few examples of how Ryan Quinn Flanagan accomplishes his task again and again, through poem, after play, after essay. Pigeon Theatre is for hungry pigeons. Ryan Quinn is an old man on a park bench, scattering breadcrumbs to satisfy his passion to observe pigeon dynamics. He describes the ceaseless picking and pecking that ensues until all the morsels are consumed. He is a pigeon, too; sometimes white, sometimes black; always surrounded by gray.
MH Clay
Mad Swirl Poetry Editor
April, 2010 |
