Book review - Patrick Friesen: Earth's cruel gravities
New book of poetry delivers ambiguity, poems
WILLIAM O’DONNELL VOLUNTEER STAFF
Ambiguity can spell alienation for many readers of modern poetry. It is up to the poet to compose his or her work such that said readers can perhaps find at least a whisper of meaning or understanding within, or such is my general understanding of poetic function and the relationship between author and reader.
Patrick Friesen, in his new collection Earth’s Cruel Gravities, has succeeded in composing poetry that skillfully treads the line between uncertainty and clarity; his words are simultaneously ambiguous and deeply resonant, and ensure that the reader does not stray too far from his or her goal. He chooses his words carefully and places them adroitly.
Friesen is perhaps at his most skilful when dealing with the ambiguous. To interject with an analogy: his poetry can be like a slick blade, at its sharpest when at its thinnest. In his short poems (or his long ones, for that matter), he demonstrates a cunning use of single lines and words, managing to sift out single moments on which the reader can reflect to make the poem whole. A fine example of this is contained in his “a boy watching his young mother”:
“how she leans on the table with one hand
and raises her leg to slide a shoe on her stockinged foot
how she walks by the mirror without looking”
The way in which that final line delivers volumes after so little setup and in such a miniature story is typical of how Friesen operates. Such a short length of poem is rare for Friesen, but these are his most admirable works and are probably as complete and profound as any of his longer ones, perhaps more so. It is within his longer compositions that the reader (and perhaps even the author) can lose his or her connection with the deeper meaning of the piece. In his short work, said connection has an immediacy that still manages to linger on after the poem is finished.
The stories Friesen tells in his longer pieces are vivid in depicting his observations and memories, the latter of which manage to avoid the romanticism of similarly nostalgic undertakings. Leave it to a clever poet to sift through his own detailed reflections of childhood and wean out the romanticism. Granted, this is not a pervasive quality in his work, just something that occurred to me now and again — when he described “J & A Lunch” or a pick-up baseball match.
As you may have noticed from the example above, Friesen’s poetry contains very little in the way of capital letters or punctuation, although the narrator’s “I” retains its standard capitalized form. This lack of inhibiting formal structure allows the reader to escape into Friesen’s stream of consciousness, and while such eschewal of formal constraints is not by any means exclusive to his work, his unique manner and mastery of the style manages to shine through.
Friesen separates his poems into four sections for the book. The first section, “Tourist Hotel,” features the poet progressing from reflections of youth to darker lamentations similar to that of a nighthawk in a down-and-out blues tune. Think along the lines of an early ’70s Tom Waits lyric but slightly more tortured and unsure.
Friesen has a wavering faith that is a constant throughout Earth’s Cruel Gravities. It is quite obvious that religion was significant in his youth, and despite his occasional bouts of defiance, his adult musings still connect heavily to his own issues of faith and conviction that are forever a part of his life.
As I suggested in the beginning, a fine poet can inspire thought and reflection; so goes my experience with the latest published works of Patrick Friesen. Though he’s more of a poet’s poet than one to breach the common masses, his work stands as something worthwhile and its author as someone clearly talented.
