Review: Less Than Ghosts (A Review of Don’t Shoot the Messenger: Just Give Him a Good Place to Hide by John Yamrus)

By Peter Mladinic

 

The Anxiety Driven Graphics book cover stares the reader in the face, though the eyes of the bird and the eyes of man, four startled eyes, look elsewhere, at something the reader can’t see. The reader sees the bird’s claws clutch the man’s left shoulder, and knows someday the man and the bird won’t be here; only the rifle in the man’s grip will remain, somewhere. But for now both man and bird are mortal, incomplete, less “ghosts,” the last word in the poem “we,” the next-to-last poem in this collection, a poem that in a few words says a lot. Three things that make all these poems say a lot are hyperbole, deflection, and irony. The rifle barrel is pointed upward, the bird’s bill is long, the man wears a jacket and a necktie. 

Both man and bird, the messenger, look frazzled, hyper-tense, hyperbolic. And who wouldn’t be, living in a world some maniac could destroy with the push of a button. Yamrus, on the other hand, creates; and one device at work in—“so, here i am,” “the horror,” “he looked at me,” “he was another,” “this is not,” “he read,” and “the streets”—is hyperbole, exaggeration, overstatement, to achieve a certain effect in these nuanced poems. “so, here i am” talks about a poetry war between formalism and free verse. Is it a war? Yes, and no. The speaker doesn’t flinch from the truth, but words such as “winning” and “enemies” heighten the combative aspects of these two different “schools” of thought about what poetry is and what it should be. In “he looked at me” the passage “you / could feel / the sarcasm and hate / coming out of / his pores” heightens the adversarial encounter between the writer and his critic. In “the horror” horror is coupled with sadness, and in “the streets” the darkness of the night, the darkness that is there, is compounded by the darkness that isn’t. In “he was another” the diction and imagery evoke a hyperbolic setting that is funny, sad, and ultimately entertaining. The first word is “bonehead.” This writer thought that “once his book was out” readers would not merely buy and praise his book but “come / banging at his door.” He goes to “a / book signing” hardly anyone shows up for, only “his niece / and a couple of kids / who walked in to get out of the rain.” Instead of paying attention to his book, the kids “laughed at the paintings” on the gallery walls. There was wine there and cookies, and at the end “a bowl of ice / that was starting to melt.” The perfect finish! It could not have been done any better. 

Deflection is a bit like an understatement, but involves a “coming down from something higher, a literal place or a particular standpoint. “his poems,” “ya gotta love it,” “he cut,” “i don’t see,” “when it came,” “i pulled,” “he loved,” “the voices,” and “poetry is” all involve, to different extents, deflection. In “poetry is,” with its words “science, truth, and secret” in the end it’s “the dog” who most astutely appreciates poetry. Once again the perfect end to a poem that informs and entertains. Deflection is everything in “i don’t see.” The speaker is talking about “great poems,” and mentions great poets whose poems have changed people’s lives, and no more great poems are being written, but... 

 

right now

the only great

poem left to be written

 

is

the one about me

taking my car to the shop 

 

for 

a new 

set of tires.

 

This deflective ending, this “come down,” is as masterful as the poet’s use of white space and his line breaks are skillful. Enjambment, ending lines with the adjectives “great” and “new” heightens, reinforces the deflection, so that the end, considering all that precedes it, is outrageously funny and very rewarding.

As much as any writer today, John Yamrus has “a corner on irony.” His irony is alive and well in such poems as “take a walk around,” “the place smelled like the blues,” “she,” “he was broke,” “she died of,” and “we.” How are people “less than ghosts”? One answer is people are works in progress, unfinished, incomplete, whereas ghosts are finished, complete, non-corporeal entities, like angels. But Yamrus leaves it open-ended, i.e., does his job. Irony involves opposites. The opposite at work in “take a walk around,” the book’s first poem, is the horizontal thrust of the road juxtaposed with the vertical trust of the tree, and the vertical gets emphasis with the idea that climbing the tree was a wonderful thing. The road, while useful, lacks that wonder. And the tree, after a flood, was bulldozed away, so it was, while the road is, another opposite. The opposite at work in “she died of” invokes control and lack of control. Here’s this boy who, after his mother died (from appendicitis, which was beyond her control, is passed from relative to relative, left with scant means and few-to-no choices. Then, grown up, he takes complete control, by criminal means, and ultimately disappears. Also, there’s irony involving time in “she.” She was fleeting, almost ethereal, no past, no future, just present, and the speaker wanted her presence to be everlasting. 

Enough said. With these three devices, and others such as diction and imagery, Yamrus is masterful, and very good at saying a lot with the fewest words. As said earlier, his poems are nuanced; it’s not only what he says but how he says it, and more. What’s most important is his ways of inviting readers in, his inclusivity. The world is a hard place, and he knows it’s hard. There’s a toughness laced with compassion, a thread of dark humor, a warmth and tenderness, an awareness of suffering and evil, and a fortitude in these poems in Don’t Shoot the Messenger that says nothing beats being alive.   

It’s also a handsomely made book. Good job with the cover and layout, Anxiety Press!

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.