Epic Rites Press

reviewed by David McLean


This huge book of 302pp represents an anthology of the best poems to date by NY poet Rob Plath, and it is the first feature anthology devoted to one writer by the new Epic Rites Press. Rob is sometimes bad-mouthed for his devotion to exploding illusions – the illusion of an after-life, the illusion of a creator and a meaning to life, the (oftentimes) illusion of happy families, the illusion that society is looking out for you, the illusion that poetry and beauty are a value that in themselves gives purpose and that aesthetics is a higher purpose above and beyond its motivational and “therapeutic” value, and, ultimately, the illusion that the active individualist hero can get things done to improve our lot, ultimately, out predicament for Plath is existential – the only certainty is finitude and that we get to rot:

a car passes
headlights aimed
in the direction
of some destination

while in other places
bodies that will no longer
move let alone maneuver
a vehicle
recline forever
(from steering wheels & toe tags)

Thus his unsuper-hero is horizontal man, not “getting things done” as in wu-wei, action through inaction, but just letting things pass us by aware of the void around us, the void inside. I think it's a delightfully nihilistic message, a sort of why bother, but it does not preclude a willingness to change things, to help others, poems should prevent suicide, should give people a strength to endure if not a reason to live, alone, like the poet, in their tiny rooms, their insignificant lives, and, as he says

if there
is too
great a
distance
between the
body
& the poem

then the
poem is
not
a poem

then it
contains
as much
soul
as

a crossword puzzle
an owner's manual
a menu in a diner
a tv guide
a phonebook
(from if the alphabet doesn't bleed)

Of course, Rob also says that he just writes to express the pain inside, the anguish, the blood, like squeezing zits, and he doesn't know what poetry is and can't, or won't, define it. so what is he doing here? Is he defining it anyway?

.. poetry is mainly the endless
banter of the flesh
(from illuminations from the bottom of the meat carousel)

What I think he is doing is stipulating what poetry seems to be for him, he is presenting a working and provisional manifesto on poetry by an industrious poet who is reacting here to the godawful factory poeticizing that constitutes much of modern academic poetry, the production of poems that resemble other poems by some fucker with all the imagination of a hen that's quite contented with its lot on the production line, dropping another identical egg/poem down its chute with a self-satisfied squawk. So may Jebus bless poets like Rob who don't mind being foxes and producing poems that take these hens by the neck.

Most underground poets who do this sort of thing are self-righteous and obviously jealous of the privileged canonical poets – Rob however expresses a real indignation, one to which I can relate myself, I myself am going to do a similar book with the same publishers, for whom I too work, and I think that they themselves have a direction that is praiseworthy, neither Rob here nor I, nest year, is going to be doing any dumbing down, but the idea is to produce work that can be comprehended by anyone who got out of seventh grade off his own bat, if s/he wants to read the works then the words shouldn't frighten her/him away.

It's a great manifesto, it seems to me

remember the jail cell & daisy chains
remember the sun like a circular saw-blade & put the next fucking word
down
next its partner
please quit pretending
write the poems that need to be written
put the right word next to its partner & so on
until they are strong enough to jump-start a dead man in his little
room
(from write the poems that need to be written)

The book is organized thematically, themes are birth, death, incarnation in a dodgy body, futility of struggles and illusions, Rob's own family history, poetry and poets, Rob's minimalist vision of poetry from the body, the beauty of the eloquently speaking blood, hatred and rage against religion, the influence of Ginsbergian Buddhism, and the necessity of writing from the twisted soul to at least try to heal it.

Like I say, a lot of people bad-mouth Rob, maybe it's hard to see that he is producing a uniquely personal vision that may be pessimistic, but is overflowing in places with a strongly empathic humanity, one which does not write love poetry, but where you can sense the charity beneath the words. This may sound fucking extreme to say in a review, Rob is in a sense becoming Christlike, to steal words about a poet who, for reasons of nomenclature, thoroughly pisses Rob off. Maybe the Christian assholes who criticize Rob for being poor-spirited and spiritually ungenerous in his poems should reflect on the fact that Rob Plath seems more concerned with living a spiritually impeccable life than they are, or ever were. In this sense his poem about his wife's and his choice of abortion and the actual pill-induced miscarriage is harrowing and very moving

sometime in January when the
bleeding ceases, when we finally make love
again i hope that it is snowing, i hope there is
a lot of white beneath our window, and after
we can run outside barefoot, ankle deep in those
tiny crystal apparitions that will melt into our warm
flesh, yes, god, i insist, there must be snow
(from let there be snow)

Or from a poem about his mother's death

it is not your departure i see
but rather god's eye.
jet and full of nothing.
(from mother)

These two taken together show the emotional range upon which Plath can draw, but generally the emotion is rage drawn from despair, perhaps the eminently suitable emotion for modern societies, with our lives being what they are, both of necessity and contingently, both because we die and do not survive and because the lives we have at the moment are not arranged very nice, and they are nevertheless coated in a cloying tissue of cotton candy lies. These poems are full of rage like jabbing index fingers trying to force open our blind eyes.

Do buy this book, spread the word to your friends, review it even. Plath is an active force in American and, generally speaking, English language poetry that will live on. Any influence this book has, either on poetry or on the personal lives and attitudes of its readers, will be for the good. Ultimately, we all need to read this book if we have ever felt alienated, and we need to read it extra much if we have not felt alienated, because we are all alienated, and this book teaches us to be aware of that, that we are “cosmic orphans”

i can't remember how long
it's been like this
but i woke up one day
& i felt like i was on another planet

i didn't connect with any humans
their faces transformed
they were like the insides
of the walls
dark, narrow & full of sharp
incoming nails
(from cosmic orphan)

Somewhere in the reading, if you are lucky, you see the way out, learn the strength to endure. Learn to be horizontal.

Rob's website