He Listens for Hungry Poems...
Alison Schaumburg -- August 5, 2007
... and we are at a feast of generous proportions. Paul Lobo Portuges' astounding The Body Electric Journal fulfills Whitman's prophesy that, "the strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung." (Alison reviews Paul Lobo Portuges' latest.)
The poem-journal's form is a musical architecture of a sort that I would love to see each poem unfold off the page. Portuges alternates deliciously rich paragraphs with bite-sized stanzas embracing technical freedom. Shaped like clouds lining up in an interesting sky, this movement from paragraph to stanza and back again might be called by Whitman "a pulse of thought."
I read the first paragraph and know I'm in for something special as I am transported to some intoxicating lake shore. I enjoy the ride, almost punctuation-less as I enter a flying-pounding-drifting mind. This absence of punctuation's control tells me when to breathe/sigh/gasp or, rather, that I may never really catch truly my breath until the final page. We enjoy a fearless banquet of words where it's ok to eat with our fingers and wipe our mouth on our sleeve.
This poem-journal is all about traveling, wandering, raw, not pedantic, but rich; from "An Angry Kiss" "Years wondering/about where is God/loving better women/talking with now and then friends/playing with the real of children/breathing forgotten words". Like Whitman's "Going Somewhere" "the world, the race, the soul - in space and time the universes,/ All bound and befitting each - all surely going somewhere." Portuges' "The Celebrated Thigh" succinctly expresses this: Drifting clouds/change their story/minute by minute.
Enter Portuges' world of tactile contrasts as you, "wander down rows of baby's breath avoid-/ing husks of dead caterpillars." Often in this work the garden represents sorrow and the futility of life as the author is found, "farming my darkness." Yet, like a seven course meal, we are restored and nourished by Portuges' hunger for Zen's salvation. In "Sorrowful Months of Unusual Rain" "The science of/mystical seeds/restores your left brain/faith in the everyday/miracles like noisy/children the music/of old trees."
This feast is rich with run-on images as, "pale deer drink the holy water of slow motion birds crossing the talking waters." Or, "A little girl plays with her reflection in the asphalt rain/blowing bougainvillea cling to her bright raincoat." Like seasoning with good spices, there is an enthusiasm for detail and a multi-layering of interpretation, "A sidewalk vendor/plays make-believe/with his crippled boy/in front of the cinema."
The book's dedication is for the love of my life. In "The Wind Falling Into Us" Portuges states, "Without you how/could I bear/the wild grasses/on the unkempt graves." Portuges' work makes us hungry for love and nourished by hope. We are reminded of Ginsberg who "blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabathani saxophone cry." In the Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass Whitman states, "The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet." In principle, Portuges and Whitman are poets, and lovers, of the soul, and very much poets, and lovers, of the body. Whitman says, "the thought and fact of sexuality, as an element in character, personality, the emotions, and a theme in literature. I am not going to argue the question by itself; it does not stand by itself. The vitality of it is altogether its relations, bearings, significance -- like the clef of a symphony... the human body and soul must remain as an entirety." Portuges, like Theodore Roethke ("I measure time by how a body sways") and Whitman, truly does "sing the body electric."
The Body Electric Journal contains such poem titles as "A Media of Loins," "The Celebrated Thigh," and "The Crossed Legs of Your Holy Kiss." The book's first poem, "Bones of the Sleeping Wind" tantalizes us with, "midnight opened thighs/wine talking romance/Hiroshima song mystical hip/kisses plus a garden/of porn filled brain/by dawn exhausted/back to forgotten earth/laughter beautiful/tears beautiful." We breathe in the present tense sensual in "The Crossed Legs of Your Holy Kiss" "Joined at the groin/deep breathing/our bodied origins/signing spiritual yeses." Dignity and sweat, love and lust, they're all good and portrayed as a natural, healthy part of existence in these poems. The entire poem "The Turquoise Mockingbird of Light" is one of the most profound descriptions of childbirth/parenthood ever penned. The fortunate reader is witness to: "Making love/to make babies/I kiss your eyes/as if God/were inside you," "Evolutionary fear in her here now eyes like/a frightened deer her quick breath veils wild/nights aflame with the wild gleam of our/wish that opened her calligraphy of love," "Her knees bent her swelling breasts wind/leaves like the lion-in-man pose. Crying out/for a child! Push push grunting breathe breathe/air air earth earth fire fire scream scream Mist."
What a body of work! Milton wrote, "to justify the ways of God to man." Paul Lobo Portuges justifies the ways of God to man and man to God. He writes, "Perfect stars/give me chills/I put down/my poesy pen/who the hell/do I think I am." You, Paul Lobo Portuges, are one hell of a poet. You leave us hungry for more.