Reviews

Hills Alive- A collection of sound poems
Chapbook & Sound Recording
By R. Joyce Heon
2008 Persnickity Press
Lunenburg, MA
joyhe@verizon.net

A few of R. Joyce Heon's passages from her chapbook, Hills Alive- A collection of sound poems, remind me of Lewis Carroll’s, 'Jabberwocky': We must “Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun/ The frumious Bandersnatch!”/…. But what would other critics make of her disclaimer, “…if it came to a choice between clarity and sound, the poet chose sound. Indeed there are some poems which have little conventional meaning, exist only for the sounds they make…”

Lawrence, and Perrine, in Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, claim, “In first-rate poetry the sound exists, not for its own sake, not for mere decoration, but as a medium of meaning. Its function is to support the leading player, not steal the scene.” This could mean trouble, but only depending upon who you ask.

Carroll’s 'Humpty Dumpty' said a word means whatever he wants it to mean, so maybe we shouldn’t demean Joyce’ voice when her sounds mean whatever we want them to mean. And she doesn’t have the problem Humpty Dumpty had after he went splat, and all the kings men couldn’t put him together again. First of all Joyce didn’t need any men to fix things when she was published in Letters to the world: Poems from the Wom.po Listserve – “wom po” not standing for wampum, but world-class “Women Poets” supporting my find that there is nothing broken, and nothing lacking, in Hills Alive.

In her poem, 'torquiesced', she pulls no punches in her first line, “sometimes meaning doesn’t.” Yet how can one fail to respond, not to nonsense, but to the following emotive force of her poem: “…queen anne’s lice closed against the night rain/ or velvet that died drying/... [when] sometimes meaning has a back door/… the flame-blackened glass a prism for the single leg of terran-tula/ dancing into a spider-eyed marble of beauty/… [ending with] we noshed on tempura crow wings until my mouth/ scalloped around his brain waves.”

'torquiesced' is reminiscent of Gerald Manley Hopkins', 'Pied Beauty.' Beauty is many things for Hopkins: “Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)/ With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle dim.” which connects with Heon’s poem, 'Voice Mirror'. She does not use opposites like Hopkins, but her mirror extends beyond her poem with “chatter scatter/… articulate silhouette/[and] … jabber blather….” We may also contemplate where Hopkins’ beauty goes, even when expressed as the idea: “He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:/ Praise him.”

Where does it go, and what does beauty mean? Dare to define it: a harlequin; a harem; harken to the Lord; the sword of a sound Heon’s poem, 'Ultrasound of Forbidden Fruit' that is not without a little synathesia in its first line, “Beige wind trickles through flypaper.” Later she has “a scythe of thought making strapless/ as fingertips whimper/ pass me a snifter of lobotomy/ /…lizards lick marrow from the stomach bone/…unwashed tincture of extinct/… ripples drain the sinking kiss.” But before the kiss sinks into (may we presume) a stink (or her “mink”), we are ready to kiss beauty such as found in her poem, 'Bermuda-Rigged Chantey' with lines of “orchidia/ ferns etch sky/ spinnakers/ luffing luffing the heel/ hard alee/… [where] no island a man or beast…..”

What makes Hills Alive thrive are her copious “Notes” at the end where we learn about many poetic forms she playfully employed. For example, we learn about “sennin,” the first line in Bermuda-Rigged Chantey: “31. Sennin—the enlightened Japanese madman who wanders the world like a blown leaf, laughing.” Next, Heon cites the ekphrastic source, or the painting she based “sennin” on.

Another of her poems is acrostic, and others are “found poems,” even from web spam. But what matters is her poems are so well-crafted they appear effortless, and her love of them is infectious. A perfect example is 'Come As You Are – Leave Different,' which was the case for me; starting out with a new collection to read, reviewing it, and yet, I did not simply keep “waiting for when all the good stuff happens/ when we should be tinkering with convention/ .., [but I tried to accept her advice] forget the post office and create/ your own dream system/… make twilight an official holiday/ to see your kids count fireflies;/ [and after contemplating all that, her poem ends with]… unpack only once because/ wherever you go, you’re always at home.” This describes her collection well: Don’t pack it on shelf, but leave it always open.

Hills Alive: A collection of sound poems by R. Joyce Heon may be purchased by writing to Joyce Heon, 280 Sunny Hill Rd., Lunenburg, MA 01462, or by emailing her at joyhe@verizon.net. Her chapbook also includes a CD; listening while reading is highly recommended. She may also have a purchase, and even a perch, on the back cover of her book in the poem, Hills Alive/ “Out birding/ winding your way/ /along the crest of the/ highest hill in Lunenburg/… amongst the rampant bittersweet/ and slivery honeysuckle/… you might hear a stridulous shrill,/ followed by a distinctive chirrup, a crow-like echo. Look/ /up there in the family tree,/ out on the branch labeled/ Great Grandmother,/ a most anomalous bird:/… in raucous syllables./… an ashen-crested juvenile/ of the species addlepated poetess!/….

-Glenn D'Alessio