G-d, Sleep, and Chaos by Alan Fyfe Gazebo Books 2024

There were three things that took my attention before I had even cracked this book, as I held it in my hand and turned it this way and that. Firstly, there was no author name or title on the frontispiece. Unusual. Even rare. Instead, a cool, glimmering art work (oil on canvas) of a snail shell by the visual artist Phil Day, that extends onto the back cover. Or is it a snail shell? The title Her No. 2, 2023 gives no clue. I do not know what this enigmatic shape may contain.

Luckily, maybe because of a marketing imperative, necessary information marches boldly along the capacious spine of the book. And then the next odd thing that alerts me to the intent that is activating this artefact. The hyphenation of the word G-D seems to be indicating a reluctance, or an inability, to name the unnameable name of g-d. This diffidence tumbles me into a pleasant, quasi-historical rumination.

And then, the almost insolent bliss of the Oxford comma after SLEEP. Dear Reader, I laughed. I felt as if I was in safe hands. It is not sleep and chaos. It is sleep (pause) and then chaos. These little niceties make my day.

And then I open the book. There is no list of contents and no page numbers! Wild surmise! Why? Why? But I get a grip on maybe why. This poet has (maybe) lucked out to fall in with Gazebo Books and I am being invited (or ordered) to consider each poem on its own terms and not as part of a traditional narrative. Good. Different. I soften my eyes so as to invite peripheral vision, and gather my energies.

Oh my goodness, what a relief. There is a signpost. There is a section heading. PART ONE: ELEGIES FOR A TUESDAY AFTERNOON. So, we are beginning at the end with the elegies/eulogies, are we? But perhaps this is always where the poetry kicks off, kicks in. With grief.

From EULOGY FOR HASAN

My grief wakes up and phones a small town in Turkey. My
grief accepts bribes in fresh fruit. My grief beats its imaginary
friend. My grief calls out for food from the concrete factory.
My grief owns a Citroën but won’t tell anyone. My grief sends
angry letters to dead politicians. My grief scratches the four-
letter word tattooed on its knuckles.

 I am deciphering the story, as I am reading. I am translating. Images and tropes are clustering around my understanding. The imaginary friend is, without doubt, g-d. Powerless, and yet to blame. And I have seen the words L O V E and H A T E tattooed on the knuckles of some of our citizens, and I do not know which word grief is scratching at, to erase it, or to relieve the itch of mortality. Or for some other reason. I do not mind that I do not know. But I decide, for my own purposes, that grief is getting its fingernails well in under the skin of H A T E and transfiguring it into a healed cicatrice.

Then, because this book is not bossing me around, I jump to the last section. PART SEVEN: AGAINST POETRY. Well, I totally get that. If there is no grief then there is no poetry, and frankly, I would sacrifice poetry to skip like a spring lamb (spring is not the only season) through a flowered meadow (flowers fade and fail) to never have to pay the price of L O V E.

A FINAL WORD ON WILLIAM McGONAGALL

One thing McGonagall did was mention prices. You’re not
supposed to mention prices in a poem. I don’t know who wrote
that rule. But it somehow sounds wrong. The same rule applies
in polite company. I found this out when I was overly proud
of a linen shirt I got cheap. A rich woman sledgehammered
me for saying what it cost in front of everyone. It was hard
for me to know what I’d done wrong. I could never figure out
what McGonagall was doing wrong either. I read him through
a dozen times and each line is perfect.

Somehow this prose poem reminds me of the time when I was just a young thing, standing in front of a masterwork by New Zealand painter, Rita Angus, and of the bewildered question that arose in my consciousness – ‘What does that cost?’ (Not the painting of course, but to be able to execute it.) And of all the botched jobs that come before the masterwork, and of the desire to make the attempt, to fill your days, your life, with making.

PRAXIS

When you
see something beautiful
always try to smash it to pieces
gather the diverse fragments in a bucket
and knead them into a mound of your own shit
smear it on the wall and wait for the light to hit it just so.

But I am struggling here, because this stunning debut of a book roams so widely amongst different registers of tone and … pause … while I try to come up with some words that convey the complex endeavours and achievements of this book … well I just can’t come up with the right words. It does its own thing with insouciant, devil-may-care chutzpah. I bow out and leave you with an introspective and loving lyric from PART FOUR: FOURTEEN LOVE POEMS.

WALL

On Monday morning
took care of some organisational concerns,
so no one would be very surprised if I didn’t leave the house.

My schedule thus clear
I floated over to rest on the red pillows
and invested my attention in the grubby wall behind the woodstove.

Bubbles of paint, chipped
history of food grease, smoke, trapped heat.
I swear, round one in the afternoon, the unpainted part twitched.

She sent her missive
in blue light through the crystal window.
The wall seemed about to seethe, but I turned my attention to her.

  – Jennifer Compton

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Jennifer Compton lives in Melbourne. She is a poet and playwright who also writes prose. Recent Work in Canberra published her 11th book of poetry the moment, taken in 2021. Her 12^th book Still is coming soon.

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G-D, Sleep, and Chaos by Alan Fyfe is available from https://gazebobooks.com.au/product/g-d-sleep-and-chaos/