A crime/war poem from Ciaran Carson

Here's another poem that packs the punch of a good crime story. The poem is "Trap," from Ciaran Carson's 2003 collection Breaking News and also available in his Collected Poems:

backpack radio
antenna

twitching
rifle

headphones
cocked

I don'
read you

what the

over

Here are more Detectives Beyond Borders posts about poetry that may appeal to readers of crime fiction (Click on the link, then scroll down.)
 
© Peter Rozovsky 2013

"Whatever You Say, Say Nothing"

For my tribute to Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet who died Friday, I'll include a segment from "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing."

That poem has been cited often since yesterday for what its title came to exemplify about the sectarian divide's effects on Northern Ireland. But it hits home with me for its jaded view of the reporting segment of my profession, of the ballet of stock phrases and replies in which reporters engage with the man in the street and that, by the numbing effect of constant repetition, ceases to have anything to say about anything, much less something so serious as a civil war fought in the streets.

I.

I'm writing just after an encounter 
With an English journalist in search of 'views 
On the Irish thing'. I'm back in winter 
Quarters where bad news is no longer news, 

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point, 
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads 
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint 
But I incline as much to rosary beads 

As to the jottings and analyses 
Of politicians and newspapermen 
Who've scribbled down the long campaign from gas 
And protest to gelignite and Sten, 

Who proved upon their pulses 'escalate', 
'Backlash' and 'crack down', 'the provisional wing', 
'Polarization' and 'long-standing hate'. 
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing, 

Expertly civil-tongued with civil neighbours 
On the high wires of first wireless reports, 
Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours 
Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts: 

'Oh, it's disgraceful, surely, I agree.' 
'Where's it going to end?' 'It's getting worse.' 
'They're murderers.' 'Internment, understandably ...' 
The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse. 

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

30 Days of the 5-2: A Month of Crime Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and crime has a place at the table once again, thanks to Gerald So.

Gerald assembled a list of bloggers, authors, and other persons of interest and asked each of us to write about a poem from The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly and pick a day to post our thoughts.

My choice was simple, because Randall Avilez's "Outlaw at Peace" combines the resignation and grim humor that makes real noir fiction so attractive with the simple but deep self-knowledge that characterizes some of the Westerns I've been reading recently. And, like much of the rawest noir, particularly the melodramas of the 1950s, Avilez's poem is narrated by a first-person protagonist whose forthrightness is inextricable from his less-admirable traits. He may be a bad guy, but he knows himself, his world, and his place in it.

Some crime writers muse at great length upon justice, law, and the differences between the two. Avilez wraps that up quickly: "I asked what exactly an outlaw was / they gave me vague answers." And the self-knowledge and blunt assessment of the world don't get more much concise than they do in Avilez's last two stanzas.

If you lack the time to lead a life that brings you to resignation, doom, and perfect insight, read a Gold Medal paperback. And if you don't have time for that, try "Outlaw at Peace."

OUTLAW AT PEACE

when they asked me about the law
i told them i was an honest man
i swore on the bible but they did not care
life for them must be hollow

i asked what exactly an outlaw was
they gave me vague answers
i lit a cigarette not particularly worried
they read my sentence

a few years on drug possession, trafficking didn't stick
no one chokes on swallowed pride
the judge looked hard and mean
as i walked, i said, i regret nothing and god is forgiving

nobody tells a drug addict to be a drug addict
they just let him commit suicide in silence
and i liked that
slowly dying under blue skies

(Here's a full schedule for the 30 Days of the 5-2 Blog Tour.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

No small crimes

Let's begin before the beginning. Here's a bit of Reed Farrel Coleman's introduction to The Lineup 4: Poems on Crime:

"I’ve heard it said many times by veterans of war, by cops, firemen, surgeons, that they never felt more alive than when death was close at hand. Humans are never more human or less human than when mortality is on the line. ... When viewed through that prism, the marriage of crime and poetry makes perfect sense. Poetry has its roots in heightened emotion, in crystal clarity. Poetry has always been about life’s lines and edges, the tensions between love and hate, ugliness and beauty, exaltation and despair. The poet’s job has always been to focus the laser, to distill, to sharpen, to filter and translate for the rest of us."

The poet focuses the laser. Makes sense, doesn't it? Joseph Brodsky once said as much. Americans too busy to read poetry? Nonsense, he replied (if I recall correctly); poetry, packing so much truth into so few words, is perfect for today's busy reader.

Poetry is efficient; poetry gets to what's important, and it gets there fast. Maybe that's why The Lineup's poems feel intimate, like David Goodis' non-heroes huddled in lonely Philadelphia cellars. Here's John Stickney's "Creation":

Make me a long coat of a dark cigarette color
Make the cities dark
No one will notice I am ash
Make me a dark fist
Clenched and subtly bitten
Watching the village’s one prostitute show a vast
Though never sentimental
Sympathy

See what I mean?

No one saves the world in these poems, no one takes over an entire town, knocks over a bank, terrorizes a city, or slaughters a classroom full of students. That would be too easy; that stuff is for the newspapers. These poems are about small crimes or about the quiet, intimate moments before and after big ones. Or rather, they remind us that for those most intimately involved — victims, perpetrators, survivors, a son who prays for vengeance on the man who mugged his father — any crime can radically alter the world. There are no small crimes.

=====================

The Lineup 4, edited by Gerald So, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortes and Richie Narvaez, is available from Poetic Justice Press.

Gerald has asked members of the crime-fiction community to write about The Lineup each day in April, National Poetry Month in the United States (and Canada). Kevin Burton Smith, Bill Crider and Patti Abbott were up before me. Here's the full month's schedule.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Rhyme and punishment

What was the deal with poets in mid-twentieth-century American hard-boiled writing?

First this, from Dashiell Hammett's story "Too Many Have Lived" (1932):

"`I'd want to talk to her,' Spade said. `Who is this Eli Haven?'

"`He's a bad egg. He doesn't do anything. Writes poetry or something.'"

Thirteen years later, Brett Halliday the author, Murder Is My Business the book, Mike Shayne the detective:

"She won't be married — unless Towne has changed a lot. That's the job I did for him. There was a chap named Lance Bayliss. A poet, Lucy, and a poet is lower than dirt to a two-fisted, self-made financier like Jefferson Towne."

So, just to be on the safe side, if you're a character in a hard-boiled book, try not to be a poet. Or at least get a real job, and write on the side.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010