Tim Peeler's review

BACKWATER GRAYBEARD TWILIGHT by t. kilgore splake.
Thunder Sandwich Publishing, 192 pages, npg.Backwater Graybeard Twilight is a big book of poetry and photographs from small press mainstay, t. kilgore splake. In this volume, the poet writes about gains and losses. In fact, his poetry is an attempt to prove that one gains more than one loses by relinquishing his established “place” in the world. The introduction and the poems themselves reveal how splake did such a thing in the late 80’s, when he elected to take an early retirement from an academic institution and to leave his family for the modern equivalent of a Walden-type existence, a solitary room over a gallery in a small town in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

One should not, however, come to this work with fixed preconceptions about how a man ought to live his life or about how poetry must be written. Either prejudice could limit a reader in terms of what he might take away from this bank of winding narratives. Like Kerouac’s Sal Paradise, Bukowski’s Henry Chinaski, and Connellan’s Boppledock, splake creates his own auto-biographical alter ego. It is the understood I that always hovers behind the clipped sentences, that indeed provides the underpinning that avoids the verbal collapses that often occur in experimental poetry. The complexity of this “graybeard” persona can not be underestimated. In “cross country escape,” he is beaten and driven away: “rogue coyote limping off to sanctuary.” In “expatriate homeboy returns” he is “one of those who bailed/ out early, didn’t look back,” a world weary Eugene Gant. “the trophy room” invokes the spirit of the sophisticated drunk who needs the “quiet sanctuary for few dedicated to serious drinking, occasional/ existential discussions, rare merriment, down and around town/ mayhem.” Many of these poems share the joy that the poet finds in the stark nature that surrounds him in the UP. Poetic lines wind along trails, climb cliffs, and ford icy rivers.

The nature motif is appropriate for this work because these are truly image-driven poems. splake’s ability to “see” is demonstrated as well in the exceptional black and white photos that accompany the poems. But it is his ability to drive the reader onward with visual poetic imagery that overcomes the occasional technical awkwardness that must occur when one attempts so boldly to recreate internal dialogue. There is in fact much about this work that could be described as bold, even fearless. splake is not afraid to cut himself open in public. He is arrogant enough to embrace the title of “poet.” He is arrogant enough to say that a man can take poetry to the high wire without a net, can take the reader sometimes to places he may not want to go. In BACKWATER GRAYBEARD TWILIGHT, t. kilgore splake shows that he has the courage to inhabit his own poems, a rare feat these days.

+ close window +