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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: "To The Magic Store...." -- poetry review by Rick Howe
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2025 20:03:42 +0000
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General-Zod wrote:
>
> To The Magic Store / Review by Rick Howe
>
> http://pennyspoetry.wikia.com/wiki/To_the_Magic_Store_by_Will_Dockery
>
> Will Dockery's New Poems
>
> To The Magic Store, just released by Will Dockery, is a publication of
> modest proportions, consisting of a cover illustration followed by seven
> pages of poetry. At that, there is something aesthetically effective
> about this simple minibook design. Having issued a series of similar
> books over the last several years, the author undoubtedly has acquired a
> certain proficiency with them. It is probably a question, since one is
> not sure how else to explain it, of /fitting/ or /filling/ - yet not
> overfilling - a book of this size with an appropriate amount of
> material, such that one might experience in it a satisfying ampleness,
> notwithstanding the smallness of its format; at the same time expression
> must reach completion in the allotted number of pages, and not leave the
> impression of having been aborted, or that necessary articulations were
> left out. Judicious resort to ellipsis may indeed be helpful in this
> regard only providing it does not signify impoverishment. (Which is not
> the same thing, really.) It is indicative that the book proceeds at what
>
>
> seems, at once, a comfortable, unhurried pace; at the same time it is
> more than the negligible sort of labor which one might expect in the
> everyday course of things to have done in fifteen minutes or so.
>
> Style
>
> In style and temperament, William Dockery's poetry is a little like that
> of John Berryman - cf., The Dreamsongs. A basically sensitive but
> slightly discombobulated awareness wending its way through hazes of
> intoxication; the neighborhood milieu. [..when I was staying/ at the
> boarding house/ across from the park,/ I hated those bells/ and I hated
>
>
> that place./ At the same time I loved it. In essence the theme is
> search for self. Now, self, in the way in which a poet like William
> Dockery understands it, is essentially a myth; in other words, a kind of
> story in which self is revealed and delineated to itself. In fact self
> cannot appear except through the mediation of external places and
> people. But the important thing is that these must be interpreted as
>
>
> having transcendental implications which might not be apparent at the
> level of quotidean experience. So this is what is meant by the poet
> entering his neighborhood or social milieu in search of self. Myth of
> origin [how self first learns to recognize itself]; golden age, debacle.
>
>
> These are some of the typical mythic components in life. To keep this on
> a simple, general level. Of course much subtler comprehensions are also
> possible. For example, a typical mythification involves a division of
> life into periods. When I lived on such-and-such street, life had a
> certain quality; I had these experiences, was acquainted with these
> people, et cetera. Then I moved somewhere else and it wasn't the same; a
> period of life came to an end. Thus life may be seen as a succession of
> /periods/ of greater or shorter duration; each more or less
> distinguished by objective referents [dates, addresses, names of
> people], each revealing distinctive mythological dimensions as well.
>
> Content
>
> In To The Magic Store the poet is viewing such a period retrospectively.
> It is a Proustian /remembrance of things past/ in a way; things are
> remembered together with their psychological associations, producing a
> sensation of mythological awareness. (It is not necessary to spell it
> out with elaborate detail. The point is simply to intuit how a set of
> associated names and images creates the effect of milieu or era.)
> Viewed retrospectively, there is of course an emphasis on dissolution.
> People drift away, some die, and eventually the milieu dissolves. The
> tone of the book is predominantly one of loss and mourning. In one case
> the poet later revisits one of his main friends - the speed junkie
> musician Hugo - and finds he'd been burned in a terrible disaster,/ in a
> wheelchair and speechless. With its emphasis on the downside of the
> cycle, To The Magic Store corresponds [mythically speaking] with a
> decline and fall - maybe not of a /golden age/, since more or less there
> is only one full-blown golden age in a lifetime, but of some lesser
> epicycle which never the less exhibits analogous phases of flourishing
> and decline. Curiously enough, there is no magic store explicitly
> mentioned in this book. Given the preoccupation with loss and mortality,
> a suitable title might have been To The Cemetery. Indeed, the climactic
> verses tell of taking a girl to a graveyard - to see the grave of the
> guy who died./ We sat there in this graveyard park,/ with a six-pack of
> beer./ he looked fragile/ as she drunkenly cried./ She looked open/ to
> my sensibility... But then, as the poem concludes: :I can still
> remember :her laughing at my poetry :didn't feel so good to me :after
> I'd been up all night :pouring out my feelings. :I thought she was
> interesting, :she turned out :she was just a little female fool. :Was
> not able to put all the components :of my life in place... :my mythology
> was incomplete. But the title might have a different and more Proustian
> meaning. The mythology of self, unfulfilled in initial experience [where
> to be sure such mythologies inevitably represent inconclusive
> aspirations], might be prolonged through acts of memory; where by poetic
> magic they may be perfected and internalized - notwithstanding their
> preliminary frustration in mere circumstances. Perhaps this might shed
> some light on the mystic quality of a poem like The Ballad of James
> Collier. A line like I hope some of them are left is perhaps best taken
> at face value, that is, in its natural sense. Other parts of the poem
> allude to ghostly reunions - perhaps in some transcendental world where
> the past continues as a permanent reality - In tiny detail.
>
> -Rick Howe, Topical Studies #5, January 1 1993. Used by permission.
>
> I noted the article of this on PPP today, where you'd corrected the
> typo.
> I went into your own article, and cut the review there down to the first
> paragraph, adding a link to the "Magic Store" article at the end. I hope
> that's OK; if not, of course, you can "Undo" it.
>
> I'd like to add this one by Rick, a review of a poetry and art chapbook
> by
> George Sulzbach:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170925073614/http://unitedfanzineorganization.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/6/0/4560933/topical4.pdf
>
> Rick Howe's small press zine Topical Studies #4
>
> Now that, my friends, is critique.
>
> I sure miss old Rick Howe, we were room mates for a spell back around
> 1993 or 1994...!!!

Again, good find, Zod.