Reviews
The Hole In Sleep
Reviewed by Elizabeth Myhr
The Hole In Sleep
by Corey Mesler
Wood Works, No. 76; Paul Hunter, Editor
4131 Greenwood N., Seattle, WA 98103
2006, paper, $9.00
The poems in this brief chapbook are about the midlife thoughts of a male narrator who is ill, bitter, insomniac, mourning a dead father, and sometimes no easier to love than your cranky neighbor. But he, and we, cannot give up on him entirely, not just yet. He wants you to come inside and keep him company.
There’s a hole in my day.
It’s where my father was.
You may come closer and
step inside it. But don’t
blame me if the hole is not
overly friendly. I only have
the one and it’s taken some
getting used to. Now, in the
morning — and the morning
is the hard part — I step
around the hole….
Mesler’s poetic method is to seduce us into each poem. He wants an audience for his interior monologues, and he cunningly floats us through them, disguising them as works in progress. We watch him write, and for better or worse are drawn in, despite ourselves. He doesn’t share, either. These are one way streets. And though he turns us into voyeurs, we don’t wind up feeling squeamish when we should, just compassion for a guy having a tough time. It works.
Mesler’s influences are popular music, Charles Simic, Tom Waits, Sylvia Plath. Plath is in the subtext, not right up top. She’s in his backyard: “Awake at all hours I rattle / about the yard. / The moon is a castoff rind.” Mesler works in her shadow with an insomniac’s futility.
Two poems in this collection are particularly wonderful, “Bird” and “Soseki,” clear, interesting and moving. The erotic poems are not as strong, principally because they are tinged with depression instead of joy or melancholy — the tone is not quite convincing. But then, near the end of the collection we arrive upon “Sleepe, Angry Beauty.” And find out that when Mesler mingles an elevated love with a tender despair he is in beautiful control of his poetic sensibility.
currently serves as poetry editor for The Raven Chronicles. She is a poet and professional editor. Her poetry has apppeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Stringtown, Knock and other journals. She has received an Artists Trust Gap Grant and serves from time to time as a writer-in-residence at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington. She has an undergraduate degree in literature from The Evergreen State College and lives in Seattle with her son. She is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University.