The Machinery of Sleep: Poems

The Machinery of Sleep by Patrick Cahill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Machinery of Sleep: Poems by Patrick Cahill is another book beautifully published by Sixteen Rivers Press, “a sustainable, shared-work publishing collective run by and for Bay Area poets.” Cahill did a Grad Literature seminar at Cal here and did research for his dissertation at Bancroft Library, hung out at cafes like Nefeli (NOW CLOSED! Oh no! Wonderful baklava and espresso…) and read at poetry readings there. 

“The last poetry reading I attended before the pandemic was at Le Bateau Ivre” (The Drunken Boat – still open – Thursday through Sunday! Patio seating, and 25% indoors) he said, on Telegraph Ave.

I wish I loved his poems as much as other Sixteen Rivers Press books, but his poetry isn’t as “accessible,” a more etheric taste. As the editor of Ambush Review and a skilled craftsman, he’s certainly been published and admired, but the clever word play and obscure references hide him, hide any voice with excesses of mind. He leans hard on L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, very popular at Cal, but I often don’t “get” that sub-genre, either.

“An apocalyptic goat plus an apoplectic owner…Salt marsh harvest mouse. Salt march harvest mouth. Malt harsh marvest south...A word with a thousand meanings, the same meaning in each of a thousand words…” After hearing the City Lights Diane DiPrima Memorial Reading, full and ripe with her direct, actionable statements of fact, feeling and self in the midst of passionate humanity; I look at his first 28 pages and say “Right. OK.” Too much time in the library? 

“Drift Prairie,” on page 29, has some actual places, objects and almost descriptions in it, so I can locate myself (Dakotan to Minnesotan) and his poem on the “Coteau des Prairies.” 

“Killdeer…Against the black furrows a flurry of late stubborn snow…middle-distant plowed disorder… bowls of glacial melt, glacier’s pothole ghosts” makes more sense, both to him, I think, and to me.

The “you” has appeared in section Two, and by section Three, he puts more meat on the bones of his language, “There where the story and desire begin.” In fact, if any word appears more than three times in this book, it is desire. That’s what brings his words and thought-activities into the present moment, otherwise it’s kind of disembodied, out in space, technical chicanery.

It’s kind of getting to actual relationships, but still falls back on extreme self-consciousness of verbiage, obscure references: “Augustine…the Isle of Thanet,” and even ones I recognize from Comparative Literature – French (Poetry) class in grad school and Boudicca from my obsession with Celtic Goddesses and feminist heroines. But not everyone is “in on the game.”

“Days Like This,” I would call a “real poem,” as are “Reality Made Easy, “Gone Astray,” “El Autobús” and certainly “The Dictator Reflects.” 

He’s almost autobiographical, I think, in “Big Dog” when he says “eccentricity’s just his cover,…But resignation’s just his cover…” and then “compulsive observation’s just his cover…Though reason too is just another cover.”

Then there’s the lurking cynicism and disaster. The seduction of apocalypse just around the corner. I keep thinking of Pennie Opal Plant when asked “what can we do about (climate/ecological/political) disaster?” she replied, simply, “I will not live in fear.” 

Rootless intellectuals and the guilty privileged, I feel sorry for, but I will not take on thour emotional atmosphere of distanced arrogance bandaging up thour terror and despair. Been there, done that. Doesn’t work for me any more… 

Then I noticed on the dust jacket that “He received his Ph. D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz,” which explains a lot.

Sixteen Rivers is having an online benefit reading through Eventbrite 3 p.m. this Sunday November 7th, 2021 too, and are sponsoring a Youth Poetry Contest. See their sixteenrivers.org site.  

Be aware, be present, be humane…

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