Burgess uses several “traditional” poetic devices, including enjambment and imagery, to create shape in his poems. In the section “Sonnets Left Unwritten At The Kitchen Table,” he also – untraditionally – uses blacked-out words, phrases, as though he, the poet, had used magic-marker to color over certain sections. We, the readers, are given a unique portal into his private writer’s workspace by glimpsing what would otherwise only appear in the drafting process: the poet’s markings on his text.
From what perpetuates ------
despite
each dam of phlegm ------
------ despite
barriers of skin
--------------- (Burgess, 4)
In the final section, “Speech Impediment,” Burgess reorganizes shapes and creates, or rather agitates movement, to allow the reader to join the road trip, the “joy ride” (Burgess, 104) highlighted in the section:
they can tell we’re not from around here
our yelps awkward catching of our
breaths
losing trail over well-worn pass
Windows rolled down (Burgess, 100).
“Speech Impediment” is dedicated to Patsy, his sister; she is the “we” (along with John) in “Ah we would talk all the way/ across Dakota/ a long philosophical discussion about/ badlands/ dead languages” (Burgess, 99). The sounds of these enjambed lines: consonance (Talk, Across, Dakota, Philosophical, Discussion), assonance (Ah, Talk, All, Across, Dakota, About, Badlands), and alliteration (We, Would, Way) cause them to flow, to “ride.” The page even looks like a road map – a diagram of words.
“Speech Impediment” touches on several themes, including, obviously, the speech impediment that Burgess suffered from as a child. As if to challenge his younger self, Burgess often repeats words: “When we hold hands/…at least the model’s at hand/…hands are beggars” (Burgess, 102). “Hands” functions rhetorically and symbolically differently each of the three times he utilizes it on the page (love, presence, synecdoche). “Tongue,” repeated four times throughout this poem/ section, is another body part prominently featured, like hands. “Lips,” too, is repeated. “Tongue” and “lips” are also mentioned in “Sonnets Left Unwritten at The Kitchen Table,” the opening section of the book. “How lips lip. How tongues tongue” (Burgess, 4). Burgess, then, has traveled 360 degrees: he opens and closes his book with lips and tongues, our speaking-mechanisms. “Face,” “heart,” “stomach,” and “throat,” each a body part that communicates, are each mentioned once in “Speech Impediment.” Burgess is communicating beyond impediments, “between breaths read lips/ the subtleties of/ tongues” (Burgess, 99).
“Ballads Under New Regime” is one of three sections whose poems are titled. Titles serve many purposes, including providing syntactical clues as to the poem’s meaning, for the reader. (John Burgess might argue that each section is, in fact, one long poem divvied up into smaller, digestible fractions, and that titles are an unnecessary distraction). In “Ballads,” Burgess presents two of his most perplexing pages: A Belarusian translation of one poem (“Ode to the Bunker”), and a musical translation of another (“Union Man”). Why does he do this? Because he can? “Ode to a Bunker” reads as follows: “Boarded and sandbagged state construction/ schematics left beneath a bare light bulb/ loose floorboards reveal sympathizer bones/ a cold kettle on a single burner stove” (Burgess, 80). Arguably as musical as “Union Man,” which is presented alongside musical notes, “Ode” is macabre and lovely. The sound of “bare light bulb” is as lonely and haunting as the image it projects. Perhaps the answer to “why does he do this?” is because the bunker deserves an ode, in its own depraved way: don’t we often ask, what if walls could talk?
In addition to the “bare light bulb,” Burgess refers repeatedly to light sources throughout A History of Guns in the Family: “taillights,” “headlight,” “bathroom light,” “white light.” Even his cover image: a 12-gauge shotgun shell, is aglow in coppery-red light. There are eleven obvious “light” images in his poetry, and five of them, nearly half, are in the “The Johnny Poems” section. Johnny’s life is presented as dreary, dark, and bleak; this is an ironic use of imagery. “Asphalt scraped first skin/ then flesh then bone then/ gave way to physics pivots/ a single headlight head-on” (Burgess, 26). Though Burgess incorporates light-imagery, he does so unexpectedly. A headlight is foreboding: he uses light to create (metaphorical) shadow.
Japanese Imagery abounds in Burgess’ work; Burgess spent time in Japan teaching English, and is obviously influenced by Haiku. This is most clearly demonstrated in “Landscapes of the 4 Seasons: Unscrolling a scroll painting by Sesshu, 2001.09.06-20.” The dates he lists are historically relevant, because as Burgess was unscrolling Sesshu’s work, and commenting on it, our country, and our world was changing. Ironically, Japanese imagery, based on Buddhism, is peaceful and pastoral. However, poem #2 seems influenced by the events of September 11: “when events unfold/ what remains unseen/ seems seamless” (Burgess, 36).
John Burgess uses a myriad of devices: familial references, micro-edited short lines, Japanese imagery, enjambment, even music, to produce light, shape, and sound in his second book of poetry, A History of Guns in The Family. This small, though robust book deserves a read or two, and a place in your poetry bookshelf.
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