THE BALLAD OF LADY VIGILANCE

A contemporary book of philosophical poetry by an American poet.

Savreux explores the underbelly of the human experience in this poetry collection. The poet begins by addressing “The downfallen, the homeless; the hungry; the jailed; / the jobless; the abused ones; the abusers who lost their / way; and those who are afflicted with illness, the ones / who are obscure but not behind an N95 mask or due / to covid but social invisibility” as well as “the people who look away,” (“Commencement of the Elegiac”) reminding them all to acknowledge the world’s humanity. Mortality is a recurring theme; in “A Syringe in a Vein,” the speaker proclaims that life is “but a syringe full of Death.” After contemplating baptism and burial, the speaker declares, “I want birds to eat me corpse while I lie rotting in a field” (“a.k.a Bathtub for Unclean Infantes”).The poet sprinkles in biblical teachings (if only to rebel against them) and religious musings: “The Pope breathes an unstained grave / Gathering the homeless playing harps / A fancy fantasy dumb utopian Raphael” (“A Crying Virgil”), and an impromptu painting session inspires thoughts about Eden. Sex is also a focal point; “Catalepsy & Fantasy Part I, II, & Redux” describes an affair with a captivating lover. Modern thinkers, like Noam Chomsky and Piaget, garner mentions; Barack Obama and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also make appearances. After much darkness and heaviness, the poet concludes with a prescription for happiness, writing, “If you are sad, I recommend smiling” (“Yes, Smiles Expiate Like Good Medicine!”).

The average reader may find the poems in this collection difficult to follow. The verses are verbose, even Byzantine, with lines like “Gods of parsimony unite in a cosmic matrimony / Their goddesses give birth to infantile contemporaneity / and a man dies in contentment’s cradled antiquity” (“A Syringe in a Vein”). Inconsistent capitalization, the excessive use of exclamation points, and unpredictable rhyme schemes further disrupt the reading experience. The poems ape Old English but lack its elegance in poems like “Catalepsy & Fantasy Part I, II, & Redux”: “She is illogical, I am saintly, infirm & charm’d / But whence does this propensity eek to flow?” (the language turns vulgar: “I never had the balls to cum oil masterpieces”). A few poems seem downright unhinged, as in these lines from “Sunshine Beat Freestyle,” inspired by a Homer statue: “Make it true, the deaf and / the blind will hear and see again. / A Bazooka against DOOM! / Suicide is always DOOMED . . . . / HaHaHa.” Occasionally, the poet leans on cliches like “Time Destroys Us All. / Wisdom is wasted on the young; and Youth / is wasted on the Wise” (“Perfect & Grotesque”). Rarely, the poet deigns to drop in an image or sensory detail; when he does, they are refreshing and ground readers in the scenes of poems like “The Modern Desirous” (“barbarous boots they / kick off the snow”; “whistles of the New York / night”). Unfortunately, too much of the action takes place in the speaker’s head.

A cryptic and chaotic book of poems.

A cryptic and chaotic book of poems.