FARPOINT MINDSTATION II

A second collection of poems fails to live up to its self-announced aspirations.

A slim volume composed almost equally of poems, authorial notes and photographs, Farpoint Mindstation II begins with Huff noting that he's included "some of the classics" from his first volume, Farpoint Mindstation I. Unfortunately, the subsequent volume fails to live up to that designation. The first poem, "A Wasted Life," is a clear indictment of Israeli policy, but the terzanelle form requires repetitions of the line "fetid vapors of forgotten objects assault the nose." However, it gains nothing with each iteration, since the heavy-handed viewpoint is clear from the start. Many of the other poems are innocuous if clichè. "Day of the Dunes" reminds us that in the desert, "Where gold is worthless, water is the currency of life." However, readers may find the sentiment of "Green Tea Under the Oak Tree" valuable, with lines like "when the ice melts the tea becomes weak and uninteresting" as a metaphor for the necessity of living intensely. It's also difficult to object to a Vietnam vet writing about war, no matter how unenlightening the results. Far more of the poems, however, style themselves in the libertarian mode of being politically incorrect (one poem is even dedicated to "political incorrectness"), and are both didactic and unenlightening, preaching to those who similarly find themselves worrying that saying "peace be onto you" is somehow going to incur the wrath of those in charge of "this verbal selectness." Tired would-be satirical terms, such as "poli-parrot" and "bureau-critter," are especially wearisome. Huff claims that his "many un-politically correct poems" show him to be an "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary," someone seeking "change over a long period of time by using the tools of persuasion," but what he offers is little more than weak Zen and a hatred for bureaucracy.

A muddled collection, unsatisfying formally and as a coherent political/spiritual statement.