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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 56 > Reviews >Alan Britt's Vegetable Love

Vegetable Love
Alan Britt
March Street Press
ISBN Number: 1-59961-109-X

Reviewer: Paul Sohar


          It’s a perennial question: Is it possible to measure the quality of art? Especially modern art? Modern poetry, in particular? Or are all critical standards subjective? An answer of some sort was dramatized for me last week when I received two books in the mail. One of them was Alan Britt's new volume of poetry, Vegetable Love, and the other a literary magazine. The latter invited the readers to vote for the ten best poems in that issue. After a quick perusal of the magazine, I felt that the challenge was unfair both to the readers and the poetry contributors; two of the poets stood out not only by reputation, but also by the samples of their work presented in that magazine. I am not easily swayed by a big name, but in this case the difference in quality was as obvious as two tall palm trees in a desert. Trying to glean the rest of the poems to fill the list was like adding sand dunes to the small oasis. There was nothing subjective about the picture that emerged.

          In Britt's book, however, there is only one star, and he proves himself in every poem. What a relief! The reader doesn't have to wade through sand dunes of pedestrian lines, boring stanzas, and trivial sentiments to get to the good stuff. It's a lush oasis from beginning to end. It's all good stuff, no matter where you open the book.
Suddenly the faint
rustle
of maple leaves
as humidity
removes her blouse.
          This stanza alone, from "Firefly," is worth more than a magazine load of verbiage, and it illustrates two of Britt's recurring themes, nature and sensuality. Or we might say just one theme, the sensuality of nature. The two are inextricably combined in his poetry. The setting is simple, a quiet backyard in summer. But summer is the daughter of sexual desire, and suddenly the simple scene is filled with drama. Sensuality, although best dramatized by sex, is a broader concept in Britt's poetry; it includes a visceral awareness of existence, an inner need to experience moments of fulfillment by living totally engaged with the present, and the ability to transform both into words.
A frightened train
rolls through
a distant artery.

----------

All that's left
in the dining car—
vintage tapestries
stained
with extinct angels.
          Extinct and exquisite. In the above passages from "Extinct Angels," Britt grabs hold of a millisecond and holds it up to our view even as it wiggles out of his grasp, only to demonstrate the poet's point: when we notice the exquisite, it's already extinct, and so is a part of us with it. Not quite, though; it can survive in little gems of poetry like those quoted above.

          It is customary to place the poet in the context of his contemporaries and literary influences, but who needs erudite allusions to other poets, past or present, when one can romp through a vineyard of such prolific growth?
But alone,
vastly alone,
with night's squid ink
stained clothes,
our ears spy
dog voices,
creeper frogs,
& wet sirens coming
to carry us away.
          There's no one to compare to Britt when it comes to immortalizing life's quiet moments and simple pleasures, especially the pleasure of having one's inner and outer reality in harmony. His is a unique voice, and yet his poetry, as the above passage from "Ears" illustrates, often reflects the timelessness of much Japanese poetry.

          The devotion to and the capturing of the fleeting moment, however, does not lead to short attention span, to confinement of the poem to the narrow limits of the present, does not exclude awareness of what has come before and might follow later on the scale of time. Just the opposite; the full appreciation of the present, in fact, makes it possible to stop time altogether and step outside of the flow of time. Standing outside of time gives one a better vantage point from which to view life on a wider scale and with a broader perspective, and thus one can even catch a glimpse of eternity.

          We spend most of our lives rushing past the passing moment, the present, because we have our sights set on future events we hope to influence in our favor, or we are too involved with our schemes for the future, or we are driven by deadlines or dreams of upcoming vacations or various forms of recognition we hope the world will bestow on us. Some poor souls waste their whole lives in expectation of a better, immortal life after death. However, immortality and eternity can only be achieved by experiencing it now, while we are alive, when we are able to hold a pinpoint in time and expand it sideways, as it were, instead of along the arrow of time, when we can actually say: Stop the world, I want to get off.

          Great art has the power of stopping time for us; it can also allow us to have glimpses into and experiences of immortality. We can also reach that blissful state by a trick of the mind, by rising above the banal metabolism of the mind. We can kick our consciousness into a higher gear above the mere mechanics of everyday living; we can conquer time; we can get off the train of time now and then. Most of us marvel at such sudden unexpected oceanic feelings of timelessness, but then we let life sweep us along again as we fall back into our little selves and scurry along our predetermined paths, our destiny.

          Alan Britt manages to linger longer in such time-out moments and succeeds in describing them in striking images that do not fail to communicate. Vegetable Love, Britt's latest volume of poetry, is probably his best so far in my estimation; it has more of these moments that can lift the reader into the calmer spheres of eternity. These moments cannot come to him accidentally, he must be on the lookout for them, and he has his well-honed poetic skills with which to snare them and preserve them in the gilded cages of his poetry. The process is reversed when we read his words; we become transported to that magic moment the poet originally experienced and wanted to share with us. Reading Britt's poems inspires me, too, to keep myself open to such gifts of life, to such moments, even though I may not be able to reproduce them adequately in my own poetry. But this way at least I know what Britt's poetry is all about, and I can fully surrender my mind and soul to it. I wholeheartedly recommend the same to all other lovers of poetry.

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