Ryan Eckes, Wrong Heaven Again

 

injury music

here i am documenting nothing
inside the defiance of brick
everyone cheats like a train
broken into photographs
rowhomes are a belief
sighed into knees
a bottle in front of me
is finally you as you
i’m afraid of
an empty baseball field
where i grew up
wanting to hit
tell me you’re sorry
and i’ll move on
like a moth
in the stands
the infinite line of trees
makes one fan
pull me out
of the car

The latest from Philadelphia poet Ryan Eckes, author of the full-length collections Old News (Furniture Press 2011), Valu-Plus (Furniture Press, 2014) [see my review of such here] and General Motors (Split Lip Press, 2018) [see my review of such here], as well as several chapbooks, is Wrong Heaven Again (Raleigh NC: Birds, LLC, 2024), a collection self-described as “songs of solidarity and struggle for and about workers and the working class—defiant and hopeful, absurd and alive.” “the dean showed us a picture of his grandchildren right before the labor- / management committee meeting on job security,” he writes, as part of the opening poem, “under the table,” “most people have a name and address, it’s true // you can buy lottery tickets for everyone in your family // you can read the sunday paper to your dog [.]” Divided by images, and as suggested through the table of contents, the collection is organized with opening and closing poems—“under the table” and “deep cuts,” respectively—and four untitled cluster-sections into an accumulated book-length suite. Also, at the rough mid-point, the collection opens to two lines in larger font, that spread across both pages:

“revolution begins with change in the individual,” said the
english department as it disappeared

Eckes’ work over the years has become thicker, heftier, more nuanced; there’s an increased weight to the poems in Wrong Heaven Again, one that clearly showcases a writer becoming more capable with his tools. “the choir got bored enough the windbags collapsed into soft balloons / found years later in a drawer,” he writes, to open the poem”wrong heaven,” “wrong heaven again, said the rabbit, returning to the dance floor // i accepted a position over there, on the dance floor, which is a field // a ranger leers at me // only i could prevent forest fires [.]” His blend of surreal humour and straightforward narratives allow for a kind of collage-collection, each poem another small piece of the larger book-length construction. As part of his 2018 interview over at Touch the Donkey, referencing the beginnings of what would become this collection, he writes:

After finishing General Motors, I started writing poems called “injury music” and “for what we will,” not entirely sure where I’m going. I’m thinking about pain, trauma and more questions around work. “For what we will” comes from the old labor union slogan, “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will.” It’s sad that 8 hours of work/40 hours a week is still considered normal, considered actually natural by many people, a century after it was established as a *protection*. Why aren’t we at 4 hours by now? Why is the minimum wage still so low? Why do Americans worship the rich? I could go on. But these are the kinds of questions that I let propel my writing at the same time that I am trying to understand myself as a living thing made of relations.

I find it interesting that I can’t think of too many poets approaching working class poetics so directly, offering shades of the late Vancouver poet Peter Culley (1958-2015) and other elements of The Kootenay School of Writing. There are poets engaged in elements of working class poetics, certainly, whether Vancouver writer Michael Turner, Philadelphia poet Gina Myers or Chicago poet Andrew Cantrell, among others, but Eckes seems one of the more overt, swirling between straight commentary and language flourish, and even offering an echo of the classic poetry title on cross-cultural poetics by Toronto poet Stephen Cain, American Standard/Canada Dry (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2005), as Eckes’ poem “independence day” begins: “who made you einstein, monday-face // american standard is a brand of toilet // so i just start walking on water // out of respect for pangea // trash gets picked up // i mean if you’re gonna be a nobody // have some class about it [.]” Eckes works his working-class politics from the ground level, from the foundation of language itself, allowing the paired foundation of working-class ethos and fluid language to mix together into something uniquely his own, while informed by a wealth of poets, observations and social politics.

HOV

i keep getting ads to be an uber driver, which reminds me of a term i learned in chile for adjunct processors—los processors taxis—and a poem by russell edson in which a taxi driver turs into canaries as his car flies thru a wall and back out again. that’s where i’m at, jobwise, a cluster of canaries flying toward you. in chile, students started evading subway fares and it turned into a rebellion. now their government has to re-write the constitution. in the u.s., fascists are wearing t-shirts that way “pinochet did nothing wrong.” republicans and democrats have long agreed. so has the ny times: capitalism is the only way, they say, and some apples are bad. so the government keeps killing black people and jailing those who fight back. every employer encourages you to vote. Your employer is running against your employer. they’ll never pay enough. how are you getting home tonight?