Tom Jenks, A Long and Hard Night Troubled by Visions

 

1984

After six days in the forest, I finally reached 1984. The tribe that lived

there welcomed me. I sat on a mossy log, ate a toasted sandwich and

drank American cream soda from a hollow stone. Later, as the stars

wobbled above the tree line, we watched Torvill and Dean win gold at

the Sarajevo Olympics on a primitive television set installed in an

abandoned foxhole. The tribe’s leader, a tall man with an asymmetric

fringe and wearing a tight silk blouse, asked me if I had been here

before. I said yes, a long time ago, and my bike got stolen.

Not long after I reviewed his rhubarb (Beir Bua Press, 2021) [see my review of such here], British poet and publisher Tom Jenks and I traded books, which landed me a copy of his collection of prose poems, A Long and Hard Night Troubled by Visions (Manchester UK: if p then q, 2018). I’m intrigued by the pieces here, and Jenks’ work through the prose poem seem related to what Chicago Benjamin Niespodziany has been doing over the past few years; poem-cousins, perhaps, these odd short bursts of momentary capture. As the poem “Mushroom Forest,” for example, reads in full: “You have gathered a lot of flowers. You are buzzing happily. Who is // watching you? Why are you angry? Where are you off to with your // snorkel?” Existing somewhere in that nether-realm between poems, prose poems and prose, Jenks’ pieces each appear as a collection of sentences assembled into prose poem structures. “He turned on the lights and saw through us immediately.” the poem “inspector” begins, “I hadn’t read // all those books. Topaz wasn’t descended from Marie Antoinette. // Carstairs’ odd socks weren’t an endearing eccentricity, but a calculated // affectation to obfuscate a deeply uneventful personality.” This is a collection of sentences, set into poems, themselves set into titled clusters, or sections: “SHRINKS,” “THE STRAWBERRY MOSHI COLLECTION,” “TOPAZ” and “THE DYSPHORIA SUITE.” What appear in Jenks’ pieces to be narrative foundations are, instead, layerings of accumulation, setting one idea or phrase or situation upon another, allowing for what the accumulation might become or reveal. Jenks’ poems offer sly slides of prose, leaning into a lyric surreal, shifting in and out of focus in really striking and unexpected ways. There is surprise behind these declarations, certainly, and it is interesting how time moves through this collection; always an eye backwards, even while looking front, immediately ahead, or further afield.

And beyond all of that, a highlight has to be the poem “strikes,” near the end of the collection; a striking and sharp notation from the AMC television series Mad Men (2007-2015). As the acknowledgements offers, the poem “documents every instance of smoking in season 2,” and the effect is impressive. One almost wishes he’d devoted a whole collection to such a thing (although one might garner how that might have worked from the focus on that second season).

1.47

Dr Stone smokes at his desk, in a monogrammed white coat. Bobbie

smokes in a bar, using a cigarette holder. Don smokes at his desk. On

a globe behind him, the countries of Africa are picked out in different

colours.

Bobbie smokes, taking a cigarette from a gold case.

Bobbie smokes in Peggy’s apartment, talking on a yellow telephone.

Bobbie smokes, reclining on cushions. Salvatore smokes in a wicker

chair.