This collection by poet and University of Mass./Lowell professor Michael Casey, recounts the ship of fools he worked with at Ft. Leonard Wood as an MP during the Vietnam era. Casey's poetry is raw and reality-based, and credibly captures the language of enlisted men. The guys he writes about are like military Keystone Cops, stumbling from one caper to the other. In the lead poem: "Frisk," Casey describes some MP's encounter with a drunk who sophmorically insults their sister and mother with tragic results: "Roes should a kept quiet/ but instead says to him/who taught you how to talk that nice/ guy replies, your mother and his sister./ Harry and I didn't say a word to him/we just looked at each other and then kicked/ the drunk's feet away from the wall/ his face fell nose first/ flat on the concrete/ his neck cracks and snaps up/ and I would not a cared more less/ it was Harry's fault anyway/ he should a kept quiet/ I don't even have a sister." Quite the rationalization process, huh?
In " whichway did he go," an MP in training asks the narrator for the location of a man " Blankenship" that the narrator has never even seen ,with hilarious results: "I say I don't know who Blakenship is/ I didn't ask you that/ I asked where is he/ I pointed out the barracks/ the far door/ and off he went/ mad as a lark at dusk/ at Blankenship." You gotta love a guy like that, and it is evident that Casey has true affection for these hapless fellows. There is also a subtext of sadness here. The poet almost seems protective of guys thrown together into a dog-eat-dog world without a clue.
If you are looking for purple prose, flowerly language, big words, obscure literary references...forget it. If you are looking to get a true look at real people, written with authenticity, this just may be what the doctor ordered.
Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ April 2005
I enjoyed this book more than anything I’ve read in five years. It’s utterly delightful to read about guys who have no connection at all to syllogistic reasoning, guys who are so outclassed by reality that it’s both sad and hilarious to follow their stratagems for survival at Fort Leonard Wood. If there is a common denominator among these men it is their hapless quest to get the advantage over someone or something with so few weapons at their disposal. Meanwhile, women move like goddesses through these pages, their heels clicking, their smiles taking dominion everywhere.
But these poems are about more than the difficulties of the unevolved, for the poet himself, “car-less Casey,” who doesn’t drive an MP Chevy II cruiser, or even a jeep, is roundly told, “You don’t act smart at all / you don’t look smart either.” Each of these characters has an edge, and this is what Casey celebrates—the radiant, unapologetic identity in all of us. These are the Permanent Party, the guys who are not going overseas, who may not be going anywhere at all. We are elbow to elbow with the poet as he delights in such companions and widens our world.
Casey’s aural imagination and memory, his grasp of idiom, his trust in the reader’s capacity to “get it”—to see the absurdity, to see the grace—these are all compliments to us, his audience. A stream of humanity runs through Casey’s poems, as each character is distinctly realized, distinctly voiced, distinctly stricken. If you’re looking for rainbows or memorable descriptions of nature you’ll have to take up another book. But if you’ve been hooked on humanity, Casey is your man.
—Julie Lechevsky, award-winning author of Doll, I’m a Serious Something, and Kiss.
