Reviews. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop

All the babble of the Souk
all the life of the planet &
so little part of it, that I breathe

 
 

 
 
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Gary Beck – All the Babble of the Souk is an elegant journey through both foreign and familiar climes. Anything but babble. Time and space bend in mysterious mists and mechanistic voyages. The poems pulsate with languid images that add to the wonder of travel to exotic places.

Scott Hastie – A collection of real substance that is long overdue. Robin writes with impressive depth and across a spread of philosophic stimuli that he makes uniquely his own. You do not have to travel long before you trip over killer lines, again and again… This is fresh, original and mature work, grown from one special creative soul’s well seasoned experience. Robin truly has a voice that is his own and it has been worth the wait to see it flower…

Robin Marchesi – High time this great Poet was properly in print. His Poems resonate like the work of Cavafy and Gibran. They are deep and revealing, resonating in one’s inner self. This book will stimulate your metaphysical being. Robin’s Poetry opens you to questions about who you are…. Essential reading……

R. W. Haynes – Robin Ouzman Hislop’s All the Babble of the Souk grips elemental tangles with wisely wistful authority, making a claim both for the adequacy of animate language and for erudite perception. Counterpointing the abstruse and the inescapably basic, these poems draw upon a power that surprises, engaging the reader in the poet’s heartfelt conversation with a tradition and its diverse voices, including T. S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas. Hislop’s retro-modernist recovery of vision argues for a refreshed perception of poetic possibility and a turn from the infinite regress of the verse which echoes the empty sophistry of twentieth-century language philosophers. Music, with its syncopation, minor chords, pauses, accelerations, jingles, knocks, and elegiac phrases constitutes a crucial part of the essence of this splendid collection.

Ian Irvine (Hobson) – The metaphor of the ‘marketplace’ or ‘bazaar’ – symbolic in this collection of public spaces generally (both physical and cultural/mediatised) – launches this remarkable collection of poems by a poet, editor and creative thinker of international significance. The ‘souk’ is a place of trade, chance meetings, overheard conversations and communal eating. This collection also links it to our post-post modern state of life in the face of cultural globalisation. However, rather than theorise key aspects of our world we are invited to explore them instead as states of being – with joyous and anxious dimensions. As the poet/narrator mingles, observes, samples and digests (in poem after poem) a colourful array of stimuli – sensorial, relational and intellectual – we gradually feel our perception of life and the species crisis/moment deepen and expand. The melancholy grandeur of the human predicament slowly comes into focus – largely through the poet’s gift of empathy. A wonderful selection of poems updating for the new millennia themes mulled over by the likes of Baudelaire (in Paris Spleen), Apollinaire (in Zone), George Oppen (in Of Being Numerous) and many other great 19th and 20th century poets.

Marie Marshall – Robin Ouzman Hislop’s new collection of poems – I find myself wondering instead of just reading on and enjoying the ride. Because Robin’s poetry is often just that, a ride which contains lines like –

    The hag in her rags begs her bag
    holding all shadows to account.

each a new thought after a pause for breath, or so it seems, each with an image that sparkles, almost with effrontery. That’s how I like my poetry – image, sound, and bare-faced cheek.

As the images pile up, or maybe I unearth more as I drill down, discovering depth in the poetry, the typographical puzzles pile up too, and I begin to wonder if they are deliberate cantrips on the poet’s part. I hope they are. I hope they are, because I want to trust the poet’s intentions. I know he’s not your average Internet Joe, but a man with a mean, keen pen. He knows how to play, how to make free, how to brew poetry:

    Riding along in our dream machine
    our virtual reality all but a scream
    no exit
    blood on the wind screen, faithful Fido’s gone
    the machine’s a mess, – every where’s a gas.

    A trickle through a diaphanous sheen
    a thin crust peels, roll the dice
    a question of ethics, the cost of life.

Y’know, somewhere along the line, Ezra Pound and John Cooper Clarke rolled dice for this man’s soul, and I can’t say who won. Maybe he walked away laughing while the bones still tumbled, soul intact. I hope so. He has the measure of our suburbs, seeing how

    gleamed cleaned cars
    the phallus of a Sunday afternoon

let us (you’re here too, and I have morphed into ‘we’) catch our reflection in that polished surface, wondering how to measure the depth of the shine. Meanwhile

    Danger, Deep Water, Keep Out

As if we could. There are caesuras in this collection, but they almost seem accidental, as though titles, page breaks, and stars merely interrupted a flow of thought momentarily. The collection has the feel of a single work, as though the poet sat down, started at the beginning, wrote the middle, and stopped at the end. See? The golden arches of a fast-food outlet, the taunts of a cuckoo, big Sunday words like ‘bifurcation’, ‘pheromone’, and ‘olfactory’, all rub shoulders, and rub along. We ride. It’s the same ride all the time, but the scenery outside the window shifts, and fellow passengers come and go. Occasionally we get off, but only to stretch our legs

    As we celebrate
    life lies dead on the table
    we eat it.

and then the ride starts again. But a short offering like that reminds me that on the return journey I must insist on long enough to read each poem on its own… and I’m by myself again, closing the book at its final page. Second impressions:

The poet is aware of the shape of his work on the page, of its concreteness. The poet knows when to be serious and when not to, and he knows when to muddy the water of each with the other. When he says ‘Watch my stick’, you hear ‘This means you!’ The poet can make a dream return from the rubble of artifice. I know poetry when I see it.
 
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The Truth Whispers. A Poem by Pijush Kanti Deb

 
The truth whispers,
‘’a happy heart can’t discriminate
between a crow and a cuckoo’’
making me an example
as I’m quite happy
from top to bottom,
so unmindful to the conflict
between macro and micro
as all is well to my swelled generosity.
My mirror is happy
so blissful to reflect the same images
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide.
My bed room is also happy
in making innocuous adjustment
among its ever-changing components-
authorized and unauthorized
or open and hidden
and dutiful always to cover
my demand up for extra-amusement.
My spiritual master withdraws happily
his imposed prohibitions
on my free movement
and leaves my free domain
saying,
‘’I’m truly needed to an unhappy only’’.

 
 
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Pijush Kanti Deb is a new Indian poet with around 261 published or
accepted poems and haiku in around 90 nos of national and
international magazines and journals [,print and online] like Down in
the dirt, Tajmahal Review, Pennine Ink, Hollow Publishing, Creativica
Magazine, Muse India, Teeth Dream Magazine,Hermes Poetry Journal, Grey
Borders, Dagda Publishing, Blognostic Black Mirror Magazine,
Dissident Voice Journal , Indiana Voice Journal Aji Magazine Calliope
Magazine, Leaves of Ink Magazine and many more.
His best achievement so far is the publication of his first poetry
collection,’’Beneath The Shadow Of A White Pigeon’’published by Hollow
Publishing is available on AMAZON.

 
 
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Poetry performance at Gli Eroici Furori art gallery, Milan, September 2015

Patrician Press poets Mark Brayley, Sara Elena Rossetti and Ilaria Locati performing in Milan at event hosted by Patrician Press: Art works are all by Charlie Johnson. Music by Elena Lila.

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Poem: The Great Obliviators by Ron Olsen

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The Great Obliviators
by Ron Olsen

Stuck in Afghanistan
Without an exit plan
While drones fly
Where no soldiers need go

All this after
Vietnam
Iraq
Pakistan
And now Syria, too

We were warned this would happen

The glorification of war
Never-ending militarism
Not to be questioned
Or risk being accused of being less than American

Ike told us it was coming
Back in 61
The “rise of misplaced power” he said
The Military Industrial Complex
Now it’s here

Eisenhower, knew war
Those who now make war do not

But they are locked in
Not about to let go
As imperial America
Bites down
On the world

A pit bull in every yard
An urban assault vehicle in every garage
A gun in every drawer
Pepper spray in every purse
To fend off neighbors
Against the oncoming imagined apocalypse

ISIS beheadings
Plastic sheeting to cover your windows and doors
Smallpox in the mail
Sarin in the subways
Hijackers on our planes

The necessary threat

Without it, there is no fear
And without fear, no motivation
Without motivation
No public funding

Keeping the prophets of fear
In power
Cash fat sociopaths
Caring only for themselves

Gutting the middle class
Keeping the nation at war
To satisfy the greed
Of those whose greed knows no satisfaction
Only the need for more

© 2015 Ron Olsen – all rights reserved

Healthcare – A Poem

Healthcare
By Ron Olsen

When people profit from
Other people’s illness

Disease becomes more profitable
Than wellness

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon
To understand

Sickness perpetuates wealth
Free healthcare results in health

Try and move forward
Rather than back

And they’ll nail you with fear
And rail you with lies

While they pay off the doctors
And give the medical schools millions

To perpetuate
The myth of caring

 

© 2015 Ron Olsen / all rights reserved

 

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Ron Olsen is a retired journalist who lives in Los Angeles.   He writes essays and an occasional poem.   More of his work can be found here.

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