Dodging Traffic, a new book by J. Bradley from Ampersand Books, unleashes a series of droll poems fueled by the beery, ammoniac caresses of a brain saturated in visions of Muppets, speculums and plastique. If Gregor Mendel had gotten wasted on Benedictine and spliced poems instead of pea-pods, he might have come up with something similar to Bradley’s chosen form, ie: poems that function as the hybrid love-children of the high-romantic, poet-with-hair-blowing-in-the-wind tone, grafted out of the kind of lines guests on Maury Povich might hurl at each other:
You have the face/ of a fat camp/ on fire.
Don’t let your heart/ mistake itself/ for a beat box.
Bradley is undoubtedly exploring the idea of poetry as the exclusive realm of the high-minded. He crafts his metaphors by deliberate 90-degree turns, cross-wiring senses, and mash-ups between trash-talking and trash-culture. The result is variable, producing groan-inducing lines:
Baby/ I wanna be the cop/ who pulls you over/ for a busted headlight,/ thinks you suspicious,/ reads your Miranda rights/then thoroughly searches/ each/ of your cavities.... I want to be the Frank Oz/ to your Ernie, Grover,/ and Yoda./ So I just gotta know/ will you be my Muppet/ tonight?
And also producing unsettling and thoughtful ones:
Son, when you wear your tears/ like a ransom note, you fill/ the briefcase of your lower lip/ with partial dental records.// When “no” squats in your stomach,/ make joy kick in the rickety door/ of your smile and evict it.// Open the black spiral notebook/ of your heart, write this letter/ to your future:// “If you’re reading this,/ you finally found the one/ who kisses like a windshield/ roaring against the highway.
Bradley’s lines turn again and again on the profane and crass, seemingly mocking or murdering sentiment but attempting to retain love. (Yes, the majority of the pieces in this book are love poems). The result, though wince-worthy at times, is successful in yanking poetry into the realm of slipping Rohypnol in your Hpnotiq and chemotherapy for teddy bears and ponies, and wresting a tongue-in-cheek self-mockery out of wearing toilet paper like a cheap beard or chasing butterflies with automatic weapons. Eighty pages of this, however, can become tiresome, and makes the style feel a little gimmicky, a little predictable, and simply self-indulgent (rather than ironically self-aware). It would have been great to see Bradley apply his caustic wit toward more variations on humor, and more kinds of irreverence instead of hitting the same note again and again.
Kudos for Dodging Traffic’s consistent questioning of the idea that meaningful emotion and social critique in poetry can only be made of the subtle, the intellectual, the pretty, or the profound. Like grape jelly and brown mustard on a baloney sandwich, Dodging Traffic’s unlikely sensory-and-sensibility combinations can be surprisingly delicious, but occasionally and in small doses.
Dodging Traffic
by J. Bradley (80 pages/Ampersand Books, 2010)
posted by LJ Moore editor(dot)moore(at)gmail(dot)com
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