The title poem with which the book begins is possibly the best although that might only be the effect of not knowing what one is going to find and being gently impressed. Obviously I usually choose what to read and expect to like it.
The 18 short lines of A Former Life are understated, with tangential musical effects - maybe a half-rhyme here or subtle enough alliteration elsewhere- and relates a disarmingly simple but vivid anecdote that stands a number of re-readings. And that is where the 'poetry' is, in the extra bit achieved beyond the sum of the constituent words.
The book is organized into three sections - People, Places and Things. If associations with the scent of honeysuckle are denied in the first poem, the sense of smell recurs in the first section, the 'acrid smoking steel' in Planking the Tango, the 'rich smell of dung' in Clarence and 'an aroma of mangoes' in Morning. The 'People' section moves from a childhood memory, through work to illness and death before ending with a restorative love poem.
But it's not all olfactory, pertaining to smell. Bill produces some effective visual metaphors in the new-born baby,
a twisted pretzel of
a person,
in Gabriel's Coming, and the mountains in Cusquenos,
curl like sleeping dragons,
but the poems in 'Places' are about people, too. Bill Cushing's places are inhabited by people, experienced by people or created by people and don't exist in the abstract beyond that. Dividing the book into such chapters is not a problem as such but might not have been necessary.
I had a good, long look at,
the finisher chips
discretely on the rough work
on page 30.
I was once told that you listen to the brass to find out if an orchestra are any good, presumably because that's the hardest thing to get right. I think one can look at poets using difficult words to see if they know what they are doing. There are 'discrete' and 'discreet' that are different things and can trip up the unwary writer. I should never have doubted Bill.
The things in 'Things' are nature, music and the environment before the poems move into religious themes. The music is Charlie Parker, a generous tribute to Miles Davis, a 'flagship for messages/ of the heart' and Modest Mussorgsky.
Some of these poems use 'the space on the page' and set the lines out for the eye, like Robert Duncan, or was it Gary Snyder, did in the 1970's. It was a fashion once and maybe still is in some circles in California but I'm never sure if it does the words any favours. There again, I'm English and by now think avant-garde is old-fashioned. And not everybody will relish the explicit Christianity expressed as the tone becomes more coruscating approaching its climax but, if the book began so beguilingly and quietly, it ends powerfully with Final Flight, 9/11 and the twin towers, and the decision to jump 'the quarter-mile journey back to earth' rather than burn alive.
That's not an easy subject to do justice to. Michael Stipe made a good job of it on Leaving New York, at a slight angle. Bill's poems don't flinch from taking any such subject head on. They are not 'literary', not ironic but are sincere and true and there's plenty worse things to be than that. He has produced a genuine and genuinely rewarding book.
