Poetry, the most exhibitionist of the arts

The power of pain in poetry increases if the writing is neither forced nor sentimental. Such are Adi Assis’ poems about the child he has failed to bring into the world.

 

Thursday 17 December 2015

Assis reveals the depths of his heart in his work, closer than even an intimate discussion with a soul mate. Of course, this quality isn’t enough to create good writing, but it is a vital basis for strong poems, which continue to make us tremble at such unexpected, direct contact with the poet’s exposed soul.

I don’t feel comfortable admitting this, but cheerful, enthusiastic poems don’t leave their mark. The ones that shake up the reader the most are those in which the poet has refined pain into searing lines. [ . . . ] The tension between an extremely loaded subject and highly restrained writing electrifies us.

The first section of Assis’ book Child grants the book its title. This series of poems is exceptional in its exhibitionism and its sorrow over the child the writer and his wife have failed to bring into the world. ‘You have no flesh / child, you are blood // spilling over the legs / of your mother / into the toilet’.

The lines are delivered as reportage that cannot mask their sorrow, addressing the missing child:

The sterile efforts to conceive are repeated, piling an unbearable emotional burden upon the reader. The poet’s world, and ours with it, contracts into a vortex of loss:

And:

The suffering of the wretched who can impregnate the rich with happiness also arises amid all this pain:

[ . . . ]

In the way of genuine poetry, its honesty unrestricted, the rage over the failed child also rises. It explodes into insults taken from the medicine cabinet of the fertility expert:

[ . . . ]

Adi Assis’ poetry injects us with the distress that consumes his days and nights. His laments madden us as we find ourselves rare witness to circumstances usually hidden from view, and even more profoundly, to the hidden reaches of the poet’s heart.