Double Penetration, a new release from horrorsleazetrash.com, is a book of poetry by two authors: Ben Smith and Ryan Quinn Flanagan. The book is split into two sections where each author has roughly thirty-five pages in which to tell their story. Each section is superb and complements the other perfectly, which is something rare in a book that features two authors. Instead of splitting my review to cover both collections, I’m going to concentrate my review on the poetry of Ben Smith.
Ben Smith
What I really want to talk about in this review is Ben Smith’s thirty-six page contribution to Double Penetration – which is, in-and-of-itself, well worth the $10 price of admission. What’s commendable about Ben Smith’s writing is its absolute, unflinching, honest approach to the subject matter. These poems are stripped of pretension, stark, realistic portrayals of human nature: whether crying on the toilet because a child’s self-esteem is smashed by a careless remark from his mother, cramming a beer bottle into the face of “a drunk” who urinates on the author’s couch, masterbating in front of “a webcam” for kicks, or performing oral sex on “a good mate” for three thousand dollars when times are tough, Ben Smith lays everything on the line to stay honest.
These poems make no attempt to mask or hide our imperfections. They remind me of an opera I once attended. I was in the front row. The entire show the female lead inadvertently spit on us. I don’t even think she knew she was doing it. She was lost in the music. While everyone around me shielded themselves from her spittle with their arms and programs, I just sat there letting the music (and her spit) wash over me. All that spitting was necessary! It was required for her to hit the notes, to dig deep enough to capture the emotions required to sell those songs.
Profanity and vulgarity in poetry.
The same argument can be applied to the vulgarity of language and subject matter in Ben Smith’s poetry. He could, of course, find different words to use than profane ones but that would inject a falsity into Smith’s poetry. This is the way that Smith talks, and, for that reason, these are simply the best words. Smith, by the same token, could choose different subject matter than blow-up dolls, masturbation, or urinating all over “his stomach/and tattoos” in the bathtub, but that would mean being dishonest in his work. If great poetry is anything, it involves writing what you know, putting the right word next to the right word, and digging deep within the muck and mire and stench of it all – to make the reader think deeply about something they normally would have overlooked.
A great example of this marriage between the mundane and the profound is Smith’s poem “The drainer.” Here, a woman is in the bath on the telephone talking to “a woman from child care,” presumably regarding the welfare of her children. The author walks in and starts urinating loudly into the toilet bowl.” When the woman hushes him, he spits in the bowl, slams the lid, and flushes the toilet “so it roars.” Inside the author’s head he’s thinking “to hell with your job” and your “precious children” because “we are all going down/the potty” anyway. Smith has taken something as mundane as urination and transformed it into a statement on mortality. Sure, he could’ve chosen some less offensive subject matter to make his point, but that is where the value in Smith’s poetry lives and breathes. It’s about telling your story as best you can, using whatever available fodder you have – and being honest in your telling.
Putting yourself out there as the freak in question.
It takes more than guts to reach as deep into yourself as Ben Smith, it requires the ability to really put yourself out there as the freak in question. You need to accept yourself, your freakish qualities – as well as humanity, in all its ugliness.
One of the great metaphors of the book (that speaks to Smith’s dedication and longing for “real poetry”) involves a man with “brain damage” who takes the stage at an open-mic poetry reading and lets out “three low gut/frequency sounds.” As the author puts it: “A real sound/A sound with meat/A sound/with a/thumping heart.”
Afterwards, Smith pays the man who is “drooling everywhere” with his hat askew on his “peanut shaped head,” “cross eyed and stupid,” a perfect compliment by calling him “the greatest/poet of the day.” Indeed, just like that opera singer who sprayed spittle on the audience, or the author urinating in the toilet, there is more value in those three primal grunts than is found in a poem nobody can relate to.
I would rather have one honest poem from Ben Smith than an entire volume of fake, forced, academic poems. I can’t relate to those academic poems that throw away the best word for the best sounding word, and other than serving as useless experiments in language, they won’t heal me. Smith’s poems, on the other hand, will save the most desperate of us, lifting us from our heavy hours, where the air is as thick as concrete, pressing us down into the dirt.
These lines are a testament to the offering that Ben Smith has laid before us: honest poetry, stripped of pretension, highlighting the best and the worst of the human animal. In “Don Juan,” one of the rare love poems in Smith’s collection, he remarks, “Sometimes the most romantic/I can get is telling her/that I was having a wank and/couldn’t cum/until I thought of her.” Here Smith shines at his vulgar, primal best. Is the poem vulgar? Of course it is. Is the poem romantic? Of course it is. Does Smith convey his message while remaining true to himself? Of course he does. There is much that wannabe writers, pretenders and posers can learn from the writing of Ben Smith. Stop trying to sound intelligent, or poetic, and just let your bones speak – that is where the real poetry is found.
Double Penetration: A neccessary book.
One of my favourite poems from the collection is “Only a cheat to one thing.” Here the subject is a familiar one: an argument between a man and a woman about infidelity, imagined or otherwise. After an outburst of anger and malice, the narrator of the poem calls his woman a “crazy hooker” and proceeds to carve a swastika into his chest. The wound bleeds “all night” and the author has to hide the scab from everyone for a “couple of weeks,” lest they mistake him for “a racist.”
It was, after all, only a momentary outburst by the author, a drunken fit, a mental slip, not a symbol of “racism.” Here, as with every poem in Smith’s newest collection, humanity shines at its ugly best. The wound heals and there isn’t any scar, but (as words can’t be unsaid and actions can’t be undone) in the tradition of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, where we should always act in ways we want echoed throughout all eternity, “... on cold days/the white lines show up/to remind me/what it’s like/to be so full of hate/for no reason/at all.”
Double Penetration is a necessary book, something that safe readers and wannabe poets will hate. It cuts too close to the bone. It brings too many truths about ourselves, our family, spouses, friends and neighbours into the open light. It raises too many questions. It pushes too hard upon the boundary walls that polite society has taken so long to erect.
Thank goodness for authors like Ben Smith who put themselves out there as the freak in question – and make us feel better about our own freakish natures, which we so desperately try to hide from others. The poetry of Ben Smith teaches us that our imperfections are okay and that we needn’t take ourselves so seriously. These writings talk us down from our ledges, pry our fingers from the trigger and put knives back in drawers where they belong – they teach us to laugh at the absurdity and inevitability of life. They teach us that sometimes these ugly moments from home movie reels are “as beautiful/as we are ever/going to get.” They teach us to stop being fake with ourselves, our writing, and to just get up on stage, take in a deep breath and tell our stories in short primal grunts.
Source
- Smith, Ben, Double Penetration , 2010
