William Allegrezza

Review of Raymond L. Bianchi's <I>Circular Descent</I> (BlazeVox, 2004, $12)

Reading Raymond Bianchi's Circular Descent is an experience in global experimental poetry, for Bianchi throws in Italian and Portuguese phrases, and he references artists and writers, such as Mondrian, Malevich, and Olson, from myriad cultural traditions. This work is Catholic, political, playful, and urban, and its poet is a city poet, especially of Chicago, and a political poet in much the same way that Latin American writers like Neruda, Martí, or Vallejo were political, which primarily means that he speaks openly of contemporary politics in ways that American poets often avoid. Take, for example, the first lines of the title poem, "Circular Descent:"

With a wink and a nod we are pressing Saudi
Arabia to monitor charities that are funded by
the tax dollars of people who work with their
hands.
This section shows his free discussion of the contemporary situation; however, his poetry is not limited to contemporary life, for his discussions are often expansive--Bianchi references many past events, experiences, and people, such as Mussolini in Italy, the White Sox, Gandhi, Picasso, and Marinetti. This poet seems as comfortable writing about "the Fascism of Starbucks" and Frosted Flakes as he does writing "high" cultural topics, which essentially shows that Bianchi has taken Ezra Pound's statement that the epic contains history to heart. I don't mean that Circular Descent is an epic--it is definitely a collection of experimental prose poems--; rather, Bianchi does not stray from any topic--he folds whatever is useful into his work, often creating historical and contemporary juxtapositions that push the reader to reexamine his or her beliefs about the original object or event. He also leaves one feeling that sometime in the future that he will attempt an American epic in the tradition of Leaves of Grass, Paterson, and The Cantos.

Peter Gizzi has called Circular Descent "wild and honest work," and for those of us in the Midwest who have heard of Raymond Bianchi for a while, that statement of his work is no surprise. In a poem, "Taurobolium," which functions as an ars poetica, Bianchi writes:

Every artist, in his work
expresses the deepest choices he has made.
Through reading the work, one feels that Bianchi's deepest choices have found voice in this exciting first collection, a collection which adds a new talent to the pose poem and shows a poet who has read widely in the experimental tradition and longs to push it in an interesting direction.

In conclusion, I had the chance to see Bianchi in Milwaukee. A few open mike poets read before him along with another poet, but as soon as Bianchi began to read, the drowsy audience was lulled out of its stupor. Bianchi's poems are challenging and exciting, and they work as well spoken as read; plus, his words stick with the reader. For example, after reading his collection, his words from "Cicero & Madison" kept circling in my head:

a beetle being sliced in half
with a razor blade
violence is managing to survive
disturbing dreams sequences
slaps of another.
This poem typifies Bianchi's experiment in Circular Descent while showing Bianchi's awareness of the difficulties of modern life. This is the reason that after having read through many collections recently, I will return to this one over and over again.






e-mail the reviewer at william.allegrezza@sbcglobal.net
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