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Two Shots of Whimsy
Dec. 16th, 2024 05:05 pmBus Stop, John Francis Haynes and The Long Trip, Dainis Bisenieks, 2006, Hilltop Press, ISBN 0 905262 38 7, distributed by www.bbr-online.com/catalogue. $4/£1.75. Not paginated, but 16 pages total. Saddle stitched with a color photocopy cover on front and back. Both covers are by Gunter Wessalowski. This slim volume has the appearance of a typical small-press chapbook, except it is laid out like an Ace double; one poem is right side up beginning in the front of the book, whereas the other poem is upside down and progresses from the back. Or the other way around.
Of course the whimsy in this book is European (British and German) and Pennsylvanian (which is east for me). I like the covers. The reproduction could be better, but it's quite acceptable. Let's look at "The Long Trip" first. Stark geometric objects, organic forms, and bleak emptiness on the cover go well with this poem about an interstellar voyage. The poem only hints at the outcome of the voyage and says nothing about the long trip's purpose. The purpose of the poem, if I may presume to claim that I understand the author's intent, is to show us the dark side of voyaging. If you don't know where you're going, or why, and you don't know where you are when you stop on the way, and you don't know what you are looking at when you make that stop, what does that say about the trip, you, and the universe? For Bisenieks, the universe is just this sort of unwelcoming and unfathomable place. In a few pages, he takes us there.
_The rainstorm ends, and the clouds draw away.
The captain gives orders: continue the trip.
Back into a world of neither night nor day
We follow our shadows into the ship._
Turn the book over. "Bus Stop" has a lush cover full of organic forms: plants, animals, and things that could be one or the other. There is a moon, which might be living, a spaceship, and a plethora of odd alien life forms. Open the book and you step into a dream. It doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the cover, but by the time you get to the end I think you'll see the connection. The protagonist in the poem (I hesitate to call him that because he doesn't make any progress) is trapped in what he believes to be a malignant dream. Alien landscapes and creatures are a dime a dozen in this dream, if dream it is. It reminds me a little of a dream I once had. The dreamer in this poem tries to escape back to reality, but he cannot. There is no explicit resolution, but the reader is left with some questions. Was it really a dream? Could it be reality? And if it's a dream, why? Drugs, the influence of mind-altering machines, bad luck? We don't know any of these things, but we do get a glimpse into mystery.
_The howling wind screamed around his ears.
Through chattering teeth and half-shut eyes he peered
At walls of ice and two pale, limpid suns.
It really must be time to wake up now_
Certainly these two poems go together like left foot and right. They could be pages torn from books in a library of SFnal dementia. Steve Sneyd, science fiction poetry's historian and publisher of Hilltop Press, knows how to pick them.
Of course the whimsy in this book is European (British and German) and Pennsylvanian (which is east for me). I like the covers. The reproduction could be better, but it's quite acceptable. Let's look at "The Long Trip" first. Stark geometric objects, organic forms, and bleak emptiness on the cover go well with this poem about an interstellar voyage. The poem only hints at the outcome of the voyage and says nothing about the long trip's purpose. The purpose of the poem, if I may presume to claim that I understand the author's intent, is to show us the dark side of voyaging. If you don't know where you're going, or why, and you don't know where you are when you stop on the way, and you don't know what you are looking at when you make that stop, what does that say about the trip, you, and the universe? For Bisenieks, the universe is just this sort of unwelcoming and unfathomable place. In a few pages, he takes us there.
_The rainstorm ends, and the clouds draw away.
The captain gives orders: continue the trip.
Back into a world of neither night nor day
We follow our shadows into the ship._
Turn the book over. "Bus Stop" has a lush cover full of organic forms: plants, animals, and things that could be one or the other. There is a moon, which might be living, a spaceship, and a plethora of odd alien life forms. Open the book and you step into a dream. It doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the cover, but by the time you get to the end I think you'll see the connection. The protagonist in the poem (I hesitate to call him that because he doesn't make any progress) is trapped in what he believes to be a malignant dream. Alien landscapes and creatures are a dime a dozen in this dream, if dream it is. It reminds me a little of a dream I once had. The dreamer in this poem tries to escape back to reality, but he cannot. There is no explicit resolution, but the reader is left with some questions. Was it really a dream? Could it be reality? And if it's a dream, why? Drugs, the influence of mind-altering machines, bad luck? We don't know any of these things, but we do get a glimpse into mystery.
_The howling wind screamed around his ears.
Through chattering teeth and half-shut eyes he peered
At walls of ice and two pale, limpid suns.
It really must be time to wake up now_
Certainly these two poems go together like left foot and right. They could be pages torn from books in a library of SFnal dementia. Steve Sneyd, science fiction poetry's historian and publisher of Hilltop Press, knows how to pick them.
