Megan Mayhew Bergman: Birds of a Lesser Paradise

Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman, Scribner 2012By HEDY ZIMRA

Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Megan Mayhew Bergman’s debut story collection, is a disquieting foray into 21st century realism. There are twelve stories united by their connection to the natural world and mothers. Each one is an examination of contemporary life told with mercy.  The close study of motherhood, both animal and human, informs the tone of the stories and those that inhabit them. There are dystopian elements that keep the prose from becoming sentimental, population control activists, artificial organs that keep people alive for too long, bow hunters. Animals such as the whale, chinchilla, raccoon, feature prominently with copious details that offer an empirical texture to the sentences.

In the first story, “Housewifely Arts,” which was published in both One Story and Best American Short Stories 2011, the eponymous bird is a metaphor for distance. A single mother is on a road trip to Myrtle Beach with her small son in search of an African Gray Parrot that she had given to a roadside zoo after her mother’s death. A strong voice is immediately established. “I am my own housewife, my own breadwinner. I make lunches and change lightbulbs. I kiss bruises and kill copperheads from the back creek with a steel hoe.” The narrator wants to retrieve Carnie so that she can hear her mother’s voice once more.  A sound that she cannot remember with clarity, but she is hoping that the thirty-six year old parrot is still capable of flawless mimicry.

“In our house, the word breeding was said with the same vitriol used when mentioning Republicans, Tim Tebow, and pit bull fight clubs,” says a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant in “Yesterday’s Whales”. She and her partner are population control activists for the EWU (Enough With US), frequenting coffee houses to spread their message and recruit new members.  The prose is sharp and bittersweet with Mayhew Bergman reminding us of the power that biology wields over our modern lives.

The stories in this collection each have a tenacious voice and gaze out into the world with psychological depth.  Regret and acceptance collide on the page. “Remember,” I told my mother, “I’m not obligated to look after the bird.” “Well, she said, “I’m not obligated to look after you.” Mayhew Bergman’s keen observations of the animal kingdom are so convincing that one wonders how she didn’t have a prior career as a zookeeper or scientist. The writing could be the offspring of an Alice Munroe and Amy Hempel marriage. The controlled nature of the prose with descriptive language used when necessary echoes Hemingway’s Men Without Women. Even some of the stories feel inspired. “Yesterday’s Whales” reminded me of “Hills Like White Elephants” with a woman’s body changing and an unplanned pregnancy. Her ability to elevate the mundane into a something profound at the single sentence level makes this collection worth reading.  Her characters, both gusty and damaged, exist to listen and propel each other forward through their lives. In a sea of oft too-clever writing and sarcasm, this felt unusually authentic.

Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman, Scribner 2012, ISBN: 978-1-4516-4335-0

Hedy Zimra  reads poems and fiction for PANKand teaches high school in Providence, RI.

We accept book reviews for our website. Please query via the contact page before submitting. Reviews must be under 1000 words. Our aim is to support new and emerging writers, and other small presses. Poetry and experimental prose reviews preferred. Review submissions accepted all year round.

Brant Lyon: You Are White Inside

You Are White Inside by B. R. Lyon, Three Rooms Press, 2011

By MARK FOGARTY

(Personal note: This review was written before Brant's sudden passing on May 12. Since my grandmother's name was Lyon I've always claimed Brant as a cousin. If not closely related by blood we were poetic cousins certainly. I invited Brant to feature recently at the reading I run in GainVille Cafe, Rutherford, NJ, and he came out and read many of the poems in his wonderful new book. We swapped books and I was knocked out by his as you saw above. I'm glad I told him I was impressed with his work, and glad I had him out to GainVille for a deeply felt curtain call. I wish he could have read this review, which will run in the next issue of the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. He leaves us at a very high point indeed with this stunning work about the triumph of love. Bravo, Brant!)

You Are White Inside is a very satisfying book of poetry. It has a shapely arc, is entranced with word play (a good thing), and it sings about love in an upbeat dare-to-hope-for way. And, after having followed it around until you think you know everything that?s going on, the last poem will give you a huge and pleasant surprise.

Brant Lyon's collection declares artfulness immediately. While many poets celebrate the senses, I became aware in this book of the prominence of one of them, the sense of smell. Lyon declares this, and defines himself, in the second poem of the collection, "Oaths." I am a scrivener with a red moist nose, he says. And the things he smells are hugely important to the work, going right through the last poem "Unfinished Business," which starts by smelling a flower and then, lest that seem too poetic, kvetches perfume gives me a headache, and tries to plumb his relationship with his mother by saying I sniffed your charmed car coat. The olfactory sense guides Lyon again and again through the maze of the book. (I use this word to mean both confinement and amazement.)

More artfulness: Lyon can use the same word in a poem as two different parts of speech, like noun and verb. Here's one: canoptic jars (used in Egyptian mummifying) is used as a noun but becomes a verb just a few lines later: vibrating buses jar images of sons. Other word pairs I noticed were fellah and fellaheen and sheathed and unsheathed. More poets should do this.

You Are White Inside fully hits its stride in the second part, also called "You Are White Inside." Here Lyon travels to adventurous sands with a series of poems about a longterm relationship he has had with an Egyptian man. The blankness of white brings up the terrifying specter of the white whale, but that's not really where he is going. In fact, it is the opposite direction.

"You Are White Inside," the section that is, is a series of love poems celebrating (and puzzling and sniffing out) the two lovers' bi-continental relationship. Not everything is wonderful (the virus rears its ugly head) but it is mostly wonderful. I was especially knocked out by poems called "The Egyptian Day Falls on the 13th" and "Omoo Hassan" (didn't Melville write a novel called Omoo?). When you write poems like this the haunts over your shoulder aren't the Melvilles but rather the Rumis and the Shakespeares. These poems are both understated and overwhelming. I'm tempted to rank them but I'll settle for this: they are beautiful.

The book ends with an unexpected (to me) revelation and the prospect of a little more happiness in the world. If this was a Greek tragedy, you'd call this the deus ex machina. But it isn't a tragedy. In searching around for a different classical metaphor that more aptly describes You Are White Inside, I'd go for the parade the Romans gave their generals after a return from adventurous sands (including Egypt!).

I'd call it a triumph.

You Are White Inside by B. R. Lyon, Three Rooms Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0983581321

Mark Fogarty has had fiction and poetry published in numerous journals including Footwork, Hawaii Review, Viet Nam Generation, Eclectic Literary Forum, Cokefishing in Alpha Beat Soup, and The Unrorean. He is managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. Mark is also is a journalist and musician.

We accept book reviews for our website. Please query via the contact page before submitting. Reviews must be under 1000 words. Our aim is to support new and emerging writers, and other small presses. Poetry and experimental prose reviews preferred. Review submissions accepted all year round.

Aimee Herman and how she never uses the door

There are some poets out there who think if you say the words "clitoris" or "fuck" they are being different and controversal.  When Aimee Herman does it it's necessary.  There is a difference.  There are sex poems and then there are poems of the body and Aimee certainly falls under the category of the body.  I've been to readings before and a poet will start getting very explicit and sexual and the crowd gets all into it but there is no art in it, might as well be writing Hustler letters or something.  With Aimee those kinds of innuendos are necessary because there is art involved and a unique voice.  Now Aimee's poetry has alot more layers than sex and the body but you can tell they are interests of her's.  She has a new book of poetry coming out called "To go without blinking" and she'll be premiering poems from it this friday at Side walk Cafe at 7pm (Ave. A and 6th St.)  You won't regret seeing this wonderful poet perform.  She almost makes you think she's talking about your body, which in a way she is, but she's got nothing but her body on the mind which is why she is such an important artist, she lets you in without showing you the door.