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Michael Casey was recently on my Somerville Media Show Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer, where we discussed his new book of poetry. Here is a review of the book by Dennis Daly.

Review by Dennis Daly

When understated, casual, colloquial poetry – you know, the type that anyone can write – jolts winsome expectations with subtext after insightful subtext, watch out. Michael Casey has been writing this type of poetic narrative at least since 1972, when Stanley Kunitz chose his book Obscenities for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Casey’s new book, there it is New & Selected Poems, chronicles his inspired career with lyrical monologues like no others. His poetry lures you in with its blue collar simplicity and sets you up, sometimes within a single piece, sometimes cumulatively.

The collection’s opening poem, and one of my favorites, the last Yankee, packs a wallop. Casey narrates the travails of a house-poor elderly lady as she negotiates the twists and turns of life’s labyrinth. Her attempts to keep up appearances elicit the reader’s sympathy. On the other hand, her flaws conjure up consternation and an interesting tension. Consider these lines,

 

… she stood outside

pretending her bags

were filled with groceries

she said the City of Lowell

made an offer to give her

so much a month if only

she’d sign over the house

the owner of the Irish nursing home

tried a similar deal too

but she didn’t like the idea

the politicians and nursing home owner

were trying to steal her house

and she wanted me to understand

that two things ruined this town

unions and Catholics

 

One of the hallmarks of first and second generation immigrants in the now old industrial towns such as Lowell was rote learning. Catholic nuns often provided the delivery system. In his poem, severed head, Casey mixes brutality with venomous wit. Sister Superior, doubling as a substitute teacher, and a defensive one at that, asks the question, What did Marco Polo discover? Louie, the usually quiet student, answers, polo. The enraged Sister Superior assaults Louie with a metallic edged ruler (all Catholic school students of that era know the ruler I’m talking about) and opens up a blood-spewing gash in his head. There is not a little irony here. Additionally, Louie was correct. Marco Polo most probably saw buzkashi, a Central Asian game, played with a goat’s head, during his travels. In fact polo was most likely named after him. Here’s the piece’s denouement,

 

he bled all over

had to go to the hospital for stitches

his mother takes him

out of St Michael’s

transfers him to the Varnum

I see him much later

and says to him

Lou, why’d y’ever raise your hand?

why say Marco Polo discovered polo?

and Louie goes

he did didn’t he?

he goes you know

Mongolian horsemen with a severed head

 

Many of Casey’s mill poems drive home the inevitability of human nature in labor calculations, as well as survival traits. Laugh out loud funny and stupidity does not entirely cancel out the underlying employment danger. The poet explains,

 

this new guy

he throws a bucket of the stuff

into the kettle

it splashes back

his ass was on fire

runnin all over the dye house

Walter chasin after him

it was Alfred and me caught him

and Walter helped us

throw him in a soap barrel

same fuckin guy

was gonna bring home

industrial peroxide

for his wife to dye her hair

Walter caught him then

just in time

 

Elevator transport holds the key to business success or failure in the factory world. Casey puts an exclamation point on this dictum in his poem entitled forklift driver. Humorously, the poet pins the sins of the world or at least its endangerment on a single multiple offender, the all-powerful forklift driver. In the heart of the piece the poet details the infraction,

 

he tried to drive the forklift in it

when the door was closed

that is the third day in a row

something like that happened

I’d say to him

don’t even bother ta punch out

just leave

it’d  be worth the week’s pay or so

just to get rid of him

do you know how important

that fuckin elevator is?

 

Drawing from his experience in the military police, the poet narrates with a combination of horror and black humor. The pieces themselves are insightful well-cut diamonds. Casey’s poem frisk especially sparkles. After the arrestee lets loose a torrent of verbal abuse, the MPs take action. Then the piece, noting the response, concludes with three punch lines. Take your pick,

 

who taught you how to talk tat nice?

guy replies

your mother and his sister

Harry and I didn’t say a word to him

we just looked at reach other

and then kicked

the drunk’s feet away from the wall

his face fell nose first

flat on the concrete

his neck actually cracks and snaps up

and I would not have cared more less

it was Harry’s fault anyway

he should a kept quiet

I don’t even have a sister

 

War equals death. Those who engage in it better understand its unbounded bestiality. Good people become good soldiers by killing. In fact, both good soldiers and dead soldiers share certain traits. Casey’s persona in his piece Victor poses with an explanation,

 

… they back up the jeep

to take the picture looking down

and that is why the ground

is the actual background for the picture

except for that and the flies

the picture they took

makes both of us look alive

 

I’ve never seen sheer power and keen intellect and down-to-earth humor fused in just this way. Once again Casey’s poems detonate our hitherto artistic calm with their dangerous uniqueness.