What We’re Reading: Permanent Record
This is a collection of poems about the cycles of one man’s life. Put that simply, it might not sound intriguing; but trust me, Vinz captures the essence of each period in life with such potent relatability that you will find your poetic appetite satiated.
The book is in four sections; the first of which is called “Boys Will Be Boys”. Yes, it captures boyhood, and the discomfort that arrives with that. The speaker learns many things in this section, learning of his family’s baggage, the cost of things, authority, guilt, punishment, and simple enjoyment. Vinz captures this section especially (and the following sections, too) with straight-forward word choice. He also works his poetic muscles by being funny, irreverent, and heart-wrenching, all in the same poem.
One of the main themes of this first section is the emphasis on guilt, and not being a “good boy”, such as in the poem “Sayings”:
I
“Eat up and be somebody” was my mother’s
favorite saying, especially when it came
to all those vegetables left on my plate.
I knew the somebody she talked about
was probably a good boy, but I seemed
to be having some trouble with that one.
It’s an overhanging presence, this guilt, and one that is concentrated in a way that only an adolescent boy speaker could accomplish. Vinz’s straight forward, but well-chosen word choices pulled me right into that emotional setting. This guilt is translated into later sections with ideas of responsibility and habit.
There’s also a level of unknowing, uncertainty, and a sort of acquiescence to the fact that as a kid, our speaker will never have all the answers (at least not like adults think they do). However, he doesn’t seem too disturbed by this not knowing.
This section chronicles an age now past, an age of Ovaltine, squirming during church sermons, bicycles, and “family values.” Every once in a while, the passing of time catches up with the speaker, as it does in the poem “Cautionary Tales”, a poem about a bull in a pasture:
[…] And so I
skirted the acres just to keep my distance,
peeking through the leaves to see if he still
was watching me, waiting for some foolish move–
those fierce red eyes, the thunder in the ground–
or maybe that was simply nightmares. It’s
getting hard to tell, as years themselves keep
gaining ground relentlessly, their hot breath
on my back, and not a fence in sight.
The second section, “Sightseeing”, follows the speaker as an adult. He’s more self-assured, and the tone veers into less direct, more poetic prose. He’s comfortable following his whims where they wander. There is some cynicism that has come with age, but there is also an admiration of love and beautiful things, such as in the poem “A Perkin’s Love Poem”:
Their few scant words were limited to food,
and when his meal was done, her salad boxed
in styrofoam, they counted out their cash,
blinked at the chatty waitress, scraped back chairs,
lunged for each other’s hands, and hurried off,
perhaps to find some calmer, darker place —
one where they wouldn’t need to speak at all.
This whole section does what the title of the section denotes: sightseeing. Observing, learning from human relationships seen during the speaker’s travels and daily interactions. The first two sections contain more active learning; the last two sections which I’ll talk more about briefly in a moment, are more about reflective learning.
The third section is called “Curmudgeon Songs” which is prefaced with a Mark Twin quote: “There is no sadder thing than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.” Things have changed in this section; both in the world around the speaker, but also the speaker himself. He’s aged, has an urgency to his observations now. In the final section, “A Certain Age”, assisted living, doctors, and antiques are now his regular vocabulary. This is met with a quiet bewilderment at the pace of change, but also an acceptance.
While at times this felt too neat of a narrative, I appreciated the full circle of the speaker’s life. What other writers encapsulate an entire life in one poetic text?
