Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
THERE IS only one way to put 165 poems on to 114 pages (and the type is not small or crowded together either). They have to be short. Really, really short.
That is what Rudyard Fearon, a Jamaican from Clarendon who has been living in Toronto, Canada, since 1974, has done with the double book Spin and Free Soil, the former being more recent and the latter being the translation to page of a previously recorded CD-Rom.
The emphasis is on Spin (Free Soil is not even mentioned on the cover), so I focused totally on that book of 102 poems on 63 pages.
How short is short? Try the title poem for size. It reads 'Spin the coin/Nothing else between us.' That's it. Three lines, including the title.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then Rudyard Fearon is extremely witty; frankly, at times too witty for me. Take 'Pop Pop', which goes 'On this fertile ground/I will scatter my seed./Pop/Pop Pop/Grow seeds grow.' There is hardly anything profound or poetic in that. The same goes for 'The Blackman', which goes 'Beware/The Blackman/He is still/Asleep.'
When Fearon misses the mark like this, his poetry comes across as broken sentences whose attempt at depth goes millimetres deep.
However, when Fearon hits the mark he does so to very good effect. In 'Spin', he first does so with 'Red Letters', a poem about writing poetry. Fearon's imagery is good as he writes:
"This is my blood
I will not waver.
I will drip
Red
Letters
To the next generation."
Coming to the close of the collection, Fearon again gives a good take on writing with 'The Poet', which reads 'the inmates/at the looney bin/hail the poet/"comrade!'
He gives two good takes on age in 'Cobweb' ('Look what/the cobweb/gathered:/a man/and a chair./How they used to rock') and 'Big Breasts' ('I love those big breasts./I wonder/When those big breasts/Start to sag/Will I still love those big breasts?').
Yet, in between he bowls me with 'talk', which goes 'a wandering duck:/quack quack quack ...'
This inconsistency points to a major flaw of Spin. Instead of cramming so many poems (as short as they are) into the collection, Fearon would have done well to edit for quality and not assault us over with quantity. Because he does have some good poems; it is sorting through the rest that is the trouble.
But Fearon reserves the right to pursue his art how he wants to, stating in 'this is my poem':
"this is my poem
and I write it
anyhow.
I write it
Long.
I write it
Short
I write it
Anyhow".
And that is hardly poetic, but Fearon does not seem to be bothered much.
