Friday, December 4, 2020

Poetry Review: Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies by Scott Ferry

When a collection opens with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, and a poem called “Gabriel Garcia Marquez changes a diaper,” you know you’re in for something delightfully surreal. It is divided into sections that make good on that promise: Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies, How to cross eyelid bridge and Divination by. 

In the first section, Joseph Campbell, Jane Goodall, the titular Won’t You Be My Neighbor guy, and other recognizable faces appear, carrying out tasks that are sometimes mundane (flossing), and sometimes not so mundane (riding a camel). The bemused and plaintive bizarre bazaar tone reminds me of Eliot’s “The Wasteland”: “What year is this?/Phillipe, are you here, back there on one of those swaying beasts?” (I love Eliot, so this makes me happy.) But the surrealness is not without purpose—Gabriel Garcia Marquez gives us the opportunity to consider fatherhood and mortality; Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall, as you would imagine, let us consider the world and our place in it; Marie Curie is a meditation on science that both elevates and diminishes, giveth and taketh away. 

How to cross eyelid bridge is subtitled Titles of children’s books that will never be written. Ferry captures images that are both childish (imaginary creatures like Sasquatches, bees, school, biting), and the attendant dread and exhilaration. The Divination by section explores the many, many means of trying to tell the future—brontomancy, clediomancy, entomancy. There is no end to the strange rituals people have concocted to try to figure out where we’re going, but the divination poems force us to look inside ourselves. One of my favorites is “Nephomancy: by clouds,” which says: 


I used to dream of walking into them

by climbing up my cement wall. 

I didn’t know what I would do there, 

I was five. I just knew there 

could be a place without yelling, 

or sirens, or people.


Heartbreaking, because it speaks to where we came from, as well as where we are now. Who doesn’t occasionally dream about a celestial realm where we can be free?  

Throughout the collection, the language is lush and gorgeous. Ferry is an RN and scientific, especially medical terms, are woven throughout, which provides a nice counterbalance to the fanciful. What I like best about these poems is the way they challenge you to step outside yourself, outside of your ordinary reality. This collection is definitely an escape worth pursuing. I heard in some English class or other that it's the poet's job to elevate the mundane and to make the fantastic accessible. On both counts, Ferry knocks it out of the park. 

Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies is available from the Main Street Rag bookstore

Learn more about Scott Ferry and his work here

 


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