DAVID LAWTON’S THE GRAVEYARD OF MEMORY

When I think of America during the 1950s, I’m especially drawn to the Abstract Expressionism of Richard Diebenkorn’s paintings. Particular in their exposure of color fields, lines and geometric shapes.

Reading David Lawton’s latest collection of poems, “The Graveyard of Memory”, I immerse myself in 50s Americana made familiar with mentions of Tom Sawyer, references to Television City in Hollywood, a Jack Kerouac epigraph, Marty Matz recalled in the title of a poem, General Electric, Rockabilly, even a forgotten actor like Doug McClure.

The opening poem, “Outside of Providence”, originates mention of trainyard before the reference to graveyard in a later poem.

The yard image echoing a feeling of generality and placement. In this case Trainyard where I saw my first graffiti, cryptic directions on a wall calling me to New York City.

Originally from Boston, his family spent summers along the seacoast of Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. These memories as a means of honor along with a background as a theater person and actor with a love for music makes a great and heartfelt presence throughout the poems in the book.

Imagery that evoke a sense of Diebenkorn colors are muted grays of cable spools, cross ties, or the expressionism of fast food trash, all from the poem “Outside of Providence”.

Heart of blue water oil slick rainbows an image referenced in the poem reframes what would be animated colors of rainbows. Placing the emphasis on the heart of blue water oil slickness.

Heart, hereby, not obsessive or possessed. There’s a candor, welcoming warmth, as the images are not pulled from fantasies. They make do with what is in the common and everyday, Sodden baseball diamond without a tarp.

And yet as the poem closes, My oh my, when they blow the whistle. Oh my oh, when they sound the horn. Is glory always reinstated.

The hosanna within the everyday is a revelation. Finding joy in things we take for granted.

The idea that the vibrant colors orange, yellow and red on a Halloween night can be reduced to White as sheet on Halloween night from “Bygone Whales North of Boston”.

When describing a neighborhood in “Pirandello’s Directions for Crossing the Charles River”, Lawton chooses the words grimy, busy. Suggesting a means of disillusionment not in the evocation of violence. Rather, the words grimy and busy presents a feeling. An option for what another poet would depict viscerally and particularly chaotic.

Here, everything is tempered in a poet who is less about shocking and more rooted in the care with which he emotes a boyishness with his charm, as in the mentioning of childhood fantasy and choice of the words cotton candy pink and kissy-poo lips from the aforementioned poem “Bygone Whales of Boston”.

There’s a shaping of innocence, a boy in the man. My saxophone teacher was the man in the moon, opening line from “Luminous Philosopher” when interpreted imagines someone who is idolized not just as a saxophone teacher but as the man in the moon an eccentric theatricality which goes on further in the next line, Enlightening me with his luminescence.

Making the already celebrated figure seem magical and transformative. Borne on sky dive cubicle effusion, another line from the same poem is the proto-modern language that spins off a generalized commonality.

If you eat eggs all the time, you know what they taste like with the idiomatic and staccato lines of A beard does not a philosopher make. But sometimes a mustache peat moss do bee do bee doo.

The juxtaposing and contrast of the everyday common themes, If you were stuck in traffic on the east side of town from the poem “The Woburn Odor” which deals with the odorous smell of rotten eggs in Woburn, Massachusetts caused by hydrogen sulfide gas compares with the peculiarity of the poem entitled “Home”.

Something drew me, pitch and rolled me, blissful barefoot, flapjack step dance. Primal timber, slipstream skip trace, ectoplasmic, gritty wood grain.

Brought into the placement of a familiar setting, the poem “Home” trips from a form of frankness creating an art song swing band effect. Once again making use of the proto-modern language frequent through out these poems.

Even the construction and building of the stanzas within the poem visually appear to be an image of stairs. Adding to the notion of an experienced builder not only of a home but the creativity in the managing of the poem as a work of art.

The memory in the title “The Graveyard of Memory” is an echo of what once was, implied even as these poems capriciously form a meditatively conscious drive towards a reimagined form of beat poetry. Accentuating that very 50s grounding of Americanism made popular in music, literature and art.

Language within these poems can be muscular.

This place pops open its jaws like a cold blooded reptile at lunch or sexual, A girl with her tits out descends the stair or And two soccer moms kiss each other with their tongues, all in the poem “Cave” which uses an epigraph from Jack Kerouac, “One cave inward” from Mexico City Blues, 16^th Chorus.

Its all a commentary on the disillusioned meandering from what passes for reality these days. While our heroes are dying off, the music on the radio’s just an audition for a car commercial. Everyplace so thick with product placement. We struggle to come together as a tribe as once we did without even trying.

This tribe include mentioning of eccentricity of extraordinary men common in their persona including the rock and roll musicians Black Francis of The Pixies and D. Boon from Minute Men.

Tried to break in the city jail to make his escape. Rode passed out all night on the Huntington line. One time too many stuck in traffic on the overpass. Has him of the opinion that he’s misplaced his mind.

There’s a notion of a boyish charm as suggested earlier, but offhandedly a masculine rage as in a night spent drinking from the previous verse in “Boston Black Francis”, intertwined with an affront in the calling of names, That fat bastard who played the Criminologist from the poem “Gray/Grey’s”.

Lawton professes a masculinity as in the kind of man who could build a house but be just as happy living in it with his dog. Independently free to live an honest to goodness real life. Occasionally interrupted by spontaneous dreams.

From the poem “Sunrise Matinee”. Technicolor lack of action clouding your eyes. Charged by the static of stasis. You cannot turn your head away from the hours that steal you from your dreams.

Kofi Forson is a writer and art collaborator. He currently guest-hosts Whitehot Magazine’s Art World podcast.