Nine Immaterial Nocturnes, Tony Towle. Immaterial is
one of those two-headed terms, conveying qualities of the insubstantial
and — hey! — metaphysical. A whiff of eerie in a self-putdown, I guess. Towle’s
adoption of the term is a quiz for me in that his accomplishment is neither
incorporeal nor slight, unless we consider a run of nine one-page poems
slight. This is not the case with Towle, I maintain, since
whether in long or shorter pieces no other poet better spoofs
yearning for self-engrandizement of the individual as creator, nor more
envelops his readers within the self-searching generation entailed in
composition “‘...you can sweep easily through the words / of a talented
writer,’ the critic said / but not of me alas.” This is Towle speaking
to the occasion of something like this very one-paragraph survey,
perhaps, “...nobody’s poetry is any good / until someone in prose says
it is.” Towle’s luck is early on to be welcomed (personally as well as
in praiseful prose) into the second generation of the New York School
under the nurturing auspices of Frank O’Hara, only to live through the
subsequent atomization of the scene after O’Hara’s death, to witness the
metamorphosis of the craft from one of avocation to career path. There
is, doubtless, a
cartoonist gesturing that smooths over such
a shift in
aesthetic temperament, imaging himself decades after his
entry into poetry among the old-timer “cactuses...keeping our spines
straight out all night...an effort well worth it.” The effort is a
countermeasure to the careless as “we force wit, / laughter and subtlety
to carry gloom, / lamentation and humorlessness on their shoulders.”
Towle continues to play historian and geographer in his references (“I
pick up a copy of Medieval Ways to Have Fun”; after putting back “What
Brooklyn Means to Me”; in the poem “Hudson and Worth” we are informed
one of these is “the former Anthony Street”). His metaphoric digressions
are erudite audacities (“Catherine the Great draws even closer, / her
Russo-Teutonic bosom heaving...the empress is coming to resemble /
Margaret Dumont..."). Towle’s game is tableau completion, nine tableaux
here, each incorporating social commentary that adds texture to the
view, as in “Le Voyage.” This is a 13-liner that manages to capture
moments when the I is composing and planning a visit to
France while walking “in fashionable Tribeca” airing, evidently in
English and French, “topics of internalized interest.” The poem
recognizes “voices have informed me” and “Every little breeze / takes on
import” especially since this is “Hurricane Awareness Week” (though, in
another voice of droll recognition, this is just another start to “Real
Estate Avarice Month”). In closing lines, Towle’s self-conscious
determination and hilarity resolve the prospect, a stunning rendition of
poet in action: “I walk down the street, / ... the passersby assume
I am on an unseen cell phone, / a bilingual conference call of
schizophrenic significance.” An immaterial self-putdown, precisely so.