Last September, I came down harshly on the work of Jake Berry, a retro-avant-gardist whose work was included in the anthology Another South. I characterized Berry’s excerpt from his long poem Brambu Drezi as being “as dense a cluster of overwriting & cliché as I’ve come across in a long time.” Fireworks ensued, all quite predictable. Now Jack Foley, who was traveling when this all took place, has sent along as strong a defense of Berry’s writing as I’ve seen, so I thought it only fair to include it here.

 

I was out of the country when the brouhaha about Jake Berry erupted — and I just found out about it yesterday.

 

I don't want to open the fray again except to say that I admire Berry's work and that — though I realize you dislike what you've seen of it — I feel that, under other circumstances, you would be the first to question what kind of language gets designated as "cliche" or "overwritten." You remember, I'm sure, that these were charges regularly made against Robert Duncan's poetry.

 

Convincing anyone of almost anything is a task for angels, but this is a passage I like. It's the conclusion of the second book of Brambu Drezi. See if you like it too. The "Papa" is of course Papa Legba from the Voodoo tradition, and the "speaker" at this point is in some sense Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, Orpheus.

 

   We can no longer separate the stars
    or the currents in the navel of Hades
or Sadir, the breast,
         rising and falling in the swelling dark
    the kabbalists name Daath —
     no sky at all, but pure unbroken light
     the stars so compressed and alien
and the switchboard constantly nagging for attention
    "Will someone please get the damn phone?"
     what do these salesmen desire
        but to rob the cruxpoint of its heat,
caught themselves in the dragon's maw
         that points north and from there gathering the cups and uneaten cake
       the hungry traffic silence
(the pain one must bear to be comfortable in this world is enormous)
          here, a cafe buried in infinite daylight
               is a vibrant cancer here at the bottom of the well,
     We can no longer separate the clanging stars.

 

                 We begin.
              The dream has murdered the dreamer
                   with a key of tongues,
           her fingers manipulating the seabed,
            and the necklace between her breasts sobbing,
                  12 trees in the wound,
                  thunder in the west,
                  I study the heart of Brahma
                            and hear voices
             when they tore her from the tree
              the branches sighed
        down at the crossroads, down at the crossroads
               they say he comes smelling of graves.
                         hey Papa, please let me pass
                       see, I bring sweet tobacco
                                     and doves for stew
                     bury her heart beneath the roses
                       her eyes beneath the Oak
                 and she will rise again someday
              he wrote until dawn and received the third baptism of Spirit,
                           he clutched the adversary's thigh, and refused to
                   release his hold,
                               for a name, for a deal in blood,
                           to bear the mark
                           to bear the mark
                                               out of nothing

 

                                                                 a fire