by Jonathan Woytek

Writing poetry is one way I have of coming to grips with both internal and external realities. I also think of my writing as a form of prayer -- a prayer for illumination, perfection.
--Robert Hayden

Jerry Springer. I was flipping through the channels at that unfortunate time of day when nothing's really on (is anything ever really on?), when I noticed quite a commotion on the Jerry Springer Show. It seemed that some poor souls had agreed to come on the show and try to explain to a ferocious, unruly studio audience, why they are like they are. To justify their appearance, or sexuality, or something of that nature, by means of telling their story to a blood-thirsty mob of strangers.

And, of course, at every sign of weakness, Springer, like some kind of junior Joseph McCarthy, would lead a verbal assault of questions and insinuations, stripping the flesh off the persons dignity, and throwing it piece by piece into his own personal lions den. Welcome to confessionalism in the '90s.

During the post World War II era, poets like Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and later Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, developed confessionalistic and analytic styles to their writings that would prove to have a great impact on American literature and art. Subjects once considered taboo, previously reserved for entries in the diaries and journals of writers, crept their way into the forefront of an emerging genre. The habit of keeping skeletons in the closet was becoming less and less practical in an ever changing world, the end result being that more writers using a realistic and introspective approach began making it into print. Then came Ginsberg talking about those "who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof / waving genitals and manuscripts" in his Beat-epic "Howl," and something really started getting stirred up. With the 60s, it hit the fan. The Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, it was all part of that bigger picture of people writing what they wanted, singing what they wanted, being who they were. So maybe Ginsberg to Jerry Springer is a stretch, but hey, it's the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario would be Dennis Ciscel and his second collection of poems called Patting The Air. Writing in a style that is extremely confessionalistic and disturbingly truthful at times, Mr. Ciscel gives a voice to a multitude of personae that fill the 60 poems in the book. From the spirit of a dead boy in "David's Song," to a transsexual talking about her days as a prostitute in "Angel's Song", the characters are all quite distinct and each is made convincingly real to the reader. Most of the poems are short, yet they are so finely crafted that each delivers a powerful message in the context of an event or a series of events in one of the persona's lives.

The themes of loss, pain, life, and love are all present and accounted for, but without an overkill of sentimentality. Everything happens very naturally, and Mr. Ciscel's concise and honest style of writing lends itself to that effect. In "Martin's Song", a poem where the speaker is dying of AIDS, the author shows the potency of the right metaphor in describing the ebbing of one's life:

In "About Abraham and Marta, then Abraham, then Marta," the author tackles larger issues of racism and religious hypocrisy, uncovering the contradictions of both. In the poem, set against the backdrop of the Holocaust, a German woman turns her lover over to the Nazis when she discovers he's a Jew. At the end of the piece she coldly recalls:

And when I died, after a good life, a practicing Christian all of my days, they said that I did not belong in Heaven. For turning in the Jew, they sent me to the lowest ring of Hell. Oh well, it was my purest moment, if you ask me.

In other poems dealing with subjects as delicate as suicide ("Bill's Song") and molestation ("Barry and His Sister"), the author's truthfulnes and underlying tones of spirituality, of right and wrong, pull the reader through an intense cycle of images and emotions. That's not to say that all of those emotions are solemn either. In the poem "David Sang This Song," Mr. Ciscel exhibits his lighter side. When the speaker, who is a young boy, receives his audience with God in Heaven, he asks why his father on Earth was so cruel. God tells him:

He was jealous of your youth and your mind and your brand-spanking new penis with which he feared you'd have more fun than he had had.

Throughout Patting The Air, the author maintains a graceful balance of wit, melancholy, anger, and contentment, yet each poem remains true to its confessionalistic roots. The reader is never left feeling like they didn't get the whole story, and sometimes you get more than you wanted. Not only does Mr. Ciscel prove to be a very perceptive poet, but he's also a skilled storyteller. As Robert Hayden would suggest, poetry for Dennis Ciscel is also a way of coping, of purging memories and demons, of dealing with life and death and all that's in between. He seems to have taken bits and pieces of the lives of those people who have passed through his realm of existence, and has done them a great justice. He has immortalized them in words, and shown the thread of humanity, be it beautiful or repulsive, that runs through all of us, no matter how alike or different we are. In the age of sensationalism, exploitation, and Jerry Springer, there's a lot to be said for that.

[Dennis Ciscel works in HIV prevention training and before that worked in alcohol and drug abuse counselling. He has lived in Austin for almost half his life and is a gay, single parent. HIs collections of poems Tiny Stories and Patting The Air were both published by Plain View Press and are available at Local Flavor, 305-B East 5th Street, (512) 472-7773.]