Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2011

The Black Ocean by Brian Barker   
Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. $15.95

Review by CL Bledsoe

As the title implies, Brian Barker’s The Black Ocean is, at once, dark, impenetrable, and alluring. One thing that sets Barker’s collection apart is his penchant for the extended poem. He begins the collection with “Dragging Canoe Vanishes from the Bear Pit into the Endless Clucking of the Gods”. This poem dredges Barker’s memories of a Cherokee roadside attraction which featured “six bears in the pit behind the moccasin shop” (line 1). Barker’s quarrel is with the lack of dignity, not only afforded the bears, but the Cherokees sacrificing their culture to survive, economically. He describes a “wheezing warrior” who sweeps garbage and a billboard inviting sightseers to “Have your photo taken with Dragging Canoe—/Fierce Warrior, Bear Tamer” (pg. 2, lines 17-18). A young Barker poses with Dragging Canoe beside a “yellow sheetmetal teepee…A faded headdress swung down his back” (lines 20, 25). Later, the young boy hears a ‘warrior’ crying in the men’s room. The boy follows the ‘warrior’ as he walks away from the attraction, shedding his accoutrements as he walks into the woods. Barker, likewise, examines the picture of himself as a young boy, which has also faded with time.

“Love Poem for the Last Night on Earth” allows Barker an opportunity to demonstrate his prowess in a more compressed poem. The poem is a catalogue of “my time on earth” (line 1). The world of Barker’s poem is an ominous one, even in the midst of celebration: “…our laughter/left teethmarks those long July days, /as the dark beyond our door culled its armies” (lines 8-10).

Many of Barker’s poems serve to paint a similar portrait of an ominous, forbidding world. “Gorbachev’s Ubi Sunt from the Future that Will Soon Pass” reflects upon the Cold War and the economic devastation it visited upon Russia, including Chernobyl. Much like with “Dragging Canoe…” Barker touches on a world that once appeared impressive but has fallen into ruin, “Where are the snows of yesteryear, Mr. President?” Gorbachev laments (line 1). Barker catalogues the decline of Russia, the tragedies suffered by its citizens in the doomed effort to save face while competing with America. “Silent Montage with Late Reagan in Black and White” is a nice bookend with the ubi sunt. Barker shows Reagan, the once strong president, now bedridden, hospitalized, fallen into dream, similar to Gorbachev.

Barker moves from global politics to issues plaguing us at home with “In the City of Fallen Rebels” which deals with drug culture and the associated violence. “Here comes the boy again, dragging his death/ by a string” Barker begins (lines 1-2). He manages the familiar scenes of a robbery and drug deal with surprising language. He describes the “light raked loose/like salted slugs” (lines 3-4), “the filthy burst mattress of the soul (line 8). He is ignored by even ‘the gods’ who see him as “a speck of shit in the eyelash of infinity” (line 16). His doom is inevitable, but there is a kind of poetry to his life. Barker describes a city full of the dead, “waking in vacant lots, / shoeless and soft in the weeds” (page 2, lines 14-15). He continues, “Here come/ the screwworms and roaches, the black ocean seething in its bowl/ and a whole century like a ship on fire” (lines 15-17). He seems to be describing the city as a black ocean full of life, but dark, impenetrable, populated by vermin.

Barker concludes the collection with “A Brief Oral Account of Torture Pulled Out of the Wind.” This (not actually brief) poem deals with the torture of political prisoners in mythic, imagistic language. Sections range from “What the Hood Whispers to the Head” to “What the Torturer Whispers to Himself in the Mirror.” Barker manages to demonstrate the dehumanization of prisoners, guards, and all involved, including audience, in stark terms while similarly exploring the true humanity of the torturer and the tortured. Barker’s compelling language and innovative approach make what could be a tedious study interesting and compelling.

Barker is a politically involved and socially aware poet who manages to balance moral rectitude with strong language. Though the subject matter of many of these poems is quite dark, the fact of barker’s attention offers hope. There is beauty in his language just as there is beauty in even the darkest of situations. Barker is a poet of rare skill, and this collection showcases his talents brilliantly.