By David Beach
VUP, NZ$24.95 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

THERE ARE several reasons I got the giggles when reading my way through David Beach’s poetry collection Abandoned Novel. Which, I have to say before I go any further, is one of those titles you wish you’d come up with yourself; satirical, self-reflexive and sardonic – how many of us believe we are potentially grand novelists? How many of us do anything to find out? How may of us get anywhere with our attempts? True. It’s one of those titles you also then go and try to find for yourself by staring up at the ceiling counting cracks until two thirty in the morning.

Anyway; the giggles.

Number one giggle catalyst; David Beach takes himself seriously. What is more he takes himself seriously as a poet. Which seems like an odd thing to say, probably an odd thing to find funny, but, when you read the poems Literary Immortality 1 through to Literary Immortality 10, a cheshire grin rises up in you that you simply can’t deny.

... I’m keen too
for people in their millions to read me
now and somehow would cope with the glory
and perquisites...
(Literary Immortality 1)

...Ten millennia from now
when I’m a household name, my verse breathing
if I’m not, a sub-century span may
seem an unfair advantage for poets...
(Literary Immortality 4)

I don’t want to hurt feelings but haven’t
much time for human poetry. But there’s an
exception, the work of David Beach. This
guy is amazing – some of his poems I
might have written myself...
(God 3)

Why should it strike me as funny or perhaps quaint, that a contemporary poet should think it possible that they could become a household name? That they could be looked upon, someday, as a genius, a visionary whose prophetic words will be learnt by school aged children around the world. What’s funny about that? I mean, it has happened before; poets have become literary popstars. ‘Yes’, you might say, ‘it did happen, but it happened to Keats and O’Hara, Elliot and Wordsworth, and it usually happened after they’d stopped breathing.’ To which, I, or the person having just read Abandoned Novel might reply; ‘right, so it’s happened before, why can’t it happen again and why not to Beach? Why not while he is still alive? You know, mix the whole literary canon up a little.’ It is a good question, one to which I don’t yet have an answer, but, I do know that reading these poems made me laugh and my laughter lead me to realise that I don’t think of poets and poetry in the same way I think of novels and novelists. This little shock-horror moment then made me think about why that was, especially given that I am a writer who spends time (sometimes far too much of it), trying to pen poems. If I, as a hair-torn writer, don’t approach the form and it’s form makers with respect and admiration then who does or will? ‘Exactly!’ I can hear Beach shouting from the wings, ‘who?’

Number two giggle catalyst (and yes number one started out a giggle and became a self-reflexive pause) are the titles, or series titles, Beach chooses for his poems; Stunts (1-2), The Crusades (1-5), Self-portrait (1-5)... Each cluster works as a group that, although they could staunchly stand alone, when read together create a rolling conversation of parts; reminiscent of the old men off the Muppets who used to sit in the wings and banter back and forth; they’d be funny as a solo act but nowhere near as funny as they are as a walking frame tag-team.

The most effective of Abandoned Novel’s vignettes, or what could almost be called vaudevilles, for me, are the God’s (1-5) in which Beach, assuming the voice of god, talks as though he is lying on a counselors couch, quietly reflecting upon his omnipotence:

I receive criticism for allowing
suffering but people aren’t aware how
many times I have concealed the earth from
aliens. Admittedly I only do
so because at present it pleases me
to keep isolated this sector of creation...
(God 2)

Number three giggle catalyst? The mere fact that Beach is brave enough to play God – and why not? As a character to assume it does put a rather carnivalesque frame around proceedings:

Still, if those who find me wanting
or non-existent knew what is out there
they would change to a prayerful tune, couldn’t
prostate themselves flat enough. ‘Hell on earth’
is a phrase which gets used rather loosely
but there are denizens of the cosmos
to whom regarding places of torment
a deity might care to look for ideas.
(God 2)

Number four giggle catalyst? By the end of the collection, and yes I did sit down (well no actually I was walking home) and read it cover to cover, David Beach is on your side, or you are on his, or your both fighting the world’s fights together. The point is you have a new comrade. Funny thing is, however, you know nothing of him. Do you want to? Would it make a difference? David Beach was born sub-1960 in Wellington, has handsome University degrees, has written in many an antipodean paper and has worked, twice now, as a mail sorter. He also has big round glasses like the guys from the Mint Chicks. What is more, his new, and very first collection, Abandoned Novel is now on sale from VUP for a nominal sum (given, that is, all you stand to gain from it – I mean think words from God people, words from God...).