Two Chapbooks: The Music We Are (and) Transfer
Review by Tryst Editor

When I received the two books, Transfer and The Music We Are, both self-published by Alan King in 2006 and 2007, respectively, my hunch turned out to be correct: King is seriously talented, he has a wonderful natural rhythm to the way he relates his poems.

Transfer

The poems in Transfer for the most part are about the lives of men, their disappointments and elusions (not allusions) about women, the hunt and the chase, not too far removed from the Victorian notion about courtship, heartbreak and seeking love. The title of the book leads me to believe that many of the poems might have been written while riding the subway and how appropos that mode of transportation is these days where many of the commuters spend their time riding to and fro; the writer busy scribbling something on his pad, intently watching the other passengers.

The beginning section, "flash," were mostly warm-up exercises, a prelude to what was to come later in the book. The first poems were a little too testerone-driven and didn't do much for me. While lust in itself can be a good subject for poetry, lust for the sake of lust doesn't automatically grant an appreciation of the body mechanics; a little too much saccharine puts weight in places that aren't necessarily flattering. But where we hit the jackpot with the book starts in the second section titled, "template" beginning with the poem, "Ritual":

every Thursday at Tryst--
over a back table--
Jati starts up a dominos game,
Fred rolls up his sleeves

the clinic's open, yo
...who tryna see the doctor first?

cellophane serpents rise from
Newports, Derrick shakes his head
at flesh flashing over Lowrise

bruthas yall see that! whole lotta
Diaspora on that one...

Followed by the poem, "Profile":

we stole Puerto Rico, the Indies
the Philippines , our turn to ride
karma's carousel    my barber Nate says
when another plane hits the Towers

any other day the shop's packed
with chess players, storytellers
and hustlers drawling over the ohm
of busy clippers ...

Eugene lying to Nate and
the other barbers     off half
a Viagra tablet, i beat that thing
so good when i tried to leave
she leaning in the doorway, talking bout
'sweet daddy, where you goin?'

over laughter and slapping of palms
Ty's heard cross the shop, trying
to convince the crowd he's never paid
strippers to leave the club with him...

These two poems are worth the price of entry. It's evident that King is an acute observer, a people watcher with the ability to tell a story: one story takes place at a coffee bar and the other place in a barber shop. Then the poem, "template" takes the story one step further honing on King's sympathetic skills, and tells of one man's humiliation at being rejected by a woman on a bus (with another woman as her accomplice) and becomes the template for all men. In the third section, "the seekers" we return to the place Tryst in "18th street omens":

women squeeze through
the crowded bar, guys
wince over glowing laptop
screens at the slow tremor
of tectonic behinds

some of us have been
in solitude, long enough
to know it's a desert
where every woman so far
has been a mirage

The image of women as a mirage for men is entirely apt for the poem. This again is a sympathetic treatment of men at the mercy of women. It's not a misogynist view since the poem doesn't offer any solutions or demean women; its only implication is that men have lost their roles as aggressors and gotten confused by women's unwillingness to give clearer signals - in effect men are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

The Music We Are

The second chapbook, there is more of a cohesive strength in The Music We Are than was in Transfer. With three sections offset by Roman Numerals as opposed to subtitles, the poems here feel more realized as if King were more comfortable with his voice. Rather than going through the entire book, I've chosen to pick out the one representative poem that I believe is the one of the best in the book, "First offense":

i barely remember the faces
of the officers   just a warm,
wet breeze tugging the shirt
against my sweaty body

the red & blue lights bouncing
off the buildings around us
while i'm patted down  before
walking the curb and counting
backwards from 90 to 69

i was 16   never drove through
the city by myself   was following
my mom returning a rental

i tried to tell them this and how
we lost each other in traffic, but
they appeared clueless  as if
i spoke some alien tongue

you have any narcotics
on you, they asked, have
you been drinking?...

step out of the vehicle!  

it was evening ...a kid pointed
out the window of his parents'
car at a red light

and i was once that child, watching
other young brothas handcuffed,
sitting on the curb while their trunks
and backseats were searched

my mind constructing
a series of scenarios for
how they got themselves
into that situation

wondering at 10, why
those guys didn't like the
friendly police, who were
just doing their jobs

"First offense" speaks truth to power on many levels. There's the implicit lesson of empathy presented in a way that doesn't judge: told from the young adult point of view, it removes any preconditioned ideas about racism from a social context - rather it is told from the sole experience of a naive child, first at the age of ten and then sixteen. The child's perceptions may be naive, but his experience is not naive; it is an induction into his own awareness of racism and the fallibility of the "other." In a world that is seemingly more integrated and more tolerant, the child learns first-hand that it is not what it seems, that he is not safe. There's a saying among the black community, "Driving while black" that has become a legitimate source of contention, more so when we deny its existence. This is a sobering reality to think that a certain group has been targeted for generations, especially young black teen boys, and I appreciate that King isn't afraid to tackle such issues, (rather than sweeping them under the rug as if they didn't exist). The poem, like many others in these two chapbooks, holds together with an authentic, quiet voice, but without directed anger and speaks plainly about the misconceptions held by people on both sides of the battle. These are the poems that interest me the most because they are the poems that can only be told by a gifted writer who trusts what he's telling will be taken as truth with language of poetry as his vehicle. I hope that King will continue to write for many years because I'm looking forward to a book of poetry to be carried by Barnes and Noble, or Powell's or any number of bookstores that need to start stocking up on King's work.

******

Alan King is a freelance writer for the Prince George's County Gazette and Capital Community News. His publications include Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature & Ideas, When Words Become Flesh: An Anthology of New Generation Poetry, Taboo Haiku, and The Hurricane Katrina Haiku Anthology among others. He is also the author of two self-published books, "Transfer" and "The Music We Are."

Copyright © 2007 Tryst3.com. All Rights Reserved.