Heavy Petting, by Gregory Sherl (A Review by Ryan Werner)
[Sheila Squillante / October 25th, 2012 / Reviews / Tags: Gregory Sherl, Heavy Petting, poems, poetry, Ryan Werner, Yes Yes Books]
128 pgs/$16
I say this not to slight his work or age—I liked his poems and he’s only two days younger than I am—but Gergory Sherl is a poet of youth, which is to say that his debut collection, Heavy Petting is saturated with a holy-fuck-I-hope-I’m-right sort of faith.
It’s possible that proximity is the reason for the collection’s charming guesswork, its unavoidable pitfalls. Sherl references what’s closest to him both physically and mentally: Crystal Light, Xanax, OCD, Mel Gibson, poems themselves. The work as a whole seems to employ Richard Hugo’s idea—or an idea that I always relate to Richard Hugo and his book The Triggering Town—of relation through proximity. “Fall Down the Stairs, I Will Catch Your Lonely Head†almost makes an excuse for itself right away, mentioning a new fondness for “the sound of poetry†and then unleashing lines that merely sound poetic. “Be My Date†is an example where this technique works, showing more of an evolution from one spot to a logical-but-oblivious next spot, along a spider web train of thought instead of a series of seemingly random things that sound nice.
In fact, most of the poems employ that quality of starting in one place and ending in another. Often, I found myself being really impressed with an ending line or flourish and upon thinking back, couldn’t remember how the poem started. Is that a bad thing? Or, a better question: Would these poems be better if Sherl reigned them in a bit? The poems in Heavy Petting where he does just that speak positively of such an idea.
“He was blurry even in daylight, always tucking
his feelings under his own myth. A wall
clock tells us tomorrow will sound the same.
A song goes But this day by the lake went
too fast, and now the raindrops are the size
of golf balls. When the power goes out, we
hide in the bathtub. I tell you I have never
drowned and lived. The wind is the sound
of the ocean meeting itself. We huddle under
a doorway. I grip your rainy nose. Tomorrow
I will wade into the nearest river, ask it when
it might like to leave.†– from “Yeti Loveâ€
Sherl’s poetry isn’t anti-narrative, but it does settle comfortably into the anecdotal obliqueness found in most good flash fiction. I had to find the right balance between what to retain and what to not get stuck on trying to figure out, and even when assuming a prose-like form, Sherl’s work struggles with its own disjointed ramble. This isn’t to say it isn’t a fair, honest reflection of Sherl’s inner dialogue and feelings—I hear him say I am disjointed, I am mostly wandering—but its similarities to reality don’t change that fact that disjointed is disjointed, chaos is chaos.
Sherl’s greatest strengths lie in the single line. I desire cutting and focus, and I feel Sherl is learning—good habits, I hope—but he’s not there yet. There are many instances where it seems like the order of the sentences doesn’t seem to matter. Or, at least, new things are unlocked by rearranging them, but it makes it very clear that the order was loose to begin with. There’s rarely an arc, a through-line. Maybe there’s an emotional top layer that makes these poems—lots of poems in general, really—impenetrable for me, but I really don’t think that I’m complaining about the difficulty of the work. Sherl’s appeal is one of the heart, and not the mind. I have a feeling he’s totally cool with that.
“If my hands were orange juice, she’d be holding them or they’d be in her mouth. On TV the narrator says Many experts believe that bull sharks are even more aggressive than great white sharks. A commercial and I think silly thoughts. I’m going to write Bill Cosby. Where do you hide all that Jell-O? I’ll ask him. I’m sick of fucking myself when I should be conditioning my hair. I have a problem using the same towel twice. The used towels are strewn across the bathroom tile, always a little more damp than I’d like them to be. I think my heaven is going to be mediocre at best.†– from “Chapter Fourâ€
Again, these are young poems. Everything is reactionary. There’s a lot of focus on “the last†of something: time I was sad enough to die, time I burned my tongue on a thigh, boy who licked your shins, girl who let me bite her pillow. Sherl’s poetry aches to be over something. These are single serving poems. I’ve marked my favorites, plan to go back to them when I need the good shit straight and hard. Heavy Petting is as necessary and enjoyable as the daily Xanax, the desire to condition my hair for two minutes, every day. Not to soften, but to remain.
Ryan Werner is a janitor in the Midwest. He is the author of the short short story collection Shake Away These Constant Days (Jersey Devil Press, 2012). Follow @YeahWerner on Twitter and visit his website, Ryan Werner (Writes Stuff).