A critical review: The Last Romantic Verb

I'm going to "kick against the pricks" here and take a close on look at the poet's CD: THE LAST ROMANTIC VERB. Not that I think it bad, but when one sees anything that could be better, the inclination is to imagine what could have been.

Let's start with the packaging. No real gripes. White, multi-colored impression of the poet omnipresent. Nice breakdown of the works...except. Except that immediately points out a major weakness in this CD: It's done as one track. One fifty-nine minute and change track. The list of contents breaks them down by time point where to find them, but there is no track to be skipping to. I am hoping before final release to convince the poet to change that. We shall see.

Now the contents.

For a man who claims no musical ability, he has put together some quite acceptable musical accompaniment to many of his works, some is actually quite impressive. I would have liked to have heard more "naked" pieces, pieces without music. His voice is solid and strong and expressive and you can feel the depth of it, but sometimes not as well as one might like to, and sometimes the music just plain distracts. I point specifically to the harmonica and horns on "Kisses for Karma"...they punctuate that work like a fist between the eyes. Not needed.

The poems themselves tend a little to the dark and metaphysical sides of the author, perhaps that is where he is right now. It is tough to isolate yourself the way he has over the two years since his separation from his second wife (she-who-must-not-be-named) without beginning to feed on yourself, emotionally. I should have liked to see more erotic and romantic works, although there are several here...I just think opening it all with the darkly metaphysical, even alien, presentation of "from out of the city" is wrong.

High points, poetically:

1. The way his voice slides into certain pieces, like "lust bunnies", "as I slide into you" and "Swerve (flirt)". Here is a man who can tune his voice, even when "merely" reading, to impart a mood or intent to defile, and make you smile about it. His former editor, Jan Innes, used to forbid him from using "that voice" on the phone when they were working on books. She called it his "phonesex voice".

2. The raw emotion of "Bragi to Freya, on his deathbed". You feel the emotion building until it raises him up as an act of will. Powerful reading. I can only guess which veins he tapped to draw that cider. I won't guess, here.

3. The black bastion of his subtle inflection when he plants himself against his perception of a cold and wicked world, full of false-hearted lovers and lying suitors. "In the memory of lovers", where he intones the resolve to "take no pretender, again to my bed", he springs from reflective and sad to resolute.

4. "My Electric Lady" a prophecy, spoken when he was in his first romance. A realization that a normal life may be beyond his reach. I hope the lover he wrote it for hears his reading of it. I saw him record this piece, it wrecked him to open his wounds like that. Truth is, he patches himself as best he can, but he never heals, he just tightens the tourniquets to slow the bleeding so he can be on his way.

5. A most remarkable arc: In the long piece "Beasts of Legends", he intones three pieces midway through: "Shards of Light", "Radiant Tigers" and "Aureate" and the music and his voice fall together like raindrops to form an ocean. I know he is very pleased with the musical transition into "Radiant Tigers", and it is interesting...the piano kicks in and the synthesizers come up as his voice builds. I can imagine him before the microphone, his eyes closed as he forgets himself in the words. For poetry is his addiction, the way he kills his pain, the way he feels anything. And then, "Aureate" comes and it is like you stepped into him, a spinning column of emotions and memories and words, a gentle whirlwind of a magic only he controls...and even then only barely. He once explained to me this last poem, and I was amazed by how much he tells you of who and what he is and where and with whom he has been and what he has done and has been done to him. He doesn't need to publish a memoir, just post this poem and leave to future generations to decode.

Overall, I am biased. It would be hard for me to trash this disc, but I have to honestly admit, it is pretty incredible. I deduct a half-point for the formatting as a single file and minor technical flaws in his one-man show (he recorded and composed almost everything, a few separate vocal pieces were engineered by his friend Alan MacDonald of The Alan MacDonald Band).

Another half point for the dark tone of the poems he selected. He's the "Romantic Poet of the Internet", the Amomancer, not some Goth god, groveling in a depression he can dispel with a touch or a word.

My Grade: B+ (not perfect, but a slightly flawed landmark moment in the digital renaissance)