Review of Barry Dempster’s “Being Here”

From cover to cover, Barry Dempster’s latest book BEING HERE: the chemistry of startle, held me, transfixed, by his vision of being here, whether that be in books or places, notably his Kamloops, Rio de Janeiro, Chile, Ireland, Berlin, with the likes of Steinbeck or Neruda or the Buddha or the narrator’s neighbors or friends. Some of the poems make political statements, so important especially with the current world tensions, but there is also the feeling of timelessness in the poet’s own meditations on illness, grief, and regret in the face of his, and our, mortality. The overall mood of the book is not sombre, however, as many of the poems show the poet’s humor and acceptance of his place in the world. The poems are thoughtful, as in full of thought about being in the present, mindfully engaging in the now.

When I read the first piece of the collection, I could have stopped right there and written the entire review on “Enlightened Forgetfulness” (10). Here are some of the lines that I have cherry picked from this beautiful poem:

You ask what those green things on trees
are called
…. if a wizard swept the air
…. maybe there’d be
less for you to forget. Do we really need
a name for the thick fragrance of steaks
on barbecues – might it be enough
to stand on summer sidewalks and salivate?
…. Buddha never
said life had to be real to hurt –
he gave up on reality years before
enlightenment. Om, held him as a leaf
from the Bodhi tree fell into his lap,
no introductions necessary.

While it is obvious that words are the poets’ tools, here Dempster reminds us (in words) that sometimes they are not necessary, that where words break off because of dementia or other reasons, we can still salivate (and communicate) the essence of the experience. I could write an entire doctoral thesis about this, and maybe I did, and so appreciate the way that Dempster plays with the unspoken languages of communication throughout the book.

In the title poem, “The Chemistry of Startle” (60), he refers to science to ask the question:

Was Snell ever stopped short by the abyss
of his inner ear, did Neuman and Keuls
track how many times their bodies touched,
was Boltman’s bunion evidence that
nothing exists without sorrow and pain

Man’s major flaw:
mistake naming for knowing.

While the philosophical debate on the separation of science and experience is not new, Dempster’s take is delightful, and he again and again asks which is more real, which provides greater understanding of who we are and how we respond to the world as human beings. In “Existential Crisis with Canada Geese,” (78-79) he tells us:

Keep away from facts;
truth is rarely found
amidst numbers and riddles.
But is just being here enough?
…. don’t forget
how good it was to scale
that haystack – the rush, the grace.

This poem is the closest he gets to anything didactic, but his lesson is one of which most of us could use a reminder now and again. He has other advice also in “The Kill” (50), that “Your job is to witness, stand/ on the cold grubby beach,/validate … navigate/the shoreline out of here.” Maybe this is why we are here. Maybe this is why we write. Or make art. Or study or practice philosophy and science. Or live within the real and the real. We bear witness.

In “The Pearl” (25), Dempster’s narrator is in a bookshop in Providencia, and when he reaches for Steinbeck’s The Pearl, it is “As if the connection had blown a fuse …”; the electricity fails. He escapes to the heat of the world outside, the real world, and when the power resumes, finds himself in an ice cream shop, that after his re-connection with Steinbeck is broken, is “sweet and brittle as an empty cone.” Which is more alive, the world peopled with characters (ultimately, representatives of the human) or the ice cream shop? The poet’s dry humor makes a strong argument.

His choice of using ice cream as thematic comes in a few times. “The Lourdes Café” (70), for example, refers to “that empty ice cream freezer,” and ends with

But I want the ice cream cone that isn’t there,
and a blessing from God whose choice
not to heal me is a gift of despair.

So many of the poems in this collection are filled with regret and longing, not only as a result of illness and living with Parkinson’s, but the feeling of death. In “Burnt to a Softness” (65), the title referring to “the softness of gunpowder:

My own father was heavier
after death. It hurt my wrists
to help carry his coffin
…. as if his own death
was sweating me a message.

Even these potentially darker pieces are not necessarily depressing; rather they are reminders of what it means to grieve, to feel, to love, to laugh.

And some of the poems have a very humorous take. In “Secret Dog” (63), the narrator is in a vineyard in the Chilean foothills with a few dogs:

We all pee on the same cactus
…. it’s all
I can do to stay on two legs –
a tingle in my ass the threat
of a tail, secret dog

Even in his humor, there is a seriousness, a reminder of the question of being here. And, maybe, just being here is enough.

I love the existential themes in this book. At times the poems are funny, gripping, sad, but more than anything, they held me—and I keep going back to re-visit poem after poem. As Dempster says in “The Right Place” (11-12), “what I chose/to remember might very well/constitute a way to live.”