A New Song : a New Walk
VESSELS, by Robert van Vliet
Vessels
by Robert van Vliet
Unsolicited Press, 2024
5 July
No matter how many times I asked,
the instructions were no help. So I stood
by the window, watching the buses pass,
all bound for parking lots as empty
as a table after the eviction.
And as the day began, I could still see
some stars, as surprising as
catching a handful of small
water-bugs skating on a lake of ash.
This is one of the roughly 120 brief poems in Robert van Vliet’s compact, beautifully-designed book, Vessels, just published this month. Over a year ago, the poet, previously unknown to me, queried and sent me the manuscript for this book. Now, reading it again – in print this time – only confirms my first and very strong, very sudden, response : this book of poems is a masterpiece.
Prediction is always a bit risky for critics. But judging by this book’s effect on me, I will say this : Vessels signals the advent of a new voice in American poetry. It is the appearance, within the historic flow of American literary happenings, of a new and lasting element. Moreover, there are various dimensions of this work that will have tremendous appeal for many readers, from many “walks of life” – to use a cliché which at least has some relevance, since this book is a kind of walk : a very quiet, a very intense walk : a journey of song, of thought, of soul.
27 June
Works go steadily forwards,
one cold whisper after another.
But I will have nothing to do.
Before me is a seed
as big as a moon.
A lifeless beginning,
as sanguine as a myth
waiting to be understood.
There is nothing
to do, and I will do it.
In an Afterword, van Vliet briefly explains some of Vessels’ compositional background. A few years ago, in the midst of the bleakness and isolation of the Covid pandemic, the poet was tied up in a difficult, exasperating writer’s block. Taking up a popular creative writer’s manual, which offered a method of daily exercises – applying aleatory, chance texts as writing prompts – van Vliet leaned instead upon three much-valued personal sources : the I Ching, the journals of Thoreau, and the gnostic Nag Hammadi Gospel texts.
The poet emphasizes the generative effect of chance operations, comparable to casting the I Ching oracles – and these methods clearly had a liberating influence, opening wide, exploratory dimensions, adding variety to the sequence. But if you read his explanation carefully, you find that the process involved several overlapping steps : sorting, mixing, shifting, recombining. And in fact this step-by-step approach allowed van Vliet’s own voice to emerge : quietly, subtly, unobtrusively. For me it emerges in the refined lightness, the liquid understatement, the powerful simplicity, of his images of nature. Like ancient Chinese and Japanese poetry in its foreshortened, whispering force, its emotional accuracy, his short lyrics find a place where heart, mind, and soul – feeling, thought, and truth – seem to merge in a transparency of light, wind, water, seasonal change.
The ancient source material is by no means an artificial scaffolding, a crutch. It is the avenue for an encounter : because for this kind of Transcendentalist, philosophical writing (think, Thoreau), there is no Truth but lived truth; there is no Word but felt words, embodied words – words in-relation to others, to otherness, to Another. The divine, the sacred, washes through these poems like a wind (or rain, or drought) : the fear and terror are there, as well as the longing and adoration. Moreover the free, questing, skeptical, philosophical mind is there : the only dogma, the only authority, the only truth… you must live them. You must experience them yourself. This is the encounter (in my rough approximation) that the reader will find in this volume. It is supremely paradoxical, supremely mysterious – as is our mortal life in this mysterious cosmos. The poet challenges himself – and the reader – to find life again, beyond the fraudulent twilight realm of illusions, self-delusions. Here is a very short piece from near the end of this heartfelt, companionable, marvelous, and absolutely essential book :
30
To lie down in the water to see
what the clouds can teach you.
To walk away to see
what you cannot leave behind.
This is not the beginning of death
but the beginning of wisdom.
And I feel blessed today – to be able to greet these musical, communal Vessels, at the beginning of their singing journey deep into human hearts.
I've posted a lot of follow-up notes about my review of Robert van Vliet's VESSELS. Let me just be clear : I would not change or retract ONE WORD of my review. My seemingly unhinged enthusiasm is a gauge, a measure, of the value, the potential impact, of that book.
My review of VESSELS does not achieve the level of actual critique, to be honest. It is my immediate emotional response, an invitation to readers. Future critics will want to explore more pointedly, for example, the underlying philosophical stance, & the allusive literary background.
One affinity/contrast I think worth exploring, for example, is that between VESSELS and the short, gnomic, brutally sardonic parable-poems of Stephen Crane.
Another field very much worth exploring would be the parallel between the social/personal landscape & the collage-like approach/technique of Eliot & The Waste Land, on the one hand, and van Vliet & Vessels, on the other. This would open a big door into the history of American poetry.
Finally, I refer to Stephen Crane & TS Eliot here, both for the inherent resemblances to van Vliet's book, and to emphasize that VESSELS might have – ought to have! – a COMPARABLE IMPACT on the current atmosphere of US poetry.