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Silent Actor
This collection of poems by J. Michael Wahlgren invites the reader to follow an ongoing process of both discovery and reflection for the poet. With a wry, quiet humor and compelling vision, Wahlgren's search for grace and understanding throughout life is wrought with passion, yet his poems remain quietly elegant and straightforward as he discusses sex, heartbreak, marriage and other human experiences. Small pleasures can be found in every poem, from Wahlgren's stimulating language to his thoughtful revelations, the collection depicting the delicate moments of everyday life in a fresh and exquisite manner.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 2008
24 people want to read
About the author
J. Michael Wahlgren
11 books28 followersJ. Michael Wahlgren is author of Silent Actor (Bewrite Books) & Valency (BlazeVox [Books]). His poems have appeared in magazines Whiskey Island, Matter Journal, THIS Literary Magazine & Barn Owl Review.
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August 24, 2008Like the collection’s title, the poems contained within Wahlgren’s ‘Silent Actor’ abide in a kind of recursive in-folding, a lengthy unspooling of self-referential ideas and sound plays turning again and again in on themselves. These are poems of a startling simplicity – surprising only in the depths they sound moments after you’ve turned the page, or set the book down, when an anomalous line drifts up out of the silence of your thoughts and demands that it be re-read – occupied by a (for this reader) unexpectedly lyric subjectivity. In what is, perhaps, a commentary on lyricism in general, however, this ‘I’ is no real actor in the world. Overwhelmed by the insidious combination of a trenchant wonder and a self-possessed passivity, the world always seems to be happening to these poems’ wide-eyed subject. The ‘I’ of ‘Silent Actor’ is, indeed, exactly that: a role acted, enacting, acting, only out of its silence, only moving the world insofar as ‘he’ is constantly rolling it over in this head, more possessed by puns and internal rhymes than the rhyme of two bodies colliding, even when the poem’s subject is love.
Other than love itself, the two ideas which occur most frequently in the poems are those of origami and jazz, and through these two ideas, the poems create a certain internal harmony, despite their wide stylistic range. Whether Wahlgren’s penning piquant short poems, like haiku deprived of that final, imagistic release, or longer pieces like “Eccentrics”, wherein the ‘I’ is a more solidly placed, even active actor, the idea of elaboration through repetition is omnipresent. The fact that the poems themselves only achieve this kind of recursive elaboration through internal rhyme and assonance – rather than through the subject’s ‘acts’ – suggests a kind of bittersweet failure, or even an intimation that it is the outside world itself which is the real actor here, the one finally responsible for the crane that erupts from this fold or that syncopated rhythm. Indeed, the book is rife with references to the ‘I’ as no more than potentiality, as in ‘Training for a Marathon’, which closes, “…we come together/ like a queen and a king –/ though I am not yet a king”(47). And when Wahlgren is not alluding to or speaking from some displaced or potential subject, his favorite pronoun is ‘we’, as if he could not imagine forming any kind of complete statement that did not almost mathematically combine the other with his subject into a whole more dissociative than its parts. For Walhgren’s ‘we’s are nearly always subject to some tremulous and quiet failure – a failure of intimacy, or equality – a failure which has not yet arrived but is always just around the next line break. Thus, ‘Silent Actor’ seems at times a graph of the downward trajectory of a deflated epic, a saga in which the protagonist is no hero at all and all relationships fall apart, but every moment is filled with a tremendous, almost claustrophobic, potential for meaning.
Other than love itself, the two ideas which occur most frequently in the poems are those of origami and jazz, and through these two ideas, the poems create a certain internal harmony, despite their wide stylistic range. Whether Wahlgren’s penning piquant short poems, like haiku deprived of that final, imagistic release, or longer pieces like “Eccentrics”, wherein the ‘I’ is a more solidly placed, even active actor, the idea of elaboration through repetition is omnipresent. The fact that the poems themselves only achieve this kind of recursive elaboration through internal rhyme and assonance – rather than through the subject’s ‘acts’ – suggests a kind of bittersweet failure, or even an intimation that it is the outside world itself which is the real actor here, the one finally responsible for the crane that erupts from this fold or that syncopated rhythm. Indeed, the book is rife with references to the ‘I’ as no more than potentiality, as in ‘Training for a Marathon’, which closes, “…we come together/ like a queen and a king –/ though I am not yet a king”(47). And when Wahlgren is not alluding to or speaking from some displaced or potential subject, his favorite pronoun is ‘we’, as if he could not imagine forming any kind of complete statement that did not almost mathematically combine the other with his subject into a whole more dissociative than its parts. For Walhgren’s ‘we’s are nearly always subject to some tremulous and quiet failure – a failure of intimacy, or equality – a failure which has not yet arrived but is always just around the next line break. Thus, ‘Silent Actor’ seems at times a graph of the downward trajectory of a deflated epic, a saga in which the protagonist is no hero at all and all relationships fall apart, but every moment is filled with a tremendous, almost claustrophobic, potential for meaning.
June 22, 2012
J. Michael Wahlgren's first collection of poems is cohesive, vivid, deeply felt, musical, and playful with language.
The poet blends narrative and lyric to unravel complex observations on the part of the speaker: the topics span a wide range of life experience, from adult romance to childhood games of spin the bottle (one of my favorite poems), and the speaker, as the title suggests, stands as an actor in all of these life dramas, letting the world's stage stun and inspire.
I was most impressed by the surprising language play throughout the book: Wahlgren has lines that stick with you, that you must read over and over for their originality. In one poem, "Fame is a Virtue," Wahlgren twists a common cliche by following with a first line that says "Patience is a bar stool, settling in, watching the game." These lines tickle the reader with their cleverness, but also reveal deeper meanings of human experience: in this case, patience is only obtained through distraction (and ironically the distraction is to look at fame on the television, the ultimate ideal.) In just a few witty lines, Wahlgren manages to surprise the reader and offer some interesting tongue in cheek social commentary as well.
Another merit to this book is the musicality of it. Often times, Wahlgren is able to play with rhyme and rhythm in inventive ways. His rhymes, like his language, are always surprising--never trite or simple. In "New Waltz," the lines dance back and forth across the page, and the rhymes aptly carry the music of the dance as the speaker declares "Come with me/into the arms of America./ We can set free/the lobster traps, or reel in a fish/ and return it to its place of origin./We can breathe/ the fresh sea air,/dedicated/to an inner waltz, a push through." The music in this is stunning, but equally stunning is the meaning behind it: the speaker has trumped our expectations of a literal dance and revealed the intriguing world of the inner dance of us all as we search for a beloved, as we dream freedom through picturing the captivity of other things. The forms of Wahlgren's poems serve to further embody the meaning wrestled from the complex stage of the Silent Actor.
Several tropes reappear in the book: namely that of the waltz and the origami. I found that their reappearance and fresh metaphors added cohesion to the collection and complicated the poems in interesting and enigmatic ways.
In short, Wahlgren's voice is fresh and vivid, both witty and serious, well worth a read. Also, be aware that J. Michael Wahlgren is the editor of Gold Wake Press and has good taste to boot! I have yet to pick up a Gold Wake title that I did not enjoy. Check out what that press has to offer!
The poet blends narrative and lyric to unravel complex observations on the part of the speaker: the topics span a wide range of life experience, from adult romance to childhood games of spin the bottle (one of my favorite poems), and the speaker, as the title suggests, stands as an actor in all of these life dramas, letting the world's stage stun and inspire.
I was most impressed by the surprising language play throughout the book: Wahlgren has lines that stick with you, that you must read over and over for their originality. In one poem, "Fame is a Virtue," Wahlgren twists a common cliche by following with a first line that says "Patience is a bar stool, settling in, watching the game." These lines tickle the reader with their cleverness, but also reveal deeper meanings of human experience: in this case, patience is only obtained through distraction (and ironically the distraction is to look at fame on the television, the ultimate ideal.) In just a few witty lines, Wahlgren manages to surprise the reader and offer some interesting tongue in cheek social commentary as well.
Another merit to this book is the musicality of it. Often times, Wahlgren is able to play with rhyme and rhythm in inventive ways. His rhymes, like his language, are always surprising--never trite or simple. In "New Waltz," the lines dance back and forth across the page, and the rhymes aptly carry the music of the dance as the speaker declares "Come with me/into the arms of America./ We can set free/the lobster traps, or reel in a fish/ and return it to its place of origin./We can breathe/ the fresh sea air,/dedicated/to an inner waltz, a push through." The music in this is stunning, but equally stunning is the meaning behind it: the speaker has trumped our expectations of a literal dance and revealed the intriguing world of the inner dance of us all as we search for a beloved, as we dream freedom through picturing the captivity of other things. The forms of Wahlgren's poems serve to further embody the meaning wrestled from the complex stage of the Silent Actor.
Several tropes reappear in the book: namely that of the waltz and the origami. I found that their reappearance and fresh metaphors added cohesion to the collection and complicated the poems in interesting and enigmatic ways.
In short, Wahlgren's voice is fresh and vivid, both witty and serious, well worth a read. Also, be aware that J. Michael Wahlgren is the editor of Gold Wake Press and has good taste to boot! I have yet to pick up a Gold Wake title that I did not enjoy. Check out what that press has to offer!
January 27, 2010
This is good--made me want to read more of his work. Valency, Wahlgren's next book (reading ms. of now--forthcoming from BlazeVox), could be a fiver.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews