This is a beautifully made book. The eye can glide from poem to poem; nothing interrupts. The poems' first lines, italicized, serve as titles. The key to the poems, the book's shaping (three parts plus meditations) and its inspiration is found in the lines, "I thought I knew who you were.// You were beauty, I was history..." "You want this man to mean something more than body."
Conspiracy's parts, "A History of Revolution," "A History of Love" and "Conspiracy" are separated by shorter meditations named after the twin stars that make Aldebaran, Taurus's eye. The book abounds in references to the Classics and names from the past, where men "shaped the world to their work/ by sheer force." Don't worry, there are enough earthy, common nouns-sauce pans, axes and sparrows-to balance the loftier proper nouns, but if your Classics or History 101 is rusty, refer to the Note section (nine pages) at the book's end. I did, and discovered that the poems' first lines take off on a statement or phrase Hewett had overheard. Strung together they could make a pop song's lyric: "Obviously I wanted you/ I thought I could have you/ I wanted you pure/ I was so blind." I love the synchronicity of a solid poem arising from something as fleeting as an overheard phrase.
Lust in...Conspiracy's poems come across at times as a series of crushes, but the longing is quite serious, building at times to lush credenzas: "Always the smallest, the prettiest,/ the smartest, naturally he commanded/ the renegade love of uniformed boys,/making us momentarily courtly" and, "I gave you wine and Hart Crane, and you fell in love/ with...Hart Crane, reading him out loud/ until the sofa felt dangerous" and, "You cannot see the Rorschach of crimson//on the fresh Christmas snow/ or the tracks of the firing squad/ or the echo of guns/ or the General's order/ to execute the buggers."
Bordering on paranoia? If you're gay, you've earned it.
- Sharon Chmielarz