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As if the World Really Mattered

Poems by Art Goodtimes

review by Ken Wright

Found in: | Inside | Books |

I'll state my biases right up front: I don't get most poetry.

It's probably the journalist in me - that's the side of the literary bell curve I reside on - but I tend to find much of what is celebrated as poetry is too often vague, oblique, amorphous, enigmatic, nebulous, and, frankly, self-absorbed. Which, of course, is what some poetry is, and should be.

But it ain't for me. Still, don't get me wrong: I appreciate the heart of poetry - its rhythm and wordplay, its ability to conjure tangible experiences and convey mood and feeling and sensuousness - but the pragmatist in me also seeks meaning and message. I like to know what things refer to, what inspired the words. I appreciate some logic. I like a clear answer to my question, So what? I like a point.

Which is exactly why I love Art Goodtimes' recent chapbook release, As If the World Really Mattered. Here is a collection of poems for those of us who crave the music and magic of poetry, but whose literary tastes tend toward the tangibleness of point and clarity and context.

Norwood, Colo., resident Goodtimes is, himself, a walking and working embodiment of this blend of art and action. While he is a self-described "paleo-hippie" - clear through his Haight-Ashbury-circa-1967-style apparel (complete with tie-dyed top hat) and wild gray beard on the cover of the book - he is also a successful and effective county commissioner representing the agricultural western side of rural San Miguel County. (He is also the only elected Green Party public official in the state of Colorado.)

Reflecting this issue-oriented side of his personality, As If the World Really Mattered is partly a work of advocacy - a powerful argument in defense of wild places and wild people, as is seen in an excerpt from his paean to Edward Abbey, titled "Hayduke Lives":

Don't be fooled

that the marches don't count.

That arrests don't matter.

That strikes won't hurt.

Because Wall Street is a liar

with a tongue as slick as grease

& miles & miles of wheels

that only roll as long as you let it.

That's as hard-hitting as any essay or editorial - and, merging poetry and reportage even more, this and every poem in the book is given some background in several pages of notes that explain references or just tell the story of what inspired each poem.

Yet, like the best of poetry, As If the World Really Mattered is also joy to read. Goodtimes' specialty is performance poetry, and while that is best seen live (and if you ever have the chance to see Art Goodtimes perform, go), you can't help but yourself become a performance poet reading this stuff, rich as it is in details, rhythm, feelings, flow, and lean, simple, direct language. It's just plain fun. Like in the chant-like verse of "Sardines":

Tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna,

dolphin.

Tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna ,tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna,

dolphin.

Tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna ,tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna, tuna,

great white shark.

Halibuts & humpies.

Urchins & eels.

The most potent aspect of As If the World Really Mattered, though, for those of us who live in the mountains and deserts of the Four Corners are the poems that tackle what it's like to live here - addressing everything from hitchhiking in remote western Colorado, to farming on Wright Mesa, to stumbling upon a big bear in the woods. Again, here Goodtimes turns his attention to real-world scenarios, but uses the tool of poetry to probe the deeper aspects of these life events. Such as in this excerpt from "Skinning the Elk," his rendering of the experience of butchering the prize of a successful hunt:

I can't stop peering

into the glazed crystal

of those antlered eyes.

Two perfect rivets

welded to the girder of that

skeletal moment when

the bullet's magic

cut life short.

Later,

after the carcass is hung

in a cottonwood tree,

I go inside to wash my hands.

But the blood won't come off.

There's no mistake.

I am marked for life.

I wear the elk's tattoo,

as its meat becomes my meat

& its blood stains my blood.

Spirit leaping

from shape to shape.

No essay or news story could map the gut-level, the soul-level, of the experience of hunting that those few lines of verse manage to capture. Yet it helps - at least someone like me - to know exactly what he's talking about, and why he's talking about.

That's poetry even a journalist can love.

Info Box: As if the World Really Mattered, by Art Goodtimes, La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, N.M., $14/paperback/109 pages