Introduction
More than any other practitioner
I know of, David Clink is a maestro of unpredictability. If there was a
mold for his poetry, he broke it-or penicillined the stuff. Any simple
attempt to throw coherent light on his art would soon be riddled by
laser-ricochets, off the mirrors of his inventively odd-angled lines.
Still, no matter what shapes his poetic persona shifts into, one could
claim with some certitude that David is, (seriously, folks) deep-down, a
serious humourist.
Even at its most somber, his writing
takes us at least to the brink of nervous laughter, while managing to be
expressive-albeit in rather backhand, yet often surprisingly poignant
ways-of states of sorrow, helplessness, abandonment, and loss. An outright
comedic vehicle like the side-splitting "My Latest Poem" is not
required for the uncloaking of such Clink-on weapons as heavy photon
torpedoes of parody, phasers set on pun, clichés (as readily stood on
their heads as teleported straight-up), and an Xtreme deadpan bathos.
David's also a magus of the non-sequitur: highlighting, to offbeat but
thoroughly poetic effect, the futile presumption of what Keats disarmingly
termed "consequitive reasoning."
Initially, you may find the work
intriguing. Bemusing. Plain weird. Off-the-wall. However, if you stick
with it, you will find, too, that the poems in One Dozen can express the
human predicament in more affecting ways than many safer, tamer poetic
efforts.
All in all, then, this volume can stand
as an off-the-beaten-track silo of fodder for thought, a storage-complex
for pleasure-and, as well, a spaced-out platform of verbal artillery, set
to ventilate your stale brain. Brace for it now.
Allan Briesmaster
NOTES:
Appeared in the chapbook,
One Dozen
May 2007.
