Review - Augustine in Carthage by Alessandro Porco

Augustine in Carthage
by Alessandro Porco
ECW Press, 2008

Reviewed by Joanna M. Weston

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”

For anyone who enjoys Lewis Caroll’s ‘The Jabberwocky’ or Edward Lear’s limericks, Porco’s poetry will be a pleasure. He invents words, turns words inside out, and makes shambles of meaning with a whimsicality that amuses and puzzles. He also engages pop culture with a sharp eye for the sexual joke.

Porco’s poem ‘Hieronymus Tugnutt in Love’ (p.21ff) comes closest to ‘The Jabberwocky’ with its invented words and sense of poking fun at so-called ‘literary’ poetry:

In Boschland
did Tugnutt knock nock,
and in hogeye bacchi
winked and wame
the quinwig quimbush; …

the tweens wexperiwent wixing
conchita and whidgey,
only to wind up diddlypout
above the toilet
wubbling to God -

The toilet and sex are never too far from Porco’s sense of fun. His poetry surprises and diverts with ribaldry and tongue-in-cheek licentiousness. The title poem, which undoubtedly refers to St. Augustine’s years in Carthage where he had a mistress to whom he remained faithful for fifteen years, is a bawdy rampage:

I stopped in an alley off Milton Street
to wizz; spiced with the finest black pepper,
my añejo piss steamed up into my sinuses,
clearing
the congested jesting of sound-imagery,
syndactylic phonophanopoiesis –
of Lord Minimus boffing Minnie Mouse
Daffy Fuck as Apollo, ducking Daphne …
O o o bless me father for I –
to the Church of the Madonna della Difesa.

(p.13ff)

His gift of playing with language is nowhere more explicit than in his poem ‘She’s all that’ (p.38ff) which piles one wild simile on another for six pages:

I gather my thoughts
And tally my loss:
As thin-spun as cidyllia
And Cavalli as a dahlia;
As saucy as a calzone,
More fatale than a Hanzo;
As golden as a waffle,
And airy as a wiffleball;

and on and on, never repeating, entertaining, though finally too much of a good thing.

His limericks do not, unfortunately, measure up to Edward Lear’s expertise in rhythm and rhyme.

‘There was an Old Man of the Dee,
Who was sadly annoyed by a flea;
When he said, “I will scratch it,”
They gave him a hatchet,
Which grieved that Old Man of the Dee.’

Edward Lear’s Nonsense Omnibus. Frederick Warne, 1945, unpaged

Compare this with Porco’s ‘IV – Harold Bloom and the Gypsy Whore’ (p.56) or any other of his twenty-one limericks:

“There once was a Gypsy Whore,
Who vagibonked from door to door;
Wholly transhumptive
- Thou Art what They give –
Metaleptic gypsic [sic] whore.”

The first has a beat that flows with the words while Porco’s rhythm limps from line to line. This could be his intent but it makes awkward reading, silently or aloud, and entirely fails the limerick form.

Porco’s poetry entertains , particularly with the extent of his vocabulary, real or otherwise, but lacks depth. It touches life on the surface and moves from one scene to another without real exploration or insight.

--
Joanna M. Weston

A SUMMER FATHER - poetry - Frontenac House
2006 ISBN: 1-89718105-1 $15.95
THOSE BLUE SHOES for ages 7-12
http://www3.telus.net/public/west34/