Book Review: Jonathan Thirkield's "The Waker's Corridor"

Jonathan Thirkield's award-winning debut collection, titled "The Waker's Corridor", proves to be a work of self-searching and obsession. Written for the most part in sentences broken into fragments by periods, Thirkield focuses primarliy on memories and dreams of his deceased father who both acted in theatre and sang opera in smaller theatres in New York City. He explores how his life has been shaped- consciously and unconsciously- by his father's life and absence.

The first part of the book establishes the image of the young boy lost without his father. It also establishes an immigrant background. Interestingly, in at least one instance, Thirkield chooses to use British English instead of American: in "Fatherland II: Children With Flashlights" he offers us a "damp dawn for/ head lamps" . What exactly he purposed by this one marked exception I could not decide, unless he meant to open up for us the thinking unique in children of immigrants and the sometimes uncomfortable, though not always consciously perceived, straddling of cultures. In "Fatherland VIII: Son", we are given the striking image of a son exhuming the long-dead body of his father and being disenchanted with the spoils he takes therefrom. This is perhaps the theme of the collection, though this is the only such overt reference to Thirkield's purposse in undertaking this particular inner journey.

In "White Coves" we are introduced to the flip-side of this: the poet himself as father and shadowed by the ghost of his own father. Sometimes certain capitalised references to Father might also be double metaphors for Thirkield's father and God, or triple metaphors that contain Thirkield himself as father as well. The poems in which these appear are all the more interesting for the possible multi-meanings to be garnered from them and compared with each other.

The last half of the book contains a series of poems based on plays given by different working groups throughout New York City. These are presented as taking place on the same day, perhaps being performed multiple times throughout that day, and all based on the similar material of the Christmas story. A stroll through the neighborbood "if you came this way" might result in the fascinating phenomena of seeing "in passing images, the whole story told backwards." It seems Thirkield's father used to act in these plays and there is some suggestion that his mother also did.

The collection is not without flaws. "Fatherland IV: What Children Learn" commits this distracting error: the word "all" in repeated in succeeding lines, much too close together. It reads: "two of us running/ down the head: stream after stream recycling all/ until it all seems suddenly so still:" The effect is that of a stumble for the reader. It interrupts flow and causes the reader to glance back at the unnecessary pebble. One more careful reading and a quick adjustment would have corrected this. In the end, it feels lazy. Another thing that annoyed me, not because of its existence but because of its execution, is the two or three poems in which Thirkield closes with unfinished thoughts. Such as in "Mystery Plays VII: The Smith's Play (8:40)" where he ends the poem this way: "Your daughter,/ Stands there still, untouched like a lily at the". This could be a wonder of a device, but he leaves us no clues within these poems as to why he chose to use it. Is he being interrupted? By what? And why?And how is it important to the poems in which it occurs? Without clues as to his intent, the marvelous potential in this kind of ending becomes a distraction. A third blunder is his tendency to give away too much. In poetry what is not said is often as important, or more so, than what is said- hence the empty spaces that distinguish it from prose. Part of the charm of this collection is Thirkield's vagueness concerning the origins of his descent- that is until "The Landing: A Stage" where he spells it out to us as if reciting it from an encyclopedia: "Chance has its role/ keeping the little Russian-Jewish-Anglo/ well covered in his Danish patronymic." Disappointment has a formidable taste.

The best poems, though, exhibit the control and polish that is lacking in the above examples.These are the section "We Are The Dark Characters" and the closing poem "Elegy". These are beautifully suggestive in imagery and phrasing without giving away too much and allowing for multiple interpretations.

All together, not bad for a first offering. Jonathan Thirkield should come back stronger from the experience.