The Forgiveness Parade by Jeffrey McDaniel

There is a fine line between irony and insincerity...a line that is apparently a bit too narrow for many contemporary authors to avoid stumbling over. Which is no great surprise, since it seems the moment one steps into the realm of poetic self-revelation it becomes a matter of when, not if, this well-intentioned honesty will eventually go awry. The formula for disaster is easy to predict: the poignant memories are too poignant, the nostalgia too nostalgic, the heartbreakingly genuine confessions just a tad too heartbreakingly genuine. Yet this is a predicament which poet Jeffrey McDaniel, in his sophomore collection The Forgiveness Parade, surprisingly manages to avoid. Mostly.

Though the number of poets who write like McDaniel could probably fill a football stadium, there appear to be few who can pull off his mixture of sarcasm, humor and empathy without coming across as jaded hipster word-manglers. That's not to say he doesn't occasionally drop a line which makes the reader wonder just what the hell he was thinking - as in the sadistically romantic Part Three, where he enumerates tale after tale of soured love and bizarre attraction (some of which are so bizarre they cease to make sense). But in a clever twist of poetic license, McDaniel has managed to turn those wince-inducing moments into instances of revelatory, unapologetic humility. Rather than detracting from the overall strength of the work, such apparent weaknesses provide the momentum that propels his writing forward...writing which is subtly self-deprecating, unabashedly (and perhaps even intentionally) flawed, yet still strangely compassionate.

Early on in the collection, the language is somewhat subdued: recollections of an unorthodox childhood emerge from McDaniel's words with quiet, toddler-like resolution. There is little immediate sentiment to accompany the descriptions of his mother's neglect, his father's incompetence; only the author's sly detachment and intermittent regret towards the events of his own life serve as an anchor to their real emotional weight. Much of the strength of these poems is derived from the clever tongue in cheek analogies that pepper the language like one-two punches. (One of the easiest ways to avoid speaking of something painful is, of course, to speak of something else, and McDaniel seems to have mastered this art.) This particular approach to his storytelling remains constant throughout the collection, and only infrequently does he drop this veil of comparative association to make direct allusions to his own personal suffering and guilt.

In "The Obvious," the analogy could not be more, well, obvious. Centered around the distressing image of a neglected child, the poem proceeds passively and regretfully - the verbal equivalent of someone slowly shaking their head. Dry humor, even in this relatively serious piece, is present with the mention of "Armenian," yet the overall tone is one of nagging helplessness, a hands-up-in-the-air "What could I have done?" that seems to simultaneously take and disavow all responsibility for the dysfunction of the family. The "it" here could easily be substituted for "I" or "me," but the fact that it isn't suggests that McDaniel really does take some of the burden of his own peculiar upbringing onto his own shoulders. Yet like the people depicted in the poem he hardly acknowledges the situation as being one worth getting excited over, and he brushes off the years of implied emotional seclusion and isolation with a "pat on the head" and a restrained, unemotional attitude. There is little melodrama in this reflective first portion of the collection - he's saving that for later.

Then along come parts Two, Three and Four, and the muted indifference of the previous poems is lost in a headlong rush of hostility and recalcitrance, hallucinatory narration and ambiguous symbolism. It's as if Jeffery McDaniel woke up from his childhood all at once...and with a really bad hangover. The language whiplashes between sentimentality and disgust, and his use of analogy descends rather frequently into histrionics, seeming in some instances painfully - even blatantly - contrived (note the pseudo-sexual carryings-on in "The Jerk"). In poems where rampant hysteria is not present, a more amorous side of the author emerges, yet even these seemingly heartfelt narratives are tinged with a sense of unrepentant apathy. "I have this fear of her rushing towards me, as if I'm a train leaving a station. She missed me. I'm already gone," he confesses in "Orbited By Kisses," a poem carried along by a tone which suggests someone apologizing for something they're really not sorry for.

Taking into account the sordid nature of his subject matter, it is a wonder that McDaniel doesn't fall into the trap of appearing insincere more often. But he manages to sidestep this particular difficulty by making those contrived analogies and over-the-top dramatics work in his favor, a sort of constant reminder to the reader that, really, he just doesn't take himself that seriously. And perhaps, all things considered, that's for the best.