NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This is Mark Pawlak's fifth poetry collection. The contents are divided under five headings: THREE OFFICIAL VERSIONS, ALL SHOOK UP, WILSON'S PHALAROPE, PROTECTIVE AND DEFENSIVE DEVICES and LEADING BY EXAMPLE.

OFFICIAL VERSIONS, is a substantial collection of 32 strong poems, presented as a literary journey through conversation, contemporary lists, the newspapers and politics. This is not, however, a journey for the faint-hearted as Pawlak's verse requires knowledge of events — past and present, British authors, music, police weapons, politics, and more. The journey has no prescribed route, but is suggestive rather, of the restless enquiring mind trying to come to terms with modern-day perplexities. These principles are stated in the very first poem CREDIBLE INFORMATION, 1999-2003 WHICH TAKES THE READER FROM THE June 19, 1999 wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones through to the Coda of May 6, 2003, where President Bush flies out to the carrier Abraham Lincoln "via a small Navy plane" and the poem ends with a White House statement about the President's decision:

	The White House spokesman denied
	the accusations of Democratic opponents
	that the President's decision to make a "Top Gun"-style entrance —
	emerging from the four-seat jet, dubbed Navy One,
	in a full flight suit with a helmet under his arm —
	was in any way intended to turn the Abraham Lincoln, its crew
	and fighter pilots returning home victorious from the Iraq war
	into a prop for the President's re-election campaign.

We arrive at Hart's Neck in hard, driving rain. There are three parked cars blocking the path to Maplewood Cottage. Numerous corpulent adults and a six-month-old baby are inside tiny, two-room Birch next door. How do they all fit?

Spiders throw nightly lawn parties. Mornings, I find their tent canopies still pitched in the mown grass of the side yard. Tiny lanterns strung along the fringes shimmer in dawnlight.

	Gonna pitch a
	Wang dang doodle
	All night long
			All night long

Grasshopper days, cricket nights, spider web mornings

	"It's more important,"
	Ornette Coleman once said,
	"to play the correct
	feeling
	than the correct note."

	Be-Bop-a-Lula
	Bip Bam
	Boogie Oogie Oogie
	Bop Ting-a-Ling

		Sh'Boom
		Tick Tock
		Tutti Frutti
		Wah-Watusi

July 25

Clank of rigging against masts announces a blow. Gulls perched in a line along the dock rail all face into it, as do the prows of the boats anchored, berthed, moored in harbor, hulls rocking

August 10

Mary: "Up since the crack of dawn! What have you been doing?"

Me: "Stealing material from other people's notebooks."

". . . anything that you can use, you should use it"

The section WILSON'S PHALAROPE contains several more conventional poems before ending with HARTS NECK HAIBUN, BOOK III: 2002. In the first poem, ELEPHANTS FIND LOVE, we see the real animals of the world - Alaskan shorebirds, penguins, monkeys, Asian elephants. Here, too, in the poem THE SHARPER THE BERRY are real people: the City Slicker, the Clever Dick, the Drama Queen, and others:

	Nose out of joint, City Slicker?
	Blown a gasket, Hot Shot?
	Fit to be tied, Arty Farty?
	Going through the roof, Curtain Raiser?

Hand painted sign posted in front yard:

Cottages Watched

Monuments Restored

"So, what's your line of work?

"Watching cottages. But right now, I'm on my lunch break. Shortly, I'll have to get back to my job: sitting on this porch . . . rocking in this chair . . . keeping both eyes open."

The next section's title poem, PROTECTIVE AND DEFENSIVE DEVICES, shows us that Pawlak is aware if the bigger picture, ranged against the contingencies of daily life, often with ironic humour as in the following two examples:

	Peerless handcuffs.
	Precision American made,
	Tempered steel, double safety lock, 2 keys.
	Model: Subpoena.

		Leg irons.
		Kick proof, pick proof, and run proof.
		Model: Irons.

	PRESIDENT DECLARES WAR ON TERRORISM

	As with the War on Poverty,
	as with the War on Drugs,
	a successful outcome
	is guaranteed.

	PRESIDENT CREDITED WITH INVOGORATING ECONOMY

	Night and day,
	at the South Bend, Indiana, A. M. General factory,
	new Humvees roll off the assembly line,
	painted shades of sand.

	"FORGET THE PAST,"
	the headline instructs.
	"IT'S A WAR UNLIKE ANY OTHER."

	Time here measured
	by the movement
	of great blue herons
	stalking crabs
	in the shallows
	at low tide.

. . . three horses, two dogs (Muggins and Sport), one carriage, three cases of wine, two packages of stovepipe, two stoves, one iron pot, four washstands, one barrel of hardwood, seventeen cots, seventeen mattresses, four canvas packages, one buckboard, five large barrel and one half-barrel. Two tuns of butter, one bag of coffee, one chest of tea, a crate of china, a dozen rugs, four milk cans, two drawing boards, twenty-five trunks, thirteen small boxes, a boat, and a hamper . . .

Next summer we'll pack lighter!

The significations and semiotic potential of OFFICIAL VERSIONS are endless. The manner of its layout and construction are important both to understanding this doubting, questioning work and the way in which Pawlak has felt composing his unique vision. That vision, after all, has allowed us entry to a reader-writer conspiracy and a feast of sensuality, mystery, poetic processes and a sense of urgent being. It contains love and beauty, horror and war, creations and recreations, all the universals are there. It contains the sheer joy of dreams and desires, while tragedy or man's inhumanity to man intersect or violently veer away from each other in vertiginous sheerness.