Sometimes the words of Peter Lamborn Wilson feel like a cattle prod but here they are more akin to a shepard’s walking stick. He doesn’t use them to steer people further into the herd mentality, but to lead, and perhaps seduce, readers into pastures that are altogether much more verdant, free, and open. The poems and essays in this book are not the idylls of the king, or any ruling class. Rather they praise the swampy haunts of lazy fishermen who do more beer drinking than line casting and celebrate feral children revolting against a decayed suburbia. And while they take their cue from the Eclogues of Virgil, those being a type of buccolic poetry depicting rustic subjects and the care of cattle, Wilson makes a definite link between being idle, idyllic poetry, and a form of idolatry that is insurrectionist in its connotations.
The book starts with a nod to British peasant poet John Clare, who in 1827 wrote a cycle of poems titled A Shepards’ Calendar. (John Clare was also on influence on the Current 93 album Earth Covers Earth.) Peter gives us twelve poems for his own “Sheperds’ Calendar”. In starting with a meditation on the wheel of the year, with thoughts on the recurrence of moons, and the recurrence of seasons, the poet prepares the reader to think of larger cycles of time, to think of the fall of empires, and even the end of civilization itself. In homage to Clare, who grew up dirt poor on a rural farm, the first word of the first poem here is “Bumpkinism,” what he describes as “…literally /[a] shit kicking hick”. Then his pen lashes out against “urbane monotheists” and the “Nature Police”. Wilson doesn’t hold any punches back on those who adhere to the cult of progress. That was in January. In May he paints a description of the Wisconsin Driftless Region, home of the anarchist, permaculture & media collective, Dreamtime Village, where Wilson has lectured and spent time in the past. Here he is “Lying on midnight hillside surrounded by cows / waiting for meteor showers / the color of wormwood / -moonflowers / blooming by the old hotel”. By August the poet has taken up the subject of oaninism. Though this could be simple self indulgence, here it is used in the service of Gaia. Throughout the book Wilson brings to light humanities erotic and libidinal longings for the things of the green world, hence the Eco in Ec(o)logues. In the mid-fall of October Wilson’s mind turns to milkmaids, haylofts, and “shiftless hip-billies” twanging a lyre.
…read the rest on Brainwashed…
The book is available from Station Hill
Two sides of a paranormal equation are presented in this cluster of songs. Decorated with primitive drums, avant drones, eclectic voices, and an array of stringed splendor, the two groups arrive at a meeting ground in the crossroads, with the arcane formulas of folk magic flowing down one street, and the poetic musings of a post-modern bard immersed in his lyrical wonderland on the other. Where one is ecstatic in the throes of Dionysian abandon, the other zones out into a haunted, rarefied Aethyr.
