The Lord and the General Din of the World: Poems

Julie Mead, The Lord and the General Din of the World (Sarabande, 1996) I have some years where every book of poetry I touch turns out to be a hideous, steaming pot of dirt soup that should never have been published, and I have some years where every time I crack the cover on a volume by an author I've never read before, I discover pure gold. 2006 is rapidly turning into one of the latter years; I discovered the brilliance of David Berman last month, and now I happen upon Julie Mead's debut collection, The Lord and the General Din of the World. I'll warn you flat out-- this is not a happy book. In fact, it's one of the most relentlessly downbeat books I've had the pleasure of happening across since Final Exit, Derek Humphry's masterpiece on ways to off oneself. And it's the kind of poetry that, in general, causes those who are not used to reading poetry to cringe. Allusions and symbols and subtext, oh my! But still, while angst-poetry is as common as salt in the Adriatic, Mead's stuff never comes off as simple angst-poetry; as one wag said many years ago of the first Death in June album (paraphrased, unfortunately, by yours truly, who doesn't have the quote to hand), Mead's work is equipped with a grim humour capable of slaughtering a thousand renegade Bunnymen: "The blue smoke turns to water in my lungs. Gale brings out the pornographic comics she's working on, in which her history teacher meets an embarrassing end. The teacher's kidnapped-- ransom set. Nobody pays. The ransom is reduced and reduced again. It would be awful-- ransom demanded and nobody so much as notices. We laugh." (--"On the Lawn at the Drug Rehab Center") Her subject matter doesn't usually differ from the sort of thing one finds on repositories (which shall here remain blessedly nameless as so not to give them even more exposure) of such angst: there's drug rehab (as mentioned above), recovery, and, of course, the reason we went there in the first place; there is death, usually somewhat messy; there is somber contemplation of the landscape, even. But it is Mead's sense of craft that makes it all work so well, and it does all work so well. This is excellent work, and deserves to be widely read. **** ½

Jane Mead's "The Lord and the General Din of the World" introduces us as readers to a poet of such strength and power...unseen since, perhaps, the work of Sylvia Plath. She writes with unflinching honesty, plumbing the depths of the human interior, composing about pain and loss in a manner which many readers might dare not speak or think or dream of. Her quietness and control is all the more unsettling: a hallmark of our greatest poets. Her timing is flawless. In this her first book, she establishes her mastery instantly and beyond any question.

One of the first things you note is that Philip Levine's introductory note seems to be at a loss for words. It's understandable once you start reading. The pieces in this book are what poetry strives to be and usually falls short of. Mead's command of the language does not come across as effortless, rather it comes across as a true command, sure in its phrasing, confident in its images. It creates a deep and lasting resonance in the reader, calling out more of the truth about ourselves and our relation to the world than we are usually comfortable with.This book changed the way I read poetry in much the same way as reading the Charters translation of "Baltics" did. It established for me a new reference point, a new vision of what is possible.