Scandals (2024)
spontaneous review after spontaneous binge of this book
Scandals, Alex Osman, 2024, Filthy Loot x Talented Perverts, 70p
I have this idea of a style of writing that I think of as “a poem is a knife.” Often a stanzaless shot straight down the page, not exactly staccato, hardly enjambed, normally with an aggressive bent style- and/or content-wise. Scandals by noise artist, photographer, and writer Alex Osman heavily indulges this style across its 60ish pages of Surrealist Americana Trash poetry. In an addictive blend of substance abuse, sex, violence, death, sarcastic cultural references, and commentary (or maybe more so just a flat presentation) of the haphazard dealings people have with one another, Osman blasts out moments many of us know to ring true but have probably never seen put on paper in a printed book.
To be a connoisseur of dollar store microwave meals, to fire bullets at the moon in a fit of joy, to know a guy who knows a guy with all the impact his actions have on the local milieu. Of course there are embellishments, but they enhance the effect of this idea that keeps coming up for me lately of “facts vs truths”.
“Fool me once
I’ll kill you”
—WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
“A case of beer
Turned into
A case of vehicular manslaughter”
—UNCLE GARY’S IN PRISON AGAIN
The volatile elements of the people in these poems aren’t taken to task. They are laid bare, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes mocked, often inhibited. Junkies are on the nod at the movies, children act up for the sake of their teachers’ tits, lovers are often in unsustainable circumstances ie affairs, ‘romance’ of youth without conditions like consistent rooms to fuck in, a general emotional turmoil felt under the surface of every scenario cast by the poems. I’d argue this book has a lot of love for its subjects, yet it knows most of these people to be Fucking Stupid and Hopeless.
Regards the Surrealism: It’s interesting to track the fluctuations between what’s plausible but wild and what is outright fantasy: Obviously one can’t ride on the back of a chicken through a tornado before breaking it down into edible pieces, but a stabbing over a meth dispute definitely seems plausible… Any given scenario or mini-narrative is dropped in with bombastic effect, variously left open or made closed by the end of a poem. Scandals starts off with many situations ending in a weirdly satisfactory way, which primes the reader for (or maybe inversely surprises with) the weird and uncomfortably incomplete feelings that come up over and over in the back half of the collection. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t narrative poems, but Osman walks you through these bursts of story suggested in short, concise lines.
“Interests were limited
Paychecks went straight to his veins
Most were already too abused to accommodate
The needle
He nodded off in the balcony at a matinee of
Jesus Christ Superstar
Sweet emotion
Infinite orgasm
Sucking the tit of Mother Mary
Cured his ills
Ending the night in the handbag
Of a whore”
— JOB
On second thought, maybe they are narrative, an impulse often explored in books of verse produced outside of the wider incessant conversation of poetics instigated by people with vested interests (graduate degrees, adjunct positions, all the studied snobbery that accompanies). Narrative poems as folky form. But we aren’t occupying Once Upon a Time. The storytelling is clear but slightly indirect, conversational. And herein lies what we want to call Americana. Scandals is definitely for and of a folk tradition, a modern one, with a vibe of the excesses found lodged in an era somewhere between VHS depravity (influence of being a noise artist?) and mass-AI brain cell loss.
It’s interesting to think of this book as having just came out before AI became such an omnipresent topic, especially considering technology is weirdly absent from the collection despite the hyper-contemporary feel. The people peopling this book probably can’t afford the latest tech, nor do they care, as wrapped up in their personal dramas as they are. TracPhones and Androids all the way down. Side note interesting how general politicized topics of poverty like EBT and government assistance is absent altogether. Politics play virtually zero role in this book. Not that Scandals is overtly about poors, but it certainly isn’t about luxury. Yet in all the chaos of occurrences, there’s a strange comfort. The mood the book casts is gross, but very warm and familiar. Populist? Rife with references including but not limited to Jim Jones, Gilligan’s Island, Slayer, Jim Varney, Terminator 2, etc.
I guess my only complaint, if there had to be one, is the brevity of the poems. Two of the 60ish poems exceed one page. There’s a slight sense of being rushed off from any given piece as entropy takes hold. But any of these conjured environs are easily expandable! Maybe this is what Osman’s novel with Expat does. Haven’t read it. Regardless, this book rocks… Barbed, full of hooks, unpretentious, yet full of double takes and head scratching moments for the uninitiated.