Typee

by Robert Head. Bookstore, 104 S. Jefferson Street, Lewisburg, WV. 24901

Book Review by Michael Basinski

A short series of poems revolving thematically around Melville’s novel Typee, which you need not reread to join the wonderful sarcasm and clear logic of Head’s poetry. In this work, Head re-imagines various words, (hwy for WHY and valuabl for VALUABLE), in his short and pointed poem works which keeps the reader reading closes and slows the space of the reading of the work so that his poetic twists bury in one’s chest like a barbed Polynesian arrow. The relentlessness and insensitivity of invading super-culture on indigenous people or people like you and me is a facet of the poetry. Obviously, power is the tool used to bludgeon the confused natives. I feel like I was hit by a savage WALMART as I contemplated this work. Let me quote a short title-less poem, which I believe sums well the poetry’s perspective:

The English must hav eaten
Joan of Arc
Because hwy else
wd they cook her?