"Subject Matters" by John Grey, reviewed by Peter Mladinic

Subject Matters by John Grey. Cyberwit.net. Allahabad, India. 2024. $ 15.00 paper.

Subject Matters celebrates life that was, is, and will be.  The speaker in his deflections and occasional self-depreciations is reminiscent of the late Philip Larkin. “I’m crossing the great plains by train. / Boredom’s tinged with gold / and very necessary. / After all, this is what we eat.” In his density of texture, and inclusivity of subject matter, Grey is akin to Billy Collins, but also, like Collins, an original. Three devices Grey uses to busy his lines and achieve a density of texture are litotes, hyperbole, and situational irony. 

Litotes emphasizes what is, by drawing attention to what is not. “Subject Matter” is comprised of things the poet is not going to write about.

And no more poems of the city.
As if this cesspool on a grid
could ever care what stories people tell of   it.
It’s too big, too dirty, too noisy,
too bedeviling for art.

“Life On Average” begins “I wouldn’t say this was a blue day.” A bit further into the day, 
the speaker says, “It’s just average. / The conversation turns to / diapers and dog food.”
And farther down the page, “It’s not a day of bodies either / or the praiseworthy things / that blue
jeans do for them.”  Litotes also structures “From The Corpse To The Young,” in that it’s spoken
by the corpse, someone not there, to someone who is; and also “Danielle,” spoken about
someone who isn’t there, and in a tone of gratitude that the Danielle who was once in the
speaker’s life is no longer a part of that life. “It has occurred to me / that we never were / meant
for each other.”

Grey uses hyperbole for comic relief, a catharsis, in “Jammed.”  The motor vehicle traffic jam is a form of war, and the motorists stuck, going nowhere, in their edgy restlessness are combatants. Readers can say of the speaker’s predicament that it is funny but it wasn’t funny when it was happening. A similar thing is going on in “From Out of the Mouths of the Useless.”  A person needs a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician. Hyperbole conveys the speaker’s dire need. The poem concludes:

I am desirous of the useful,
enamored of the trade.
And you are needed now.
I assure you, I can pay …
with the rest of my life
if I have to.

Hyperbole structures “My Home Alone Story.” A child home alone, the speaker’s anxiety was evoked by “creaking floors, rustling curtains, / and the very thought of basements.” Father along, he says, “Television couldn’t protect me.”  His mother’s entry into the house gives the poem an ironic twist at the end. Most importantly this poem is a good example of Grey’s taking an “I” poem and turning it into a “you” poem readers can easily relate to, and hyperbole is one device Grey uses to turn a memory into art that entertains. 

Situational irony is a third thing that makes these poems entertaining, pleasurable to read. Situational irony lies behind extended metaphors that give poems such as “That Old Eye For An Eye,” “Suburban Dirt,” “Hit On At The Pool,” “The Realtor,” “Dump Stories,” and “A Kind Of Money” an element of unpredictability. In “Life With Sounds” the lives of two apartment dwellers become the speaker’s life, as heard though the walls. While the poem is an extended metaphor, its title has a literal meaning, as in his life with their sounds. In a metaphorical sense he becomes them.

There was no need to cock my ear
for her sobbing,
or his stumbling through the door
late on a payday evening.
Even if the couple didn’t live with me,
their relationship did.

In the tradition of Larkin in Great Britain and Collins in the United States, John Grey, in New England by way of Australia, writes from a personal, intimate standpoint about human concerns. Ultimately his quirks, foibles, places, and people become his readers’ though his skill with language.  At his best, Grey is among the best poets writing in English today. He informs, surprises, entertains in Subject Matters.  Is it love or infatuation? Ultimately it’s a celebration of being alive.