HCSHR 4:8 — Marshall Bood. Spring Cleaning.

HCSHR 4:8 — Marshall Bood. Spring Cleaning. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021.  31 pages.  uglyducklingpresse.org

reviewed by Dave Read

Tucked away from society, white collar business, and the picket-fenced suburbs, a class lives in social exile.  The addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless, and outcasts of all stripes slide through days in the shadows. On the fringe of community awareness, these people and their struggles remain conveniently invisible.

Marshall Bood, in Spring Cleaning, takes us directly into this world.  Through free verse, tanka, and haiku, Bood utilizes a variety of poetic forms to capture his subject matter.  Often dark, Spring Cleaning is a journey into the recesses most people prefer to pass by.

The collection begins with five free verse poems.  These poems are short narratives which predominantly examine mental health and undesirable jobs.  “Burn”, for example, contemplates a failed suicide attempt.  Bood’s concluding imagery is brutal and stark:

and she can’t eat anything
with charcoal in her stomach —
if I lit her on fire
she would burn all night

The remainder of the chapbook contains tanka and haiku.  Bood makes strong use of these forms, into which he breathes some much-needed novel subject matter:

a cloud of dust
rises
above the avenue ... 
a woman collects 
spring syringes

This tanka is gritty and distinctly urban.  Spring is traditionally a time of gathering flowers and plants.  Bood turns this convention on its head with a woman picking up after the outdoor users of drugs.

Likewise, consider the following one-line haiku:

outside the rescue mission bread rolls left in the ice

This poem is a shashei, that is, a sketch of life.  Shashei are meant to create an objective picture (or snapshot) of a moment just as it is.  Even so, this haiku is full of sadness. The rescue mission, defined as an institution meant to provide help, has implicitly failed.  The “bread rolls left in ice” did not reach the people they were meant to feed.

Bood also includes a handful of lighter moments:

scattered leaves —
a man dreaming
of becoming a politician 
runs naked
into City Hall

Here, Bood treats his reader to an ironic chuckle at the would-be politician’s expense. 

Spring Cleaning successfully explores the darker side of the city most people would prefer to ignore.  Through free verse, tanka, and haiku, Bood tackles his subject matter with refreshing honesty.  This chapbook is recommended to all readers of poetry.

Dave Read
March 2021

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