Michael Mc Aloran's The Zero Eye by David McLean (Book Review)

This collection by Michael Mc Aloran is condensed and highly idiosyncratic, perhaps his most experimental collection thus far. It is equipped with an introduction by Aad de Gids that brings out the direction taken, that the poetry laments the absence of something it very well knew was missing all the time. It is of the “itch of the redeem” and the knowledge that the itch never gets to be assuaged.

The book servers as a key to the others in a sense, a description of what happens “in damage seasons”, a summary statement of the pointlessness and the beauty there nevertheless is in all of the emptiness.

the silent light/ the light by which no light may be seen/

hence the distil/ the teeth of it/ the bones of it in a

slaughterhouse of all/ mocking the lung lock/ awash with

bile and unspeaking reckless nothingness/ no prayers for

the now/ silenced/ shine a light/ here a breath there a

breathe/ in damage seasons/ having breached/

absconded/ not a bloody chance/ no nothing/ no not from

the commence of/ no no other route…

Mc Aloran, says de Gids, is expressing a point about the development of the polities and sociuses in which we live, that their ultimately arriving at this dreadful impasse where everything is excused in the name of political rectitude is what we all anyway wanted, the endgame, the terminus, the final fucked up destination. I see the point of the poems as more ontological, that if we were living in a perfect Utopia life would still suck balls because of finitude, and the fact that the fuckers have remorselessly destroyed any chance of jouissance anybody ever had is just icing on the suicidal cake, as it were.

Still, the book introduces itself as “a book of misunderstandings” so the vicissitudes of interpretation are all well and good.

Mc Aloran is also a visual artist, thus the “eye” is deeply involved in the book, the function of seeing, usually taken as the exemplary sense for humans, and the comprehension of light and color, the conquest of color being something Deleuze regards as fundamental and a source of great anxiety for the visual artist.

…the eye recalls it does not recall/ stratosphere of bled/

sun light of asked of promise/ spat out/ sheen purpose of

the whole/ locked to the might of virulent/ a-breeze/

shattered frozen flesh/ dead light what of it/ the half moon

circus of redeemed purpose/ knocking the teeth from the

broken jaw what laughter now/ fingers yet/ yet fingers

hands to caress/ there is blood beneath the fingers of the

unearthed/ the earth clogs the lungs there is nothing in the

hands of breaking lightlessness/ as if to say/ what speech/

what of the voice that imparts the dead colours/ the

tourniquet heart/ spasm/ spillage of blood/ asks of till

given silences mocking the reaching purpose/ which is to

bile less than ever was before/ a syntax of shattered bones/

till ever-dreaming in the shadow’s longing/ as if to be gone

were the only crosshair in sight/ and yet/ subtle the

change in the pulse/ here or there/ dead light what of it/

spit forth/ the raped tune of these silences that cannot be

acquainted with/ less or more/ dead songs/ dissipatory/

struck shine/ some detritus of light.

Thus the book develops its reach into the emptiness from the most fundamental percepts, from the bottom up, instead of from the abstract and at an already and exclusively semantic level from which the text never departs, as I would have done.

All in all, a splendid read, well worth buying, and it's on sale here: 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-mcaloran/the-zero-eye/paperback/product-21589767.html

Author bio:


David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dog, Oscar, & his computers. In addition to various chapbooks, McLean is the author of six full-length poetry collections: CADAVER’S DANCE (Whistling Shade Press, 2008), PUSHING LEMMINGS (Erbacce Press, 2009), LAUGHING AT FUNERALS (Epic Rites Press, 2010), NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO HEAVEN BUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO DIE (Oneiros Books, June 2013), THINGS THE DEAD SAY (Oneiros Books, Feb 2014), & OF DESIRE AND THE LESION THAT IS THE EGO (Oneiros Books, May 2014. A seventh full length poetry collection to be called ZARA & THE GHOST OF GERTRUDE/ ON A RAMPAGE, which is a selection of poems inspired by Gertrude Stein, is alos due from Oneiros. More information about McLean can be found at his blogs http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/ & http://davidcmclean.wordpress.com/