Bob Glassman is an Evanston, Illinois, writer, editor, poet and maker of books who has written an epic prose poem called Abscission Layer that is one of the most original pieces I’ve ever read. If it recalls any other artist, it is William Blake (a Blake print appears on the title page) because it defies categorization, invents its own form, explores the unexplored and is quite literally handmade; Glassman binds and stitches each small volume with fastidious care.
There are five characters in Abscission Layer. I think. They flow in and through each other mixing, melding and morphing together in ways that make us reexamine our own literary assumptions and boundaries and ultimately our own realities. The main character is the nameless narrator whose lyrical and weary voice we come to know well although we never see the person behind it. Then there is the narrator’s grandfather, an immigrant tradesman and union organizer who is a figure of pride and rectitude for whom what matters is respect, the family and “the common good,” his father, a well-known, well-traveled botanist finally reduced to helplessness and despair by age, his friend J and his lover A. What the latter four have in common is that they are all dead, that they are lost to the narrator, that they exist only in his dreams and memories:
“But there was also A on the lakeshore. The titanium white impasto clouds applied to the sky with a trowel. The water as green as blue can be. Like a little child, she wanted a seashell, childlike expression near the lake, wanting a shell, disappointed, colored with a personal paint box, remembered sadly, the inability to give her what she wanted, not able to find her a seashell. Never able to give her what she wanted. Wanting to protect her from disappointment, to heal every wound for her, every past wound, every future wound, find her a shell, the innocence of a child remembered, colored with emotional paint in memory, glazed until it lives like a work of art.
A golden dream interrupted again, as usual. Praying to God to allow the dream to come again. Time collapsing into a vortex, unrecognizable time like so much elapsed debris, mangled time. No peace at hand, a damaged man filling all space and time.
Do you know…what it means…to be…falling?
She’s falling…and…she’s in…deep danger.
She’s falling and…she’s in…deep water.
I’m falling…and…I can’t get up.
This chicken…is…inedible.”
In Glassman’s mind, words and hands, time is timeless, space is forever falling away, personality has soft margins and it is often difficult to distinguish amongst consciousness, dream and memory. Glassman deftly persuades us not to try. He asks us to surrender to the work and when we do, we enter a visionary mindscape.
“Even this dream, and every dream, destroyed, vaporized by an old man missing big parts, a clock that no longer keeps time, a collision of past and future, a catastrophic collision ripping the world apart. Wanting only to dream again, the body aching, the head aching, the throat dry, a drink of water needed, the throat aching, the throat vibrating…the throat vibrating? Why would the throat be vibrating?
Thank you…for…your concern.
Please send…someone here…to talk to.
This chicken salad…is…inedible.
This food…is all…we’ve got.
This time…is all…we’ve got.”
The recurrent motifs in Abscission Layer are of isolation, decay, falling, the universal and the mundane and the infinite and the very finite. The medium through which all these swim is time itself:
“…a wild beast, unfit for human contact, never well understood, but the humans always desperately trying to measure and control it. The time actually a transference, a scapegoat, the real monster being chaos, but time, capable of being measured with a mathematical system, an attempt to bring structure, and therefore meaning, to the chaos. A goat upon whose head the sins of the people are placed before being driven into the wilderness, a poor stupid goat, time. A shepherd’s crook used as a gnomon, or an elaborate Egyptian obelisk requiring engineering and manpower, both conceived as means of capturing a shadow, assigning order to the energy of the sun, and the result the same, the attempts to impose order on the chaos always futile, but the attempts never stopped, a testament to the persistent hope of mankind.
How much…time…have we got.
That’s all…the time…we’ve got.
How much…chicken…have we got?
A few more…meals are all…we’ve got.
A few hours…are all…we’ve got.”
Glassman takes his title from botany. The abscission layer is the surface of separation a plant forms when preparing to shed its flowers, fruit or leaves and ironically an act of creation preparatory to dormancy or death. In that way it is like this unique and quite extraordinary work of art.
Another thing that Bob Glassman has in common with William Blake is that he is largely unknown in his own time. He has a tiny circle of readers and admirers. If you’d like to be amongst them and order a copy of Abscission Layer, it is available in Kindle Format and soon in paperback from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Abscission-Layer-Bob-Glassman-ebook/dp/B00L6GLPHY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403461035&sr=8-1&keywords=abscission+layer