Author of twenty-three books and four chapbooks, Stevenson does not disappoint us with the current collection of forty-one poems, divided into three sections.
In the first section, “Rock, Scissors, Paper”, about a children’s game, like others, such as “Playing Possum”, he defends a tomboy (“Doreen”)for being a lesbian; a fish caught with a hook on a line (“The Knife”); adolescent acting-out behaviour (“Mike’s Acid Story” and “A Room Full of Balloons.”). However, the heart of this section is a thorough examination and celebration of the “turned-on, tune-in and drop-out” psychology of the psychedelic Sixties
Like the Romantic period poets who relied on laudanum (opium) for inspiration, Stevenson writes, from inside experience, about visual and auditory hallucinations; and like their poetry, his work sanctions the “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley, especially the function of “soma” on the human brain. In “Wiser Pills”, an Air Cadet, “a lone crow”, (among “a murder of crows”, that is, “the older boys” of his squadron) answers why he swallows the drugs, “once to belong”, “again, to be strong”, and third “to defy...their lie.” In a companion poem, “Wiser Pills (Reprise)”, the poet evokes the Fifties and popular culture, such as “Patty Duke/ and Donna Reid”, sanitized black-and-white television icons of propriety; the Sixties rock and pop music, of The Jefferson Airplane, The Dead, Jim Morrison; the so-called British band “invasion” of the Beatles, with their embedded messages about LSD in “Lucy in the Sky [with Diamonds].”
Alcohol was once the drug of choice, “Get drunk. Drink me to disappear now. / You are getting smaller. So small.” Alice Cooper and acid-rock will represent a major shift. In relation to the little pills that Alice in Wonderland was offered, Stevenson attempts to uncover what she “really found on the other side of the looking glass.” Further, he portrays a generation which believed that drug-induced transcendental consciousness was intended “to get us down every rabbit hole pore of our bodies.” The poet personifies these speaking “pills”, with “little Alice [in Wonderland]” voices, promising “to make us wiser, make us taller.” Rather, they are sanctified, to intone Christ’s Last Supper, “Take this in remembrance of me,” the act of transubstantiation in the sacrament of Holy Communion, when the Messianic figure Doctor Timothy O’Leary was once society’s leader of the “Baby Boomers”, post-war prosperity accompanied by spiked fertility rates, before the advent of Free Love made possible by the birth control pill.
Like William Blake’s “grains of sand” in the hand and the soap operatic program “Days of Our Lives”, like “grains of sand / poured through [the] hourglass”, the poet views us “all gathered”, in prime herd mentality, to fit Spandex work-out uniforms. The image of “the little engine that could” derived from a children’s book and combined with the philosophy of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am” is evident in the line, “I think I can, I think I am, I think I, I think, I---”. The human body, composed of nerve synapses, acting as conduits, “the ganglion”, is compared with steam engines, the roundhouse, and steel track, except they are fueled by “the same angst”. For this reason, we cause our own escape from both mind and body, thus “the ghost...can’t find us.”
In the section “An Exercise In Alchemy”, the poet offers a series of work poems which focus on the work place as convenience store, school, and government, when he was employed as a stock boy, a supply teacher / relief janitor, a noxious weed inspector, and on, occasion, university student and poet. He expresses empathy for the everyday, yet unforgettable, characters, “Bob” (“Making an Angel for Bob”) who suffers a nervous breakdown; “Charlie” (“The Day Charlie Got Fired”) on “two tabs of acid”; “Mrs. Nash” (“Mr. and Mrs. Nash”) who has the distinction of being “the oldest, / daffiest cashier on the floor.”; “Alberta (“Albert’s Story”) a spy “sent down from central office”; “Big Al (“Big Al’s Trick”) a school grounds’ keeper. Of “Gus”, “The truth is he was bored, and so was I” (“Grunt”). He is able to make their case convincingly because--- and in spite of--- his own wrongful dismissal. The acronym “FUBAR” stands for “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition”, a fitting motto for this world. He does not view them through rose-coloured glasses. For example, for his fellows, “Poetry begins and ends with dirty limericks” (“Grunt”). Further, unlike the poet, “[Howie] never has to eat words.” (“Howard’s Teeth”).
The third and final section entitled “Body Sculpture”, deals with the contemporary obsession with exercise, which has turned unwitting participants into “New Hydes” (as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). To counter this search for eternal youth, which he criticizes, is a focus on mania (“Insomniac In a Cold Snap”), death due to brain tumor (“This Is Just to Say”) and an elegy, “First Funeral, In Memoriam: P.V. Stevenson”, all the faults that flesh is to air to. Among his many gifts is Stevenson’s ear for song lyrics, authentic speech patterns, musical cadence and intonation, regular (and irregular) rhythm. These talents are evident in his tour de force “Canada Geese Nest Site, Return Engagement”, in which he imagines geese (well, one gander in particular, capable of public speaking, when introduced by a carnival barker. The poet says his inspiration was a sign at Henderson Lake Park, which claimed: “...these geese are here for your viewing pleasure.” His performance of this poem at the Jubilee Auditorium during the inaugural “Alberta Arts Day” on September 6th brought down the house.