Robin Eichele, a Detroit-based poet who’s written four previous collections, has structured “THE WAYLAND SESSIONS” 2017-2020, his latest work, around that of a vinyl record. The poems are organized by movement—ten altogether and organized by month—that capture the tone and mood of daily life. The collection is told in the Blue Note tradition, which in jazz and blues refers to a note that doesn’t quite belong to the key of the song being played. They may fall flat, or sound minor when the key is major. The blue melody is meant to create an enjoyable tension.
Most of the experiences Eichele shares are familiar enough. Any reader may have lived them; folding a poker hand, a run-in with an old friend, a wardrobe malfunction, or the difficulty of spotting someone you know from a train platform. Some poems tell more than others. For example, in Blue Around the Edges, the reader gets a clearer sense of who is speaking to them. “Like Bresson and Bergman and Schrader, I am a bit blue around the edges,” Eichel waxes. It’s not all-telling, but suddenly, the topic of film has entered the frame. The use of proper nouns, when done thoughtfully, is fantastic.
The collection does have a few shortcomings. With the expectation that the collection is shaped like an album, readers should be able to (metaphorically) drop the needle on certain distinct tunes, rather than sit for a single read from beginning to end. For example, with Poem in the eighth movement, the rhythm stalls quite a bit. It’s a robust piece, composed of page-width sentences. Musicians rarely take this liberty with their lyrics, especially in jazz, where vocals tend to give way to the sounds. But for the most part, the structure works: the discord of the blue note tradition comes through. Passages like Center Field, The Natural Order, and Michigan Canvas, keep the collection in motion. Center Field, especially, moves along quite swiftly. It’s sparse, and the words are well-placed. In the accompanying audiobook, which Eichel reports is in production, the small repetitions will create an amusing listening experience. That may be what is lacking on the page, anyway, a regular rhythm.
In his “THE WAYLAND SESSIONS” 2017-2020, Robin Eichele delivers a delivers a thoughtful and lyrical reflection on the complexity of our time with a selection of poems that invoke the style of a blues artist.
~Elizabeth Barton for IndieReader