Anything But a Review

Sorin Gherguț's volume, Anything (Overtures & Residues), recently published by the Pandora M Publishing House, opens the collection of poetry coordinated by Svetlana Cârstean, “Live Poets Society”. This series aims to tame poetry readers. Cure them of classical prejudices: that verses are heavy to take in, elitist and for an expert audience. It is a bet she deserves winning. Through an efficient and smart promotion mechanism, the volumes of verse should find its potential and latent consumers. I believe however that both contemporary prose and poetry are with us in a competition for the same active audience, updated to what happens in cultural life. And therefore extremely demanding and exigent. Unfortunately, very limited. This discussion is maybe worth taken some day.

I have taken this detour because it is, actually, very difficult to me to speak of Gherguț's volume. During university I heard him reading at the Litere Club and every time I had the same feeling that his poetry was a sort of ear or pair of eye glasses that he always bears on him. And without which he couldn't make it. With which he is one. And when he read them, those unexpected, discreet, bookish, jokey verse, simply won you knock-out. (The author will hold public lectures; don't miss them, it is important to listen to him as well.)

I also read Gherguț in the anthologies including his poetry and in Time Out, and his volume published in 1998, by Timpul Publishing House in Iași.

His Anything now includes everything. In a spectacular combination, catchy and fatal at the same time. The book is an enormous whale belly where game, cultural references, absurd and fun, language expressiveness mix and blend all together. Tragic and comic, smart and touching, Gherguț weaves his net in which the reader lets himself be caught for good, smile on his lips. And wanting to read again and again the same pages.

Gherguț's poems are and are not poetry.  They rather seem to be a rare and yet unknown species of words and phrases of their own fascinating life. Some you know, you recognise when you see them in the book, stuck to your mind, but left behind. Hence the perplexity you are loaded with while reading, as you discover them completely changed. Reconverted and fresher than ever.

To see what I am talking about, here are some quotes: “I loathe amusement and repose/ abhor, after all, amusement and equally repose/ and stay away from them as much as I can. / (in putrefaction I'll learn my greatest amusement, -ntine I’ll fully enjoy rest)” – am&rep (amusement and repose). Or: “any nearsighted / any tender-eyed bears in his knapsack/ his white cane/ any lame has trolley in his larder” - any nearsighted any tender-eyed; “don't let me (please kindly) die/ at the border of no sea/ at the border of the sea/ don't let me die here/ neither at the border of some sea)/ I'm not interested in disappearing as long (…) who disappears/ doesn't prove to be worth anything./ the sea goes splash, the fly does splat/ I'm going to bed, in the morning there's a job to attend” – (wondering hit).