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Daniel f. Bradley, A Boy’s First Book of Chlamydia: Poems 1996-2002.  Toronto: BookThug, 2005.

Reviewed by Judith Copithorne
The Rain 4:1 (Winter 2006): 5


This is multi-dimensional, emergent writing. Some writing is two-dimensional, pre-Copernican, completely ordered and rigid, other poetry is three-dimensional, open to several influences but still bound by theoretical considerations. And then there are the wild cards who will take the chances necessary to go wherever the language leads. Sometimes they make terrible mistakes but when it works it is beyond description. We learn and keep on learning.

The kind of poetry we are given in A Boy’s First Book of Chlamydia is rarely easily accessible, it gives up its gifts slowly, the reader’s resources are seriously called upon and she becomes complicit with the poet. It may never be completely seen and only rarely glimpsed. This is what we are dealing with and we pay to understand it. It is almost never taught in school and most critics avoid it but when we give it a chance we have the possibility of adding more dimensions to our lives.

Since the powers that were and still be started oppressing through the use of taboos there have been people who understood these mechanisms. Confess to the priest and he will condemn all like you from the pulpit the next day and offer you heaven if you give the church earth.

Since Marx and Freud and such groups as the surrealist, dada and so forth these procedures have become clearer. Since the 60s when Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse started to popularize in North America these century—old but still generally unknown ideas, these viewpoints have been much better known here. But fashions change, generations turn over and ideas have to be continually reexamined.

And so Bradley, who is going the distance, can seem puzzling at first until we step back, his full size comes into view and we can understand him from a larger perspective in the context of repression, enlightenment and the need for conscious understanding of inevitable change.

It is worth noticing how easily we subvert ourselves, internalizing taboos and giving in to peculiar twists of repression, regression and fear of shunning, which fashion makers understand so well.

Thus one thoughtful and committed reviewer in the last issue of The Rain ran into murky waters with this book. Looking at this review by a writer I appreciate I had to rethink my views. This gave me a chance to stand back and say if it is a question then maybe it is also an answer and then I realized that Bradley’s stance is all the stronger for being a purloined letter hidden in full view because the taboos have blinded us to the obvious.

Bradley is an iconoclast, a taboo breaker, not on purpose but simply because he has felt it necessary not to let certain taboos interrupt the movement, logic and integrity of his writing.

Taboos have many important functions and this is definitely not a plea to dissolve them all. Instead it is written in hope of encouraging more conscious examination of our reactions in life and in poetry. It is also an appreciation of Bradley’s bravery and openness in the face of some of our most persevering and oppressive taboos two of which being, first, gender inequality, and second, the necessity of presenting a cohesive, “adult” persona at all times.

And as for the problem with having “chlamydia” in the title: is it a problem because it has to do with the mention of bacteria? But bacteria are one of the most important elements in all living systems. Is it because it is a female disease? Are female concavities more disgusting than male protuberances when they are viewed in anything but a titillating manner?

Perhaps it’s the ideas of a young boy knowing about chlamydia. But isn’t it good that a young person has the possibility of learning about sexual activities from literature rather than Hollywood, from science rather than from advertising? That he will learn to be very careful and loving of his partner rather than a foolish or ignorant transmitter of a disease that usually men only carry and women primarily suffer from? Sometimes a very debilitating and almost impossible disease to cure.

There are several aspects to the “maturity” taboo. One aspect is that although fashions in attitude change with the generations (and also within the generations) they are rarely able to really address the taboos of power and authority except in the almost brutal way of “let it all hang out”, as it was put in the 60s, which was pretty unappealing and sometimes even dangerous not so much to the hanger outer as to his surround.

There are areas where Bradley feels uncomfortably unconscious but these expressions are not glossed over or covered with attitudes. Also in areas where Bradley shows uncertainties and lacks I know that my desire for an “authoritative” grasp of a situation may subvert my need to understand what is outside my present comprehension and yet not add further to my knowledge.

Bradley also approaches with his iconoclasm quite carefully, by throwing out what appear to be innocuous phrases which in fact seriously question our need to continually show ourselves to be hierarchically structured, unquestionable “adults”.

This book is wide-ranging and the result of a deep commitment to trolling the submerged in the world (inside and out) and whatever it turns up, however discomforting that might be. So I see a commitment to the rational and the irrational together and an ability to take the clues as they come without it being necessary to control them so that sometimes there is surrealism, or language poetry, or the personal, or complex references, or slightly seen plays of language, or mythical activity, or sometimes the shock sensibility of some writers or maybe it is better to leave that under the heading of unearthing and accepting whatever turns up whether it causes pleasure or disgust so long as (the old but, according to my limited knowledge, still unreplaced proviso goes) no one’s boundaries are intruded on.

In these poems there are very fine expressions, lovely passages, fleeting as is usually the case, but there like the air, like the good dreams along with the nightmares. These poems are well beyond fashion or any particular style. They reflect the complexity, clarity and incomprehensibility of our lives. What they don’t try to do is anything in particular. They are poetry as we hope to find it. And worth all the attention we can give them.