Shane Neilson

Personal experience weighs heavy in Shane Neilson’s third book of verse, but I stop short of calling it autobiographical. Neilson, a doctor, stares death in the face by looking into the faces of his own patients. The major theme, and the power of the book, is the speaker’s expressed inability to help his patients in a concrete way. The familiar story of the doctor whose job it is to save lives, sets itself up against his inability to cure death. Not accomplishing this impossible task translates into expressions of personal failure. “I Doctor like Charon tends to his Staff, ”he writes in the villanelle "No Ill Effects," and observes “...futility chips away at my clinical edifice,” (The Doctor Will see you Now).

In poems like “Dr. Grinch” and “Fariygodmother, MD,” Neilson explores his mythical soothsaying role. “I am aloft on wish power, I am borne on the shoulders / of a sweaty wishing public...” While there is a confessional slant to this book, it is primarily observational in scope. Neilson examines his own professional position as much as his emotional reaction to it. He relays the inevitable futility of language to address mortality.

“How to say to you, You will die?
I try not to speak in third person,
mentioning statistics.
I’ll look you in the eye.
The word terminal—impersonal—
is forbidden. “ (Terminus)

The theme repeats itself: (Companology)

“I’ve tried to make my own vocabulary,
one with a syntax of comfort, a grammar of relief,
but all that comes out
is a sound like a tolling bell.”

Shane Neilson’s Complete Physical announces the honest voice of an onlooker addressing his predicament. It is confessional only in terms of rhetorical technique, rather than in fact. But ethical questions do leap to mind about such a project. Before we assume our doctor is jotting notes for poems during our medical consultations, and relaying actual recognizable persons and their medical conditions to the reader, lets consider “The Death of Leo Emberson, November 2006,” and “The Death of Josie,” the only poems that address patients directly. What about the exposed details of Leo’s life? Are they fictionalized?

“...from the wrong end
of Hamilton, you became a Dofasco foreman
and drank until you ended up in the ICU.”

A family might be uncomfortable if the poem exposed private moments at a father’s deathbed. But Neilson doesn’t let it go there. It becomes clear Leo is not his own patient, and it is clear the poem is an homage to a man’s life in the tradition of an ode to a fallen hero. He universalizes the poem with some marvelous insight into what a hero actually is:

“There I learned how big a man
you really were: how that bald head
and ratty moustache meant a friend,
was the disguise of a hero...and looking at you
I knew I needed no more fathers.”

The less successful “The Death of Josie,” is potentially more problematic; reading “...that I looked down your throat and saw through the smoke,” suggests it’s his patient. In avoiding identifying detail, Neilson struggles to paint a fully realized character, and the poem lacks the moral focus of “Leo Emberson...”, disintegrating into description. (There’s also a borderline mixed metaphor: “..I write a phantom appendage for your leg / that you will never hear.”)

Complete Physical is largely a content driven book, and on the whole, Neilson’s use of language is informational rather than musical. In too many places the descriptive-laden writing moves closer to the realm of prose. While Neilson has an ear for music, I wish he’d trust his instinct, let loose, give himself over to the flow of sound, surprise, juxtaposition, dissonant meanings, in short the harmony of that creates poetic logic (and maybe cut a few adjectives while he's at it). He can be a bit, well, clinical.

“At twenty-five, degree on my wall,
I looked to yellowed yards of textbooks
for wisdom, and found data only.” (Song of the Most Responsible Physician)

The stilted syntax “data only,” along with prose rhythms at times create an emotional flat line. However, look at these next line:

“There is no preparation: people die
and I solder silver linings to grief.”

The language here lifts, and reveals the heart of this book. The blunt thud of the first line, “people die” followed by effective use of reworked cliché results in surprise. This is where Neilson is best. Matter of fact truth, followed by unexpected metaphor containing important insight.… (altro)