So That's What Synergy Means
BY SHELLY BRYANT I MAY 8, 2009
David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Kendall Evans. Night Ship to Never. Diminuendo Press, 2008. 59 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-9821352-3-5
If synergy is the combined work of agents that somehow surpasses the sum of its parts, then the collaboration of David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Kendall Evans in putting together Night Ship to Never is a perfect specimen to describe the idea of synergy. And that's saying something, because Kopaska-Merkel always writes topnotch poetry, and Kendall Evans has yet to produce a piece that doesn't jump up and grab me by the throat, demanding to be read just one more time. But somehow or another, this little poetry collection does manage to be more than a sum of these two very talented parts. It is a seamless piece of beautiful writing, chock full of fantastically imaginative images.
The poems in the collection do an outstanding job of narrating surreal stories for the reader, such as the tale of Princess P, who "twirls in place / Like one of those ballerinas / Impaled upon a post / Atop a wind-up music box," and the rest of the twisted (and twisting) world in which she moves. Her story, like several others in Night Ship to Never, is told in a cycle of poems that piece the images together so that they form a mural-like narrative. It opens up and invites the reader to take some time looking at the different parts and how they work together to present the whole story.
Interspersed between several lengthier cycles of poems are stand-alone pieces, like "Robo-Cat®" and "Wicked Child." In these poems, you'll find plenty of humor ("Robo-Cat®" is an advertisement for a mechanical pet — one that has to be kept away from your computer's mouse), and also plenty of weightier topics ("Wicked Child," even with it's funny-bone-tickling wickedness, has an underlying punch that can make the reader pause). The mix is just right, and lends to that feel of the value of this collection being something more than merely the sum of its parts. And that's a good thing, because many of the parts are outstanding in and of themselves.
The crowning piece in the collection is "Robot/Worker." It touches on important questions of selfhood, consciousness, and the implications of both in our future relations with the robots we build to work for us. These are intriguing questions, and the handling of them in this poem is just right. We see a robot that stares into the blank eyes of a human skull, ponders the point of his own existence, engages in philosophical reflections while enjoying a cigarette, and ultimately hops right back to work when the boss tells him to do so. It all seems so...human. And that is what is so thought-provoking in this tale of a robot whose "algorithmic mind / Edits the visual distortions, allowing it to see / Without seeing fracture lines in a stained-glass world."
The work put together by this team of poets is exemplary of the sort of thing that can and should come out of a successful collaboration. Upon reading it, I can only hope that Evans and Kopaska-Merkel have plans for more joint writing projects in the future.
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