Under-dreaming My Days Away

A Review of Nothing of the Month Club by Jeff Alessandrelli (Broken Sleep Books)

The title of this book is taken from a phrase used in a Ray Johnson collage but sounds to me distinctly Kharmsian. The Russian Absurdist Daniil Kharms was a member of OBERIU collective, whose anthology this book is influenced by (as the notes tell us). Kharms is well known for his non-conclusive endings and had a collection of work called Today I Wrote Nothing, so it is not surprising that he comes to mind, or that I was drawn to the book in the first place, being a Kharms fan.

Nothing of the Month Club, is a book of mainly prose poems. More poetic and lyrical than Kharms, it is Vvedensky, the absurdist’s fellow OBERIU founding member, that springs to mind, in terms of style (Alessandrelli confirms that it was Vvedensky, especially, who influenced the book in his interview 'Journey into the Wild' in 3am Magazine). This book is an extension of Alessansdrelli's book Fur Not Light (a title taken from Kharms' poetry), published in America by Burnside Review Press in 2019.

The first poem, 'The problem of America is my body', written after Alice Notley, stands alone, separated from the other sections. It doesn’t fit with the mood or tenor of the other works, but I can see why it’s included: there is an anxiety, an air of defeat that links nicely to the rest, a sense of monotony and disappointment. The speaker has lost the will to dream or be creative.

“Suddenly under-
dreaming my days away,
all worthwhile interests
waning,
my favorite book
merely
the girl with the best ass
in the neighborhood,
the only poem
that tempts me
her boyfriend
working out in his apartment
in the gloaming’s half-light,
his phosphorescent 6 pack abs.”

The speaker can't be bothered to write or read or engage in any way. He is just watching, getting older and fatter. Titillation is easier. So, the book begins at a place of defeat.

'The Leopard Does Not Change Its Spots' opening section has an Ai Weiwei epigraph: “Any awkward moment is a creative act,” and we start with the awkwardness of childhood. 'The Invention of Solitude' includes many vivid descriptions of parents, one “sawing the air like a crazed conductor.” The poem captures loneliness from the outset: “by 10 I was an expert in silence in 13 different languages … the type of child who wanted more from a sunset, one that worked too hard at being themselves.” It is tender and touching, a fragile beginning to the book, and a good point to work out from; the discontent of the speaker in the prologue and the opening poem showing that the child has always been this way; perhaps why the sequence is called 'The Leopard Does Not Changes Its Spots'; our inherent natures and vulnerabilities endure.

As the section progresses, the child starts sending letters but “No-one was ever there.” The child is lonely and wants to be part of a club. Things progress to multiple pen pals out of a heartbreaking, “earnest desire for friendship.” Each poem contains at least a gem or two of gorgeous analogy. For instance, the speaker's mother's eyes “housing two fires, two dull blue flames” in one, or a parent's voice “as soft as the humanless snow of a ghost” in another. All the poems and segments of story represent failed attempts and non-events which reflect on the collection title. There are funny parts too, like the Thai pen friend who finally writes back 14 months later to say: “Yesterday I turned into a bad apple and now I turn around my back.”

'Mammal Half Life Lasts Still Longer' introduces a pervasive absurdist mood. Now the speaker is older, things get way more absurd than before: “You get older, use words like granular, aphasic and lack.” Things are getting emptier, more nothing-y: “simply for the joy of the world, you used to send your pen pals icicles, papier-mâché cats...,” it's like the magic has now gone, everything was so much more colourful and real back then. A time where anything was possible. 'Now the very phrase “pen pal” seems absurd to you,” the speaker says, looking back. Passion is slipping. Things seem to matter less and less.

The act of breathing gets difficult and complicated in 'Everyday Dilemma', in which there is humour around anxiety. This little series of four poems at the end of the section is particularly playful. The climax is the longer, penultimate, poem, 'The Third Sitting Room', about a potential novel about napkins, Alessandrelli is really playing with the status of the mundane here, mocking poetry and showing a little New York School irreverence, by taking a subject that many wouldn’t think worthy of poetry and making it the longest one in this section. So, we have the breathing poem followed by bowels, followed by napkins, things getting more and more ridiculous, as if this is the only way to deal with reality.

In the title sequence, all poems are titled 'Nothing of the Month Club’, which seems to say something about repetitiveness and mundanity. A good example: “The owner of the world's largest air guitar collection” and the “scrap metal … starting to bloom,” the latter seeming to be about writing poetry out of nothing. A significant piece in this section is the one that starts with “Most German fairy tales end with the sentence: 'Not long afterwards there was an outbreak of the plague,'” which ends with the sentence: “Not long afterwards there was an outbreak of the plague,” There are some very funny lines in between these bookends: 'Hey Mr. Police Officer, if you're so smart, how come you're only doing your job?' for instance. The poem seems to leap about like anxiety itself, as a critique of society. Illustrating how unfair it is, in terms of power and money: “In Mexico you have to pay to go to high school,” the speaker says, whereas in America they don’t, and they take it for granted.: “Dumb American kids are f-u-c-k-n-i-g lazy.” They have time to study the sky and can do what they want:

“I studied the sky.
The sky was crowded
I will mention the dead birds
I will mention the wind.”

The poem is surreal, going in and out of reality and the fairytale. Who is in power? Who has the money? There is no justice. The poem goes off on one and the ironic ending is funny and powerful.

In another 'Nothing of the Month Club' the surrealism intensifies: “Certainly I've torn starlings apart with my bare hands, while smoking a cigar, watched a pack of ravenous wasps methodically inhale a horse’s head” it starts. The form is more experimental by playing with the colour of the text on the page. We move through this section until the glorious line, and my own personal favourite of the collection: “Yesterday stands all over today facefucking tomorrow.” Some of the parts of this poem are in Russian, which to the reader, unless they speak in Russian, would be nonsensical, so that it becomes something visual or asemic, again, leaping about all over the place.

Nothing of the Month Club offers a blend of sadness and the comic that is distinctly Alessandrelli’s own, and it is certainly a combination of the two that is essential to all good absurdist writing. As we near the end of the book, in ‘Resignation Modes’, we explore acceptance: “My dog won't stop jumping on the couch, so eventually I love him for it,” “My husband can't keep a steady job, so instead I grow inordinately fond of his ambient sound collages.” In the short final section, 'The natural way to draw', it is moments of despair we traverse: “Despair is believing tomorrow will be exactly the same as today, which was the same as yesterday.” But it is not despair that we are left with in this swoonworthy book of complexities and elusiveness. In fact, in the final, stand-alone poem (yes, the book ends just how it started in that respect), it is “Bright / Florescent Lights” we are left with. Fake maybe, but light, nonetheless.