A Review Of Death Poems

Review by CB Smith


From the moment one begins burrowing into this ominously titled poetry collection one is braced for something, anything, and a more than likely lethal journey into a dystopian universe. But the expectation pales in comparison to what greets the occipital lobes furtively but all too violently as images assault from all sides, very much like a Kandinsky canvas, wild vortices of shape and splashes of color each tied inexorably to an emotional center of which the artist is master. The title piece, Death Poems, begins as at cursory glance we are greeted with what seems two men or maybe boys, one squatting and attempting to shit while the other lords over the first holding something over him manifestly terrorizing, literally scaring the shit out of. Yet by the time we get to the second poem, Genital Arts, color splashes scatter and recombine, vortices interconnect, and in this recombinant form the poet hits full stride. Cock, pussy, cunt, fuck, semen? What in the hell have we gotten ourselves into? Is this a Henry Miller, or Georges Bataille, or Jean Genet poetry collection? The questions race up the esophagus in vomitous mass but the answers are slow in arriving. Che Elias, subversion personified, has in this collection pulled out all the stops as he moves from scratching below the carefully controlled surface veneer to plunging straight in for the kill, blasting through the sedimentary layers until all life’s horrors nightmares and vulnerabilities are exposed in all their exuberant and excruciating colors. Meanwhile as the reader huddles and prepares for the end, rolling on the floor pulling in tightly to ward off unseen attackers, the barrage relentlessly carries on. Now one might think this is merely an attempt at porno poetics, and while this viewpoint has some merit it only strikes the tip of the iceberg. Che Elias is no greenhorn poet just in from apprenticeship trying out a few new tricks. In fact so well versed, so daring, so outrageous and uncompromising a poet is he that he is perhaps the Ezra Pound of the 21st century. If you are unfamiliar with Ezra Pound, know that he was a poet who, along with T. S. Eliot, was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early 20th century poetry. He was the driving force behind several early 20th century Modernist movements, notably Imagism and Vorticism. An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. It is the presentation of such a 'complex' instantaneity which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works. All this, however, some may consider open to debate.


With Che Elias, correspondences abound, his favored precision of imagery, clear, sharp language, using no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something. He operates within this collective matrix: go in fear of abstractions; do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose; be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it; don't allow 'influence' to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire.


This synopsizes the poet, stylist, artist, Che Elias, whose remarkably insatiable curiously and courage to seize the emotional centers of life, and yes, death, and tear them to shreds with his bare hands Wolani warrior style, annulling the flagrantly bold fears to send them sniveling into the corners of ignominy to lick their wounds. This then is Death Poems, the latest collection of fearless poems from Che Elias. Enter if you dare…