The Gang of One, Selected Poems by Robert Harris (review)

Abstract

Robert Harris’s The Gang of One, Selected Poems is divided into six sections and represents a lifetime of work. Five of the sections contain selections from specific collections, while the sixth section is a mash-up of uncollected poems. Unfortunately, because the sections are fairly unbalanced in length (some are quite short; others are very long in comparison), it is difficult to get a clear picture of the collections that each section represents. For longtime fans of Harris, this book might provide a way to look back on past favorites, but for those new to his work, the book has the feel of a tasting menu. Like other books of selected poems, it does not give us a clear picture of what the poet is hoping to accomplish. Another issue with the selected poems model is that Harris’s many experiments with form and style, all of which are liberally displayed in the book, feel disjointed and somewhat random, the one exception to this being the selection from his collection JANE, Interlinear & Other Poems, which includes several multipart poems in which Harris has been clearly methodical in his choices to use form to represent various voices within these sections. This part succeeds because we are given enough context to understand what he is trying to achieve. Other parts of the book are less convincing. This failure could be either because readers are unable to see the larger picture of a specific collection or because at some stages in his career, Harris just was not as adept at using form to meet his purpose. For example, in the poem “Australian Rules,” in The Cloud Passes Over, Harris establishes a pattern of playing with white space on the page and with indentation and line lengths, only to completely abandon that pattern for traditional stanzas on the second page of the poem. When such a choice is made with a clear intention to which the reader can relate, it can work, but in this instance Harris’s method seems sloppy. This lack of unity is further amplified by the fact that Harris appears to have no one distinct style. While some themes repeat throughout, each of the sections is markedly different, presumably reflecting some of what the poet was trying to accomplish in the original anthologies. The trouble with such a setup is that the poems are presented out of context; thus, their individual failings become more magnified. Harris is undoubtedly talented and at times displays a keen eye for relaying details and setting a scene; he is also clearly a lover of adjectives and is not shy about using them to excess. A fair number of the poems are so verbally dense that a reader may struggle to find the heart of the work. For example, in “Old Sailors at the Memorial,” he writes,