The Tormented Mirror (Pitt Poetry Series)
by Russell Edson

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Book Reviews of The Tormented Mirror (Pitt Poetry Series)

Book Review: Great Comedy, But Less Wonder
Summary: 3 Stars

At first I thought that The Tormented Mirror was a book of throw-aways culled together by the editor of Pitt Press. I read the book four times, and each time I came away feeling disappointed. The poems in this book are a bit more crude, and on the average, less sophisticated than the best poems in The Tunnel. I tired of the over-emphasis on body parts and functions. In general I'm all for Edson's bizarre forays into the ultra-Freudian mentality, but I kept feeling that The Tormented Mirror was obsessed with the most overt and simplistic Freudian reactions while neglecting the complexities and depth that Freud himself, or classically, Edson, would have seen in the dark marshes of the unconscious. Then I heard Edson read the poems. There's a Real Video of an entire reading given at Arizona State University on line (http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/creativewriting/marshall/edson/). It was the first opportunity I had to hear Edson read his work, and I was very impressed. His voice is deep, resonant and filled with wickedly satirical drama. His ASU reading devoted about half the time to this book and half to old favorites (from The Tunnel).

With the benefit of Edson's voice and performance, I realized that the poems of the Tormented mirror are not deficient, but simply lighter than his best work. They are more comedic, and Edson's reading (complete with bouts of chuckling) demonstrates the comedy. When he read them in line with his older poems, they blended seamlessly, and the reading was truly a delight.

So I returned to this review, originally a rather mean one, to rectify my error. I had demanded too much of Edson originally, probably because his writing is so important to me. I sympathize deeply with his status as "Poet of the Unconscious." In some ways, he doesn't do the unconscious as much justice in this book as in the best efforts of his past. He draws more from the sexually repressed, id-terrorized personal unconscious in the Tormented Mirror than he did in some of his earlier poems, which carry more mystery, oddly-resonating logic, and deeper, more universal palpitations of the human animal and its beleaguered brain. Still, these poems are great fun, and definitely worth a read if you are familiar with and enjoy Edson's writing. If you are new to Edson, don't start here. The Tunnel is the book to get. The Tormented Mirror strikes me as more for the Edson aficionado. But, by all means, watch the ASU reading before you buy this book. At times, The Tormented Mirror lacks a lighted pathway to understanding Edson's voice, and the ASU reading will work as a starry night to navigate by.

Another weakness of this book in view of the poems in The Tunnel is a relative lack of wonderful language and linguistic pyrotechnics. Edson is a genius, but not just for his weird masterful manipulations of logic. He is also a master of metaphor and amazing phrases. The language in The Tormented Mirror is less electrified than the Edson poems I love most, which adds to its seemingly simplistic crudeness. My recommendation is to read these poems very slowly with a heightened sense of wry drama. In the past, Edson has utilized strange phraseology to send your tongue and ear tripping into the proper rhythm for the specific poem. Here, the very basic language would seem to encourage faster reading. You will have to trip your own tongue to best appreciate these poems, and after you become resigned to this, the poems will best expose their polymorphously perverse sensibilities.

There are some great bits where Edson's language is in classic form, though. In "Sleep," a neat little poem about insomnia, a man suffers from being an unprofessional sleeper in need of training. Edson writes:
"He needed a sleeping master, who with a whip and a chair could discipline the night, and make him jump through hoops of gasolined fire. Someone who could make a tiger sit on a tiny pedestal and yawn ..."

More frequently though, the language of the poems is more silly and humorous than magical. For instance, in "Sunset," a poem about a person who sits in a stranger's window eclipsing the stranger's view of a sunset with a large posterior. Argument ensues as the owner of the window tries to get the owner of the posterior to leave. The owner of the large backside says:
"I was tired and saw your open window and thought to sit on your sill until I was less tired. I even took my pants down to give my backside a more natural look. Experience has taught me that people prefer to see something almost as natural as a sunset in their windows ..."

Another poem, "The Reality Argument" opens with a wonderful line, "Who has not awakened in the night wondering if the illness called childhood was not borne by an infestation of dolls?" but degenerates by the end into infantile sexual curiosity, seemingly neglecting the other exquisite non-sexual possibilities. Almost all the poems are good for at least a laugh, though, and that is not a bad thing. A very short poem, "The Rule and Its Exception," is dumb, absurd, and hilarious at once, and serves as a good illustration of how the Tormented Mirror is best treated as a sweet little literary confection and not a multiple-course meal:
"The big toe located on each of the two feet of man (Homo sapiens, "man, the wise") has as its main function the growing of a toenail and the production of pain when stepped on ...
Death is the exception to this rule.
Goodbye, my friends ..."

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