Crunked is the
second full length poetry collection by Jack Henry. Written in confessional free verse, it documents with astounding
honesty the life of a methamphetamine addict flung deep into his own private
hell. These are stark,
unembellished underground poems which are sometimes highly confrontational in
subject matter which Jack Henry explores with uncensored abandon; including- drug
use, prostitution and mental breakdown. Most of the poems are written in first
person, but Henry adopts a variety of voices and styles in this collection to
flesh out his harrowing perspective on life. The persona in most of the poems wavers between the voice of a defiant, never give-in-to-the-system ‘Superman’ while high, and the crushed voice of
regret and self recrimination, while down and hanging out for the next line of
speed or crack bong.
In his Amazon hype for
Crunked
Henry claims he wrote the book over three days following a sixty-six hour high.
Initially, he did not want to publish it because it ‘was so raw and so personal’.
As revealed in a recent interview in Horror Sleaze Trash, he put the manuscript
in a box and sent it to Wolfgang Carstens of Epic Rites Press with the
intention ‘to get feedback from him and nothing more’
http://www.horrorsleazetrash.com/interviews/13-questions-with-jack-henry/
. Carstens wanted to publish the work but Henry felt it was ‘a little too
honest’ in documenting this unstable period of his life. In the recent
interview with Jack Henry which follows this review, he explains why he finally
agreed to allow publication of
Crunked
after three years:
‘I think Wolfgang wore me down. Initially I sent it to him
for his opinion as I have always respected his take on writing. He's never been
afraid to tell me I am full of shit or if it is something worthwhile. When he
gave me a positive assessment I admit I was surprised…The final decision came when I just decided to do it.
Literally threw up my hands and said let's do it. It was minimal process more
gut.’
In
the Amazon blurb for Crunked Henry also
asserts that he is not intent in glamorizing or creating a moral tale- rather
he is merely presenting a slice of life: ‘CRUNKED
is a nothing more than a narrative. It's neither cautionary nor celebratory, it
just exists as a document of experience’. In this review, I will explore what I
consider the two main concerns of the collection- Henry’s perspectives on
getting ‘crunked’ and on writing.
On Getting Crunked
The main hit of this book is certainly focused on Jack Henry’s
frenetic and unrelenting quest for methamphetamine in its various forms. Over dozens of
intricately woven poems, Henry credibly represents the manic
speed-driven quest for drugs and sex and the inevitable tragic descent of a tweaker
who becomes mired in self delusion, depression and sickness.
The poem ‘Checking out’ effectively captures the poet’s
‘need to escape’ and his sense of urgency in his self destructive ‘search of a whore
and enough dope/ to last until my breath finally fades.’ In ‘forgive me father
my sins’ he feels ‘the twitch’ and is dealt ‘a little something/ to cut the
edge down/ to a manageable burn.’ In ‘sober eyes’ he watches the people on the
street from his house and he is bored shitless. He expresses a ‘crack pipe epiphany’:
‘lines before me/ a rolled bill in hand/ i prefer the blindness/ of
amphetamine/ to that which sober eyes see.’ In the rare surreal poem ‘on
getting a job’ he validates his lifestyle and is determined not to become a
whore to the mainstream: ‘in that chair, in that office, / with those pictures
and plaques, / and i know this will kill me quicker than speed, / or nicotine,
/ or fucking a crack whore.’
In ‘no promises left to keep’ after scoring ‘a purchase i
cannot afford’ it is as if a drill bit has split his skull and ‘demons dance
atop/ my flesh.’ In ‘underneath skies of diminishing returns’ ‘the voices’
within him are silenced and for a brief moment of illumination everything
‘makes sense’, everything ‘seems/ so clear.’ In ‘containment’ he rolls up a
bill and states matter-of-factly: ‘that bitter taste is what makes me whole.’
The poem ‘finding’ probably best describes the potent elixir
of empowerment and freedom that the poet seeks: ‘I found freedom/ at the
center/ of a rolled-up/ twenty-dollar bill… when i am high i’m a hero, / no one
can touch me… when i am high/ i put away worry, i put away Sunday/ live the divine.’
In his first hit as a teenager in his bedroom he proclaims: ‘i became Superman
and i thought: / it doesn’t get better than this.’
The hit of the illicit mind-fucking drug also evokes random
thoughts, disturbing childhood memories and frightening hallucinations in the
poet’s head. In the outstanding title poem ‘crunked’ Henry makes clear his
ambiguous take on meth: ‘speed makes my mind nimble/ makes me breathe as if
content/ before i fuck away tomorrow.’ He risks ‘it all’ for the taste, but in
the cold light of day he realizes that speed is ‘my pathos dance’ and ‘doesn’t
pay bills/ or mop floors/ or bring me flowers when/ I vomit on the couch.’
When Henry steps back and views the direction his life has
taken he is greatly startled. Although he has made a conscious decision to
pursue his lifestyle, its chaotic, reckless pace amazes him in retrospect. He
asks himself a number of rhetorical questions which to the sober reader seem
self evident: ‘how did i end up here?’ (‘how did i end up here?’), ‘how did i fall
so fuckin’ low? (‘I’ll just call her
bitch’), and ‘when did i fall/ when did i fail? (‘dance then on the grave of a
dearly departed’).
In such moments of vulnerability and self reflection, the
poet agonizingly expresses his considerable doubts and regrets. In the third
person poem ‘equanimity amongst the living’ the ‘old poet’ pain-stakingly realizes
that he has ‘tossed away/ everything/ for a taste/ a simple lick.’ In ‘addict’
he views himself like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner ‘as a leper/ a pilgrim/ a
corpse lost in a rotting sea.’ In the poem ‘tails hasn’t come up yet’, he
graphically sums up the depths to which his life has been reduced to since completing
his worthless university degree and getting stuck into the meth:
when I weigh my scale
this is what I’ve got:
internet masturbation
white line inhalation
one round in the chamber
and the distance to watch
In ‘forgive me father my sins’ he makes the stark
realization: ‘i never thought i’d be an addict/ i never thought i’d fail
completely/ i never thought i’d sit mute and wait/ in front of a television.’
In many respects time has stopped for ‘sad-sack Jack’. Many of the poems in
this collection are about waiting. Waiting for the next score, waiting for
inspiration, waiting for anything to happen. In ‘discovery and departure’ he
waits at a Greyhound bus terminal for a yet unknown destination. He is
rootless, in a kind of secular limbo without a center. In the remarkable poem
‘fifteen points without a center’ Henry describes how this waiting is akin to
‘awaiting the church door to open- / my penance is in the waiting.’
The quest for personal freedom and expression obviously have
their downsides. To Henry meth brings euphoria, self confidence and an
increased libido- but also chaos, disintegration and alienation from family and
friends. Many of the poems directly address his ex-wife often in a tone of
regret and merging on self pity. In one of the books most powerful poems ‘a
slow inching forward’ he admits in the opening line, ‘chaos sits harbored at
the center of my soul’ and it feels like ‘a rope cinches tighter/ around my
neck’. There is sense of tragedy, of a wasted life, when later in the poem he
utters, ‘you have left me/ atop buildings awash in fire/ you have left me/
alone.’
In ‘freakshow.com’ Henry explains to the reader the source
of much of his public anger, how he ‘threw in the towel’ after unsuccessfully
sending out 237 resumes to find a mainstream job. In ‘novice’ he uses the
inventive metaphor to describe his disillusionment, ‘i am/ in denial// dreams
ass-fucked and bleeding/ two years gone and 20k more in debt’. As the interview which follows explains,
Henry wrote Crunked in the context of returning to college in his
late 40s to complete an MFA degree with the intention of teaching but he was
unable to score a job despite sending off hundreds of resumes. In ‘dance then
on the grave of a dearly departed’ as his aspirations ‘fall apart,’ he states
bitterly, identifying himself with Icarus: ‘I should never have been a poet/
never went back to school/…never reached so high’.
In ‘future’ Henry realizes ‘there’s no future for me/ not
here, not in words/ or pages/ my lies have caught up with me. He closes his
eyes and takes the ‘sledgehammer kick’ he vows defiantly: ‘I will never stop
running’ towards the next rush. In ‘containment’ he furthers this point, ‘i am
not quitting, / when faced with that alternative/ I find contentment// living//
right here’. Instead of sitting around a table studying literature, he says in
‘tails hasn’t come up yet’ that ‘I live by the balls’ and ‘it’s my revocation/
my rapture’.
on writing
There are close to a dozen poems in Crunked in which Henry provides explicit insights into his writing
process, choice of subject matter and underlying intent. Henry is a frenetic,
highly spontaneous writer who gets it down fast and rarely edits his work once
it is completed. In ‘paths know no direction’ he describes the origins of one
particular poem and how it takes shape in his mind:’ ‘it starts with a title/
not by design/ simple words/ a progression/ a development of sense/ an
explosion of light/ burning fire/ seeing through nucleoli/ red blood cells
dance beneath/ chemically burned eyes’. In ‘and in the beginning’ he states
that ‘poetry’s my main addiction’ but the ‘other one’ ‘finally gets it done’.
In ‘last Thursday night’ he furthers the notion that he uses drugs to quell his
anxiety and to evoke his creativity. While waiting to be seen by a doctor in a
public hospital he takes a hit in the restroom to settle his nerves. In a
clever extended metaphor he explains how his ‘poem begins with a thought/ and how
these ideas are intuitively reworked in his brain like a snort of meth:
in my head, i see words form line after line-
when they come out i place them on a flat surface
cut the rocks down to powder with the hard edge of a
credit card forming lines on a flat surface
(how many lines make a stanza?)
i roll my last five-dollar bill into a tube and snort
each line back into my skull
rework the poem
in my brain
In ‘wastewater in concrete sewers’ Henry uses a graphic metaphor
to describe his pessimistic take on his own writing and the difficulty he
experiences in composing his poetry: ‘some days it/ flows/ -shit filled/
wastewater in/ concrete sewers’ // other days/ it’s like trying/ to find a
viable vein.’
In ‘and in the beginning’ the poet clearly explains the
emotional impact a poem that works will have on him: ‘sometimes a poem kicks my
soul/ with steel-capped boots/ a diamond bit tearing my skull/ as breath draws
baker’s dust/ to the marrow of my spine’). In the interview which follows Henry
makes the observation, ‘The poetry I enjoy is that which surprises or shocks or
improves on a form of the past.’
In ‘itch’ Henry sums up his urge to fly, to find ‘my center’
through his risk taking. He comments on how his ‘life evolves like a poem.’ He
states that his poetry is not academic or has a well thought out intent, but
instead it is built from the ‘bottle/ or spike’ of real experience and reflects
his genuine pain:
not a marshmallow academic one,
nor those written
by rebels and
rabble rousers
more like a poem
built from bottle
or spike, or meticulous sorrow
one that wanders without purpose
or function
Jack Henry seeks recognition for his poetry to ‘a level of
some renown’ (‘fifteen points without a center’) but he can appear to be self
defensive or thin-skinned in his reaction to critics of his work. In one of the
best poems in the collection- the complex, multi-layered ‘dance then on the
grave of a dearly departed,’ he finds comfort in finding ‘restitution’ in being
‘six feet deep’. There is a dismissive, angry tone in his voice: ‘there are
those that do not like/ the way i write…too much sorrow or pity or something/
they cannot comprehend’. He continues as if he has totally given up, thrown his
arms into the air in despair: ‘i never said/ i write for you/ never said/
anything, really/ at all.’ This defeatism is furthered in ‘i’ll just call her
bitch’ when he cynically states in a moment of self-reflexivity, ‘maybe you
haven’t realized/ that this ain’t art.’ Blunter still, is the disdain he shows
his readers when he ponders his fallen state and says matter-of-factly: ‘fuck
you/ fuck it all/ i’m tired/ out of dope/ out of patience/ out of second
chances.’
Summing
Up
There is always an inherent difficulty in attempting to
explain poetry ‘ripped from the heart’ like Jack’s book. I can easily draw
associations here and there and create a synthesis of the poet’s ideas, but the
significance of a work usually relies on the emotional impact it has on its
audience. Much of what Henry writes is, as he says, like ‘a shotgun blast from
a fading smile’ (‘no promises left to keep’) and the totality of his poetic
achievement is extraordinarily difficult to reduce to mere words. I have been
writing book reviews for a couple of years, but Crunked has certainly been one of my most exacting.
Overall, as an ordinary bloke who settles for the occasional
weekend beer, I found Jack Henry’s Crunked
to be a fascinating, but disturbing read. His redemptive quest for pleasure is self
indulgent and essentially rooted in the abandonment of his loved ones and
friends. His desire to ‘taste another bump’ and to hunt out anonymous whores
‘in back alleys’ is a repugnant, hedonistic attempt to achieve penance from the
deadness he sees around him. (Yeah, I'm jealous). You can understand why the author was reticent in
publishing this amazing collection in the first place. Despite the brilliance
of his poetry, what local American school board would have the balls to hire
such an innovative, subversive thinker?
Jack Henry’s blog of poetry and publications:
AN INTERVIEW WITH JACK
HENRY- 12 September 2011
George, thanks for the opportunity with the interview. I
always find these a challenge and for some reason found this one even more
challenging than usual. Maybe I over think it, I don't know. My responses below
are my fifth or sixth attempt. The first ones felt too thought out,
over-analyzed or something.
1.
Your book description
on Amazon says that you wrote Crunked
in three days and then put it in a box, perhaps never to see the light of day
because of its raw, personal nature. Can you describe the process of finally
deciding you wanted to publish the work?
I think Wolfgang Carstens (publisher of Epic Rites Press)
wore me down. Initially I sent it to him for his opinion as I have always
respected his take on writing. He's never been afraid to tell me I am full of
shit or if it is something worthwhile. When he gave me a positive assessment I
admit I was surprised. Personally, I never thought much of it and I still
struggle with its value. The voice of Crunked
is somewhat unique to me, in retrospect. It is very much of the moment.
The final decision came when I just decided to do it.
Literally threw up my hands and said let's do it. It was minimal process more
gut. Sometimes it's hard to let go of something personal, other times not...
2.
You returned to
university in your mid 40s to complete a Masters of Fine Arts degree with the
hope of becoming a teacher but were unable to score a job. Can you elaborate
further on your personal context leading up to the writing of Crunked?
This is the question I had the most problem with, initially.
To be honest I don't remember the personal context leading up to the writing.
It was two or three years ago. I do know, at the time, my life was a mess.
Dabbling in the illegals, not having a significant job, getting shut out of
employment opportunities in education.
Ultimately I made the decision to get my MFA to teach. No
other reason. Teach. And I thought I had done all the right things to get to
that point. I mean if you read the requirements to get employed I had them,
plus a ton of other extracurricular activities. The press, the journal, the
reviews, the publishing, and on and on. But the one critical, the one I thought
I fulfilled through my every day job, failed me. I didn't have the experience
as a teacher. Even with glowing recommendations from some significant
academics, it just didn't carry. And when the economy first got tossed a great
many teachers with more experience than me were in the wind and picked up all
the available jobs. A perfect storm of recession to fuck over my goal. So in
the end I spent the money, did the work and had a degree I could not do
anything with.
I guess my personal context was pissed off. In retrospect,
pissed off at myself.
3.
In a recent HST
interview you expressed a need to ‘be as honest in your writing as you can
be’. http://www.horrorsleazetrash.com/interviews/13-questions-with-jack-henry/
You conclude that Crunked ‘feels a
little too honest. But fuck it.’ What sort of responses to your book have you had
and how do you feel about the publication four months out?
The responses I have received have been pretty good. Most of
the compliments come from people I know or know my work, so I have a hard time
accepting those as a true critique. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them and
anyone that forks out the money to buy the book. It is amazing. To the chagrin
of my publishers I have always said that if I sell one book to someone I don't
know or doesn't know me that is a measure of success. Marketing my own work has
always been difficult and I get criticized a great deal for not doing more, but
self-promotion is a tough thing.
I am eager to hear more, good and bad.
4.
Crunked is a very confronting book which explicitly discusses drug
addiction, prostitution and how you ‘fuck away tomorrow’. If it is as you say
‘a document of experience’ what do you hope your readers will take from it?
This question bothered me as well. My answer changes. The
best and most honest answer I have is this: I hope they take something away
from it. What that thing is, I cannot say. I never have a specific hope about a
written document. I imagine it will play to each reader uniquely. Each reader
brings their own perception, their own past to what they read. I cannot control
that nor would I, if I could.
5.
Some of your poems
such as ‘equanimity amongst the living’, ‘perception to reality’ and others use
third person narration. Why do you use this distancing device in an otherwise
first person collection?
Voice is part of the moment. Some poems come out first
person, some third. I never edit to change voice. Hell, I barely edit at all.
The poem as it comes out is how it should remain.
6.
Your book adopts the
form of the confessional and includes many references to Christianity. Why the
fascination with religious imagery from someone who appears to be an atheist?
Well, one I am not atheist and, two, my fascination is more
with others that are conscripted into
believing that a specific religion is the voice and
motivation to their existence. I challenge the right of an organization or
individual to decide for me how to interpret a given event or experience. In
that respect I am very individualistic. Religion was created to solve the
issues of the day of a relatively uneducated and ignorant populace. It is a
tool to keep people down and oppressed. Religion is an anathema of what
spirituality should be and is meant to be. I do not feel to pray or worship a
deity when I am the one responsible to resolve my own issues. Putting this
responsibility off on belief is in fact irresponsible and, frankly, stupid.
Each person has the ability to resolve the issues they exist within, whether it
is an event on a grand scale or minor.
I was raised in a Christian household and, at a very young
age, rebelled against it. The Christian faith is a part of my background.
Organized religion is my enemy.
7.
Most poetry bores the
shit out of you. What do you like to read in a book of poetry?
The poetry I enjoy is that which surprises or shocks or
improves on a form of the past.
Too many poets are "me-too" and show no
originality. I am as guilty of that as any, but there are poets that never
progress, never push, never change, never evolve and that is what I see
published all too often.
8.
Your magazine ‘Heroin
Love Songs’ reappeared for a short time earlier this year. Is it now defunct or
does it still have a future, including a print edition?
No Heroin Love Songs is dead. Completely. I have no desire
or compulsion to publish.
9.
How is your head now?
What challenges await you? Are you still working on your novel Red Lincoln?
Interesting question. In my heart I am done with writing, at
least for a public audience, which is not to say I will never publish or
attempt to publish again. But there is a spark that has left me. In 2006 I
could sit down and write all day, now I can barely focus on a piece. It's just
not there. Some say it's writers block but I don't buy into that. I just am
done.
Cheers!
Jack Henry
