Chatoyant

Rosicrucian in the Basement
Poems by Robert Sward
Black Moss Press, 2001, 75 pp., $12.95
Review by Suki Wessling
Published on The Constant Reader

In the spirit of disclosure, I must admit that Robert Sward is a friend of mine. When I arrived in his town, like an affable godfather of poetry he took me to lunch, offered me advice on my work, and has supported me in subsequent crazy schemes. Robert is a literary gourmand---he revels in the making, the teaching, and the promotion of poetry. That said, I am moved to write this review not because of my affection for Robert, but because how deeply I was affected by reading his recent work.

Sward's latest poetry collection, Rosicrucian in the Basement, brings across his exuberance in a readable, laugh-out-loud celebration of familial love. Starting with the Rosicrucian of its title---Sward's podiatrist father who takes up the practice after his wife's death---visiting one-by-one his offspring, as children and adults, and ending with an incantatory homage to his mother, Sward takes us on a lightning tour of generations of an eccentric Jewish American family.

Reading from the opening poem cycle in public, Sward brings a boombox equipped with klezmer music to set the scene. On the page, the music is in the language of his father. The poems are monologues, the podiatrist father lecturing his son: "Feet don't lie, / don't cheat, don't kiss ass. Truth is / peoples' feet are too good for them." And the poems are dialogues, the son asking his metal-melting father, "Are you still a Jew?" Sward's new stepmother calling from the kitchen, "He thinks he can look into the invisible... / like God's out there waiting for him... / Meshugge!" In remembered conversations and vivid scenes, Sward memorializes his father from the feet up.

Moving from World War II Chicago to modern L.A., we're introduced to Sward's daughter--- "ring in her navel, / rings on her thumbs" --- a son --- "a musician / a prophet / a raging Apollo" and a second son --- whose "girlfriend / plays back [my] message. / "There's a stalker..." she tells him. / "No, that's my father"." Sward's poems to his children trade Yiddish inflections for young L.A., the disaffection and familial confusion clear not only in content but in the manner of his writing. Sward paints his children in short, bold strokes, spiced with their favorite rock bands, their clothing, and memories of their childhoods so different from his own: "Absentee father / fathering, / he the fathered, fatherless / hungering."

As is often the case with real families, some of the biggest laughs come with the most serious lessons. Aunt Miriam in 1945, teaching her nephew in the manner of a licentious schoolmarm about sex --- "The diagrams and lettering helped," the young Sward admits about their awkward affair. And fifty-two years later she offers a belated lesson on longevity in marriage on the telephone --- "Listen to me. People go up and back between loving / and not loving."

Sward ties it all together---the lecturing father, eccentric relatives, temporary wives, confused children---with a final homage to his mother, who died when he was fifteen. "Mourn like a Jew," his grandfather commands, but young Sward can only remember the mother who taught him: "Mom...How do you pray?" "Snap out of it," she says. "Better to go shopping." When called upon to say Kaddish at her funeral he remained silent, but now that he reflects from an age she never reached, he can offer the final prayer in the form of a poem for her soul and his. Rosicrucian in the Basement is Sward's love letter to his family, and we are privileged to be able to look over his shoulder as he writes.

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