Beautiful Bullets by Gary Duehr (Cobble Hill Books-Boston) $14

reviewed by Doug Holder

Somerville poet Gary Duehr's poetry collection BEAUTIFUL BULLETS explores a visceral rite of passage. It marks a painful transition. A trauma that took this country from relative innocence, to shattered ideals. It was a cluster of decades when notions of good and evil, reality and fantasy were thrown into a puzzling mix. Beautiful Bullets is a lyrical construct. It is a poetic edifice built from 1964 to 1999; a monument to a changed and bowed America. But still, there is a sense that "hope springs eternal." The poet is not without optimism for himself, and the country.

Duehr skillfully uses a plethora of pop culture images, 60's jargon (some so arcane that he provides an extensive note section for the too young or uninformed), and historical fact, to produce an account of personal and global malaise. In this passage Duehr sets the scene for what was once icons of a callow and complacent society: "Once there was this country America/ its people dwelt under Tonto, Zorro, Aunt/ Jemimah and Howard Johnson's.... History happened somewhere else." Then the Cold War reared its ugly head:

"then Kruschev spooked us/ any plane could be carrying the BIG ONE. Any average Joe- the grocery clerk/ or traffic cop-could be a mole, trained / to act like us./ they/ capital T/ were everywhere ...' Twas they who got JFK." And so we're off... Notions of a verdant, benign, Rockwellian country were subverted. It is as Duehr puts it: "the America that draws the line at the Woolworth's counter/ or of thrust and counter-thrust: marches, firehouse, Sit-IN/ the aftershocks, from thirty years ago, still tremble."

From the Civil Rights Movement, to the tragedy of the Vietnam War, Duehr delves into the psyche of all the tortured players, the families torn apart, and the aftermath of this national and personal drama. But as the saying goes, "time heals all wounds..." Well... at least partly. In the final passage of the book Duehr looks to the future with an optimistic eye:

"One Hundred years from now/ all new people on the planet/ As from Potemkin to the Curtain's hasty drop, a line drawn through:/

& the o'returned boat shall right itself, its wooden vault/ cleave the water/ free&easy,/ as the captain climbs the pulpit." Duehr manages to go from Bombs to Balm in this accomplished collection of poetry.

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press homepage.mac.com/rconte in Somerville, Ma. His own work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Somerville News, Cambridge Chronicle, Spare Change Newspaper, Poesyand many more. He is currently the Arts/Editor for the Somerville News of Somerville, Mass. To contact: dougholder@post.harvard.edu Copyright 2003. Reprint allowed with author's permission.