Review of: Synonym for Sobriety - A book of poetry by Ben Adams

Review of 'Synonym for Sobriety', by Ben Adams

I've heard it said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but connection, community, friendship, association, kinship and all the other terms synonymous with a healthy life and mind. So while sobrietas is not always the antonym of ebrietas, it may be said that the two states of being have more in common than one might expect. Omar Khayyam tells me that '...drunk or sober a man lives in doubt, so pass the wine cup...', and whether or not he spoke of spiritual, or alcoholic wine, one cannot live in such a state and still maintain the resolution required of a man to live in the world. So, drunk or sober, Ben Adams book tells us the story of his life.

He is, (I think) by collecting this decade of poetry and sharing it with us, trying to illustrate that sobriety is not the same as renunciation, nor is it abstinence or ascetism. To be a poet, one must live in the world, and thus, all poets are compromised between their ideals and the reality of life and death. So between the strip clubs and the libraries, the empty streets and the empty nights, Ben describes to us the fullness of his connections to both the living and the dead. I think him right to wear his influences openly and to proudly declare both Hemingway and Bukowski as his friends in literature. Cicero and Tacitus taught that in order to learn the craft of oratory, once must seek out those worth emulating, and through the study of their great work, come to find one's own voice. It is in the gaining and the loosing of love that poets comes to know themselves, and Ben's book is a story of a life replete with both, mixing poetry both rhythmic and prosodic. But it is also haunted by the ghosts of uncertainty, so common in our age where truth itself seems just another fake news report.

Through long afternoons

we gulp falernian wine

and send back word from the edge

there is nothing here, nothing left

to defend -

- except an idea, this empire braced

against the invasion of years

and the sky above,

like Rome itself

a canvas of splendid

familiarity hung

above the burning wind.

I think that Ben Adams is keenly aware of the pool of great literature in which his book now swims, and while it is not for me to declare the fate of his work, I do affirm its worth. There is truth in poetry, and Ben soberly gives his account of it, sometimes drawling of the tired striving and failing of everyday life, sometimes insisting that there is beauty in the fractured lives we lead. He's certainly not trying to sugar coat the story, but it is sweet enough in his telling to find value in reading, and re-reading his poems.

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Find Ben's book through www.friendlystreet.org

or on www.facebook.com/bts.adams/