Today we bring you the latest from Chris Peebles and, to be frank, he’s testing our capacity for empathy with this one. It all started last summer when our money boat was struck and sold for scrap, forcing The Kreation Korner staff and kontributors to pursue more conventional forms of gainful employment. Since then, Peebles was hired on as a nonperishables buyer for Tsar Mart and became a father. As the following poem suggests, these life-changing events have precipitated a full embrace on his part of the middle-class lifestyle in all its predictable, humdrum glory. While it’s not our place to judge and certainly not our place to police the expression of our kontributors, we feel it’s important to at least point out that Chris’s “domestic trip,” though he has every right to pursue it, can have negative consequences for our movement as it perpetuates the sort of suburban banality an originalist interpretation of the Kreationist Manifesto tells us to fight against. It’s troubling that one of the sturdiest pillars of Kreationism could be so seduced by such un-kreative fantasy, but we do acknowledge that a person can assume multiple personae all at once, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes clashing, in the ever-unfolding ballet of human experience. We're confronted with the reality that there are no easy answers--we’ll give Chris credit for that much at this point. We’re still unpacking this, and it will take time to arrive at a final ruling, if any. If you wish to consider a fully-formed opinion at this time, stay tuned after the poem for a short review by budding kreation kritic Schuyler Graves. Proceed with caution:
“Content of Contentment”
I’ve found stability in my life
The Dove of Balance snatched up my strife
Vanished into the majestic sky
Make sense of life? I no longer try
I’m now at ease with life’s contradictions
I calmly surmount all its frictions
Not anxious nor angry, self-destructive nor mean
I’ve found comfort and joy in consistent routine
--Chris Peebles
Review: “Content of Contentment”/Chris Peebles/2017
To say Chris Peebles new poem for The Kreation Korner is confounding is an understatement among understatements. “Content of Contentment” is a full-on head-scratcher Though the composition is short and sweet for the snapchat age, its sentimentality and naïveté could fill vast volumes. Is this THE Chris Peebles, The Korner’s franchise player, Boise’s legendary street poet laureate reduced to silly rhymes and embarrassing metaphors (“Dove of Balance” deserves its own level on the cringe scale)? After wincing my way through the two cloying quatrains, I seriously questioned Peebles' credibility. Have we been duped? Has he been just another over-represented over-hyped mediocre white male artist all along?
That's what I thought at first.
Then I realized I’d been played like Dig Dug. If we’ve learned to expect anything about Peebles it’s that he’ll invariably subvert our expectations. And subvert he has! But he employs a device far more sophisticated and enduring than the garden-variety irony used to elicit a passing guffaw (although an overtone of that signature self-awareness is of course present). It’s possible that Chris is being completely sincere, and, if so, should we not applaud him for daring to make himself vulnerable in this lingering postmodern nightmare in which the pressures to drape oneself in the veils of cleverness and coolness are so great? Are we the readers, Peebles ultimately asks of us, ready to incorporate sincerity meaningfully into our lives as a healthy counterweight to our cynicism? Congratulations, Chris, on a landmark addition to the Kreative Kanon. I’m not ashamed to admit that at least some small part of me now wishes the Dove of Balance would swoop down and snatch my strife away.
--Schuyler Graves
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment