Early in Pulver Maar, Zachary Schomburg tells the story of Wanda, who found a disembodied arm at the top of a mountain and ātook out an ad in the newspaper./Whose arm? read the ad above a photograph/Wanda took of the arm. She wrote a song about it/on the piano, and sang the song out of her windows/every day. No one responded. No one claimed the/arm as their own.ā
Schomburg, Portlandās most beloved surrealist poet, is known for work thatālike āOne Arm Wandaāāevokes a complex stew of emotions. Seemingly silly but carrying a strange emotional weight, his uneasy poems nod to a larger loneliness or disconnection.
Pulver Maarās eight distinct sections are culled from a variety of Schomburgās recent projects: a chapbook, a performance piece, a few poem cycles written forāor in homage toāother poets. The book opens with āInside We Make Children Sandwiches,ā a section Schomburg refers to in the bookās notes as āstories written for children.ā With their simple language and magical elements, the pieces come off as folktales that are also radically different than most stories for children. (Gertrude Steinās childrenās book, The World Is Round, might be a close cousin.) While the section is the bookās shortest, it creates a template for what follows: Schomburgās wide-eyed, imaginative, and fractured yet ostensibly simple stories.
In one tale, thereās a questionably wise cow advising a human to not ābe so in love all/the time. Stop loving./Stop wanting to be loved./Stop loving yourself/so much. Stop letting/love into your life.ā Thereās a doctor whose job it is āto hold things. She held a baby/then she held a cat. She held some trophies/for being a doctor.ā There are narrators who speak of their many shortcomings. āI have no chance to become mayor./No one would vote for me./ I have all the wrong answers./My pants have no pockets./I donāt know how to read,ā says one. ā[T]hings donāt work out for me./I hid the cash in the wrong cave./Iām the only thing tigers eat,ā says another.
While the majority of the collection makes it clear that no one else writes or thinks quite like Schomburg, there are plenty of poems that feel like outtakes, or like they belong in a specific, separate context. But Pulver Maar should probably be treated as a āB-sides and raritiesā collection more than a cohesive work meant to be read cover to cover. Itās a book to leave on a table so you can flip it open and have your mind-state briefly shifted by a story of a frightened piece of dust, an angry plate of pasta, or a house that dreams of being a stand-up comedian.