A Dark Samadhi - Brentley Frazer - Bog

Frazer is post-romantic in his investigation of the 21st century human condition; as this line from "Plastic Daffodil" suggests; "Her mouth is where I hung my soul, an ode in a round window." This sentiment undercuts both our 19th century romantic and 20th century colloquial assertions of the 'self'. Or even musing on the mystery of universal suffering as in the poem, "Tempting Sleep", Frazer looks for the abnormal, even the para-normal to explain these, "Exit wounds without an entry point", but discovers instead, a banality of human metaphysics overridden by hyper-natural despair, or "a dance of movement on the back of a wardrobe, an intricate waltz bled there by wood." For Frazer, we inhabit a 'shapeless' body that is yielding to the ministrations of conventional dogma, becoming dumber, obese, brain dead and impotent as in "A Dog Theology" where "the blunt edge of shadows hit us through phonebooks", or not surprisingly, we inhabit all three states simultaneously, a "kingdom of joined together heads. A tinny symphony of cheap die-cast clockwork, a little lonely if it happens to be evening." A Dark Samadhi is Philip K Dick melded with Andre Breton; a Rimbaud modified to produce the diaspora of Ballard. This is a post-surreal, techno-lingual savvy text that uses the oppressor's corporatist and jingle-laden language against them. Like the smart arse kid who always sat at the back of the class and pushed the Maths teacher that little bit further, until the imploded in hollow anger, Frazer tempts the reader to counter-experience the world as we know it, to reorganize and reprocess our consumer enhanced daze. Or as the poet says in 'Blood Psalm', "...What do you do, there is no menu bar on the screen." Brett Dionysius