Metode (Methods) by Vlad Drăgoi

[Yigru]

(Background: Vlad Drăgoi is one of the latest experimental poets to bring a new twist to the shock formula of the 2000s generation, which brought in Romanian poetry ridiculous amounts of gore, but also meant a new "authenticism", a reaction to the frenetic consumerism of our post-Communist society and a more tragic take on poetry compared to the pretentious, "bookish", somewhat entertainment-orientated formula of the so-called "postmodernist" generation of the '80s... As the poetry readers are very few nowadays in Romania, violent and uncensored poetry has not attracted public scandal - and neither is the case here, at least so far.)

Looking for something extreme, radical, shocking, gross? Well, you probably won't find in current Romanian poetry anything more fitting than Vlad Drăgoi's Methods. If Constantin Acosmei (from Jucăria mortului) was a low-budget Bacovia living "half past dead" in misery, Vlad is a hi-fi, HD-ready terminator kid, degenerate "homo videns" of the 21th century, whose reactions are reduced to the basic, for whom life is just a violent cartoon or a video game.

In one of the striking poems of the "macromethods" cycle (sorry for my storytelling, but the epic is implied in most of the texts), Vlad is interrupted by the doorbell while he was playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (obviously, he has to start the whole level again), at the door there is one of those persons from charitable organizations that seek donations, but Vlad pushes her in the kitchen, fries her on the gas cooker and watches her die in agony, is a bit annoyed that the corpse leaves au unpleasant smell and happily goes back in his room to play Assassin's Creed...

All these atrocities are served without a disclaimer (by the way, explicit language is the least shocking thing in here), without a morale. I'd obviously pinpoint that this remains a book, that you can have an intelligent discussion with the real Vlad Drăgoi and that if he „promotes” violence (violent movies and superficial shows are a dime a dozen on TV), it is because we live in a world that promotes violence and hate.

The biography of the character may give us some clues: vlad drăgoi (in lowercase, mind you!) is 26 years-old, seems to live in a dysfunctional family, is obviously very poor (claims that he would be happy with a Happy Meal a day), always looks for jobs, but never seems to get one, so he resumes playing Angry Birds or sending death threats to TV stars... oh, and as the back cover says, "there are a few very beautiful love stories"... Sarcastic or not, the love poems contain a very distorted definition of love, if existent. Intriguingly, the cruelty of the character does not belong exactly to the S&M territory - as a review on the book stated, he merely explores the effects of destruction, one that is not felt as evil since there is no good or evil here, no metaphysics, just impulses, actions, reactions...

Did an innocent little murder ever crossed your mind while waiting in an enormous queue or being interrupted just as you were about to finish the #@! level!? Try this - though I don't know if you're feel any better. This book, as a whole, is uncompromising (not even the so-called "love poems" are easy to swallow) and hard to forget, but the texts, as intense as they are, suffer from predictability (almost identical epic formula) and most of what the author had to say was already said in the first two cycles (though I'm personally more fond of the "gonzo" poems and the disturbingly fascinating "undertile people"). And some of the last poems in the book are simply not on the same par... though the ending is definitely surprising: for the first time apparently, vlad drăgoi makes a concession, leaving a seat for an "ugly lady" and thinking something else than what he had accomplished - the beginning of a different age, point at which the psychic impulse and the physical action are no longer the same! Of course, this was a rather unlikely trigger, but, then again, everything in the book is in a conceptual logic different from that of our reality. Fortunately!

Methods may remain a classic example of rough-edged minimalism - rough-edged and double-edged. Leaving little to no space to (we could say) "poetic emotion", Vlad Drăgoi is radical and, for that reason, prone to the pitfalls of his radicalism. Nevertheless, texts such as "the chickenpox poem" promise an ingenious conceptual poet. He is also noted for being one of the several Romanian poets who have included in their 2013 books references to video game culture. The action/horror/porn B-movie references are also there. One rather conservative critic, Alex Goldiș, complained about the fact that young poets such as Drăgoi now have the "bad habit" of drawing models from mass-media culture instead of books. I'd say this was inevitable - and, if else, Methods will still be discussed due to how symptomatic it is for today's society. As I previously said though, the author does not leave any traces of moral - and we can guess from the back cover that is intended to be a sort of "history of violence" (also the title of a movie with Ed Harris), if not just what it is... a volume of extreme poetry.

Here are two mild, somewhat less cruel examples from the book (translated by me, may not be entirely right):

(micromethod 24)
take snails insert them
into a bag crush them show the
content to a mother with white short
hair the smile that you will
receive is for a good boy you are a good
boy don't forget that

(gonzo power)
you
only
have
to
hit
the
fly
on
the
other
side
of
the
net
so
that
it
does
not
fly
but
it
knows

[Jen]

Great review, Yigru!

I tend to find that concept poetry is only appealing or interesting in the concept and not in the poems produced by the concept. Thanks for sparing us the more violent examples.

I agree that seeing more references to mass media and gaming is inevitable. In fact, I've been surprised that I haven't seen more of it already.