ZERO DIVISION by Joseph M. Gant
paperback, 148 pages, published by Rebel Satori Press
Review by George D. Anderson
This is the first full-length collection by Joseph M. Gant, a 33 year-old
resident of Pennsville, New Jersey. Over the last few years, Gant has
extensively published his poetry & reviews in small press magazines
such as Shot Glass Journal, Dance Macabre du Jour, Alternative Reel,
Gutter Eloquence, Houston Literary Review and dozens of others.
These are short, caustic poems which depict a dark world plucked bare
of joy. Like his hero Hamlet, in the poem “Pushed At Both Ends,” the
central speaker in Zero Division is obsessed with decay and death. He
repeatedly dry humps the loss of love and childhood innocence to un-
sheath the underlying tumor that ‘everything’s a sham.’ Many of the
poems are powerfully and defiantly written, but dozens of others adopt
a feverish, teary tone and tend to drown in verbosity or self-pity.
The title of the compilation Zero Division appears to derive from the poem
“Divide By ZerØ.” In contemplating the ‘mathematics of cadavers/ indivis-
ible by sin’ the speaker of the poem turns to the living and concludes:
nodes of Emptiness derive the sum of waking days –
divide by zero
all become
at once
the nothing.
Gant’s nihilistic idea that we are zombie-like zeros, devoid of meaning is
also graphically illustrated in “Wakeful.” He compellingly compares ‘every
instance of waking’ to a birth: ‘not/ beautiful, blessed nor full/ of joy, but
bloody/ hard — a squeezing shit into/ the day as painful.’
Zero Division is a fascinating but schizoid compilation. Stylistically, the
poems waver between two distinct camps of writing. The first appears to
use a pseudo-Romantic style which characteristically makes lofty state-
ments about life and which swirls with archaic expressions and abstract
extended metaphors which tend to wring out a false sense of pathos. At
times, Gant undermines his writing by imbuing his imagery with the use
of pathetic fallacy — employing the darker forces of the universe to explain
why his relationship has fucked up. Not content with merely describing the
grind of the shit that couples face on a daily basis, he sometimes puffs up
his poetry by trying to explain his life in over-reaching mythological terms:
his eternal struggle with Satan, explorations into the secrets of the universe
and his reflections on the nature of reality. “Union,” “The Space That Makes
The Past,” “I Tried to Save The World,” “What You Will With It,” “Extinction
Season,” “What For?,” “Tears And Tatters”, “Beggar’s Clothes,” “What We
Have Beside” are poems written in this grandiose and cryptic way.
The best poems in Zero Division adopt the simple, pared down language of
contemporary underground writers. The subject matter is grounded in real
things and these poems are easier to read. Some of the more memorable
poems in this style include “Bounded In A Nut Shell” about a sperm donor
jerking off into a plastic cup, “Down At the J And Flying” about trawling for
pussy & dope at a truck stop, “Where I Sit And Eat My Mashed Potatoes”
in which the speaker admires how his little dog shits like clockwork in the
kitchen each night, “Cancerous Sonnet For A Tumor” in which the speaker
vows he will ‘collect as many cancers as my body gladly holds’ without
seeking treatment, and the self-explanatory “Just Another Crack Poem.”
The poems are refreshingly simple and express raw but credible emotions.
Overall, this is a daring but fledgling collection. There appears to be no in-
ternal logic to the sequencing of the poems and you need to wade through
a solid chunk of the book before you find the underground gold. That said,
Gant is an intense and highly experimental writer whose work continues
to improve.
More info about Zero Division can be found at the Rebel Satori Press website.
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