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The Alchemy of Opposites |
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The Alchemy of Opposites by Clifton Snider, Chiron Review Press: St. John, Kansas, 2000 
The subject matter of Clifton Snider's delightful collection of poems The Alchemy of Opposites is, as suggested by the title and the cover illustration - a cave painting from the Niaux cave - couched in experience related to archetypal subjects. Written on the premise that profound experience can be found wherever we are, if only we care to look, the poems span a wide variety of themes divided into seven sections, which partly indicate their chronology and partly their thematic content.
The central underlying theme of the collection is the mysterious disappearance of Snider's older brother Evan Allan Snider - also the subject matter of his autobiographical novel Wrestling with Angels (Xlibris, 2001). The elegy 'A Last Good-bye' on one of the opening pages attempts to come to terms with the lack of data surrounding his brother's presumed death and the realization that the mystery will never be solved. This painful situation is the subliminal point of departure for the collection, which consists mainly of a sequence of strong poems dealing with loss interspersed with nature poems, poems on art and artists, poems of love and friendship, spirit of place, etc. Inevitably the subject of the poet's brother bleeds into extended elegies on lost significant others; from a Norwegian cousin in the poem 'Holocaust', a student activist who was deported during the German occupation of Norway, to 'Homomonument' describing the pink granite triangles, near the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, commemorating Hitler's gay holocaust. A host of AIDS lost lovers and friends are also remembered in the collection, as in the poem 'Survivor': The loss of a hundred once familiar faces, faces that blend into one black space like the entrance to a cave a bat cave with guano rotting, exuding ammonia, poisonous to human breath. (18)
The poem 'Survivor' opens the theme of AIDS related deaths which surfaces with regular intervals throughout the collection. The once familiar faces disappear into the black space likened to a transformative cave - a metonym for the alchemical crucible. Subsequently the cave-crucible fills with rotting raw material and vile poisonous airs signalling the putrefactio, related to the nigredo, both initial stages of the alchemical process. Here the alchemist traditionally works his way through a profound depression, projecting his unresolved emotions into the operations of the process. Just as a seed crystal of gold was traditionally added as enzyme to transform the raw material, darkened by initial combustion in the crucible, the poet's philosophical integration and voicing of the horror belabours the depression, while the primal matter graduates from ammonia to oxygen. The oxygen in the cave-crucible (complemented by the Niaux cave ox image on the cover) reflects the philosophical gold of the reference myth of alchemical transformation and stresses the processual nature of Snider's collection: Alchemy is continually engaged in his poetry whose sustained focus is on healing through dynamic experience, insight, and love, as celebrated in 'Hanging On' and the eponymous poem "The Alchemy of Opposites", both dedicated, like the collection itself, to Snider's Guatemalan companion. Here the traditional heterosexual opposition, the mysterium coniunctionis of the alchemist and his mystic sister celebrated in the reference myth, is translated to an intermale nexus of 'mestizo fire and Nordic reserve' (130).
The final poem in the collection 'The Cave of Niaux', ends on a processual note, a dedication to a collective numinous moment, which, in accordance with its alchemical reference icon, the philosophical stone, is ephemeral: We gather torches and trek back, different now, bonded, purposeful, if only for the moment. The opening blinds like a blast. (141) The author relates the experience of the archetypal paintings in the cave, a becoming metaphor for the unconscious, to his own syncretistic (Christian/Amerindian) rituals, and reborn from the underworld he returns to diurnal matters. The evocative poem, which metonymically describes the poet's quest, is rich in classical intertexts such as the myths of Demeter and Persephone, the Eleusinian mysteries, Orpheus and Eurydiche, Tammuz and Ishtar, and of course the appropriate man-to-man epic of the Babylonian Gilgamesh. On a different level Snider's Zuni fetish collection poems relate to the subject of healing through creativity. They are reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin's Utz whose main character towards the end of the novel realizes the psychological implications of his passion for collecting: It is a therapeutic protection against loss. Snider's poems do not point to this; clearly he is immersed in the profoundly traumatic task of coming to terms with loss, a process augmented by research into the deepest layers of the psyche, which he mediates by writing, recording personal microhistories, sublime and prosaic epiphanies in nature, art, the quotidian, building a home with his lover, collecting, etc. Snider's theoretical and practical focus on alchemy as a vessel of healing and individuation is part of the tradition of alchemical revival initiated by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake, and explored by Patrick White, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, etc. In this chronicle of spiritual work related to loss and grief Snider's stamina shines through every poem, giving a new meaning to the term 'healing fiction', which, as described by James Hillman, is a significant contemporary variation on the alchemical process. I respect the author's focus on the apparent chronological sequencing of the poems. However, I would have preferred a comprehensive thematic structuring of the poems into for example elegies, poems of love and friendship, ekphrastic poems, poems about artists, animal poems (often related to the Australian poet Les Murray's work), poems of place, etc. There are many poignant poems and important graphics of fin-de-siècle gay sensibility in this collection and I suspect that the cumulative effect of a thematic ordering would add to the pleasure of reading Snider's work and the profound insights it shares. James Benedict is the author of six acclaimed books of poetry: Distillations I XY Action Poetry from Australia, Distillations II XY Action Poetry from Denmark, Distillations III XY Action Poetry: Suites from Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, San Francisco, Munich, and Copenhagen, Extractions I XY Action Writing from Australia, England, Spain, and Denmark, Contractions XY Action Poetry: Suites from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Berlin, Gymnospheres XY Action Writing from the [M]orphic Field of a Danish Gym, Trans Verse. Benedict lives in Denmark, Europe where he teaches and writes. He donates books to archives, libraries, resource centers, and individuals as long as stock lasts. He can be contacted at jamesbenedict777@hotmail.com . |
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Author Clifton Snider 
Clifton Snider's Wrestling with Angels