Review: Behind the Paint by Marve Hendry

In his second poetry publication, Behind the Paint, Marve Hendry emphasizes the masks we wear to hide ourselves from a multitude of life’s quandaries, and occasionally, even from ourselves.

This emotive and engaging collection is divided into five sections, with each heading beginning with “Behind the…” In “Behind the I” the poet opens with “to whom it may concern” in which he examines and questions some common assumptions:

I can’t begin to imagine
where do beautiful things go
sometimes I can
but then I feel I shouldn’t

In “Diaries of an Insomniac,” the poetic protagonist tries to stay awake to keep a spider company as it “crocheted its home through the dusty ceiling.” “Broadband Dreams” provides a seeming self-criticism of cyber-obsession – “I live in a box and forgot why,” showing the variety of focus in the collection, where the seemingly mundane is rich with poetic potential.

Part two goes farther afield, on “Neptune’s Chariot” to Rome and Trevi, and to “a body of worlds” where he wonders, “where do broken dreams go?” The third section becomes emotionally murky, perhaps issuing a cry for help: “Just for once,” he wants in “Floating on Dark Spots, “that picture on the wall to be true. In “Behind the We,” he explores “the truth behind our veils” and cries, “we may love, we may not!”

Looking “Behind the Paint” in the collection’s fifth portion, he draws comparisons of a home’s outer qualities and the inner life and love within it:

as our walls mature to yellow
we fall, we quarrel
we rise to fall again
til we learn to help each other up

Hendry’s grasp of the subtleties of language and the emotions that hinge on well-chosen words is notable. Much of this aggregation is introspective, solidly in the tradition of composers from Keats (natural beauty seen and parsed, minus the rhyme) to Cummings (including the occasional sardonic touches). Hendry has the gift of observation of life’s minutiae turned into readily identifiable feelings and contemplations, or even more grandly, into universal symbolism. One potent example is found in the ironically titled “Just Another Hallucination”:

we sit and pray
on wooden stools,
admiring eternity.
yet we never fail at envy
as we sleep and yearn
for a better version of us.

Several poems about powerful women stand out, from a motherly figure who “was here once” though “powerless to save me,” to an elusive siren who stood in alleyways and at mountaintops, “still standing because she cares. One woman, wife, and “sidekick” for a jester as he performs on stage, clearly controls the magic feats he performs, though she is “often shunned as most women are.” There is a quiet reverence in each of these poems, whatever the subject, and though the language is sometimes overly direct, without complex turns of phrase, the feeling conveyed reflects the poet’s keen sense of observation and introspection.

Though these are all short pieces, each one carries more than one message, and all display the potential to evoke a deeper appreciation for the world writ large and small. Ardent miners in the realm of poetry will find gems worth keeping in Hendry’s rich assortment.