Thomas Harrison

Adriano Bulla, Ybo' and other

Lies (2005) Poetry Monthly
Press, ISBN 1-906126-19-0

We all tell lies. All the time. This

intriguing and sophisticated collection
aptly calls its poems lies. Adriano
Bulla, former lecturer, now teacher
and critic, shows us that lies are not
the conscious distortions of an alleged
truth directed at others, but the
subconscious confusions of poor
souls. We all tell lies, all the time, to
ourselves.
In a journey which is itself a
chronological inaccuracy, as the
author was too young in 1991 to have
written the first poems in this
collection, as if to tell us not to trust
the words of his own poems, Ybo' and
other Lies stuns the reader with its
extreme experimentalism, its extreme
imagery, its complexity, its variety of
forms and yet consistency of theme:
the disorientation of the post-modern
and post-colonial alma.
The collection starts with a series of
poems, "Ybo'", an esoteric word,
whose meanings is hidden from the
reader, a riddle partly explained in its
introduction (not included in this
edition). Ybo' represents an
aspiration, maybe the need to
understand, the all-pervasive quest
for self-knowledge and happiness. The
experimentalism in these poems is
mainly linguistic. Words are distorted
in a hallucinatory trip into the
unconsciousness of ill being. They
flow into each other, they melt
through constant alliteration in a
poetic slur stitched together by
suspension dots that not only allow
the reader to pause, think and infer,
but confuse the rational mind and the
phenomenal world, like an LSD trip:
. . .Brought by breath o' blush'd
wind, 't whirls up. . .
. . .obah
lifts, lines. . .
beyond crosses. . . caught
in th'eddy-turnin' windmills?
. . .bein' hurl'd high. . . .
The inability to take control of one's
own mind, highlighted by the use of
passives, throws the reader into a
landscape of Freudian dreams and
Christian symbolism where questions
only bring more questions, while the
answers are hidden in the fog of
punctuation and sound:
. . . whirls o' –
. . .–fog?. . . fallen. . . floodin'
. . .inside. . .
mist mincin' my mind. . .
While the soul is dipped into its
remotest corners in "Ybo'", the
following series "Heaven from Hell" is
a conscious nightmare, a literary
exploration of the stagnation of the
world. Its complexity should not be a
deterrent to the reader: the imagery
and powerful diction are a continuous
reminder that poetry does not need
analysis, but understanding and
empathy to be appreciated. It is a
highly parodic series, with references
to hundreds of texts that the literary
mind will find exquisite stimuli, or
doors to other worlds. Though there
are lines in Latin, Ancient Greek,
Middle English, French, Italian and
even Egyptian, the poem is mainly an
English epic.
Its mind-boggling and soul-freezing
refrain, "We cannot drop the curtain"
is a reminder that there is no escape
from the stage of life, and its
continuous references to war reflect
the conflictual nature of the poems
themselves:
After a war, wall still
Facing the winds like stubborn
willows:
Whispering and weeping. . .
This apocalyptic vision is
underpinned by references to
destruction and demolition, "a
considerable part of the building /
Had already sunk [. . .] / Forgotten the
cries of their ruined walls" and again,
"Thus, crumbling / Like dry bones in
winter" and the need to escape from a
reality through suicide, "– We hope
we shall hang him tomorrow" which
cannot be satisfied because the
curtains cannot be dropped.
The poems play with different
rhythms and meters, from the
regimented hendecasyllables of the
"epitaph" to free verse, and at times
get stuck in polyglot cacophony, like
the broken record of Babylon tower:
Quocumque me verti
Where?
Quocumque me veri
Where?
Quocumque me veri
Where?
Quocumque me veri
Where?
Such a complex series is followed by
24 "Flickers", delicate spiritual
landscapes that capture subtle
feelings through juxtaposition of
natural imagery and sounds. These
seem to be, structurally, less
experimental than the previous
poems, however, the experiment here
is not with form, but with imagery,
and the ambition is to push explore
the possibilities of human expression:
feelings become the protagonists, if
"Ybo'" is is a charcoal painting,
"Heaven from Hell" oil on canvas, the
"Flickers" are watercolours.
"Twigs"
Bony fingers
Twitch
Against the bloody sun
Adrift
On tolling waves
Forgetting enamelled
Abyssal skulls
On the white sands
Lulling
The swollen eye
Of a flayed sky
That lightly ripens
On marble ripples
("Flicker" nr 5)
The collection closes with a group of
miscellaneous poems, some of them
about war (Under Heavy Copper
Heavens') some erotic, like the
exquisite "Between Dreams", which
captures a moment of intimacy during
sleep, paints it white, gives it the
hissing sound of sleep through the
alliteration of 's' and fills it with the
richness of the juices of nature,
freezing this split second forever, in a
still where dream and reality mix:
As if in dreams, I rest my nose
between
Your cheeks – the moon is sleeping
on my face
Still wet with love and passion,
silver drops
In rivulets of nectar fall down the
 slopes
And kiss my lips, disclosed like rose
to dew,
And drown my face along a milky
way
Of satin waves, and find humid
source
Of joy – a plump carnation brown
and dark
Like loquat nested warm and snug
in you;
A silent kiss I stole from slumber's
arms.
("Between Dreams")
After so many changes of style and
themes, the collection closes with a
change of mood. "The Happy One" is a
bawdy poem with an extremely quick
rhythm which shows no respect for its
own nature, Along with "Sots / On the
rocks / Like cocks" we find a send up
of the most romantic of poems in a
new hallucinatory journey, this time
not reminiscent of acid, but, more
congenially, alcohol, "Trilla lirra by
the river [. . .] I wish I hadn't lost my
liver."
Ybo' and other Lies is an exceptional
collection of poetry for the literati as
well as for the passionate amateur. It
explores the human soul with heavy
strokes of formal and structural
haphazardness, smoky landscapes of
the unconscious, picturesque
watercolours and erotic photography.
It sounds like Wagner in "Ybo'", like
Beethoven in "Heaven from Hell", like
Nick Cave in the "Flickers" and end
with the most courageous musical
option of all for such refined text: a
genuine, bawdy, heart-felt sing-along.