In a recent tweet on Charlie Baylis’s latest, I wrote ‘I have a fondness for the colour charlie’ and it is an apt observation to repeat for being both true and in tune with the poetry, imbued as it is with his distinctive exuberance and colourful (beyond just the verdant) personality/persona. I don’t mean autobiographical – though this is an inherent part – but in the playful and surreal and delighted (as in in). I have enjoyed his work over recent years, and you can read my reviews of this here: https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/?s=charlie+baylis&submit=Search

Opening poem zero gravity is a good enough place to start in exemplifying the lively and rich evocation of the writer’s vision/s. Notionally relating an encounter with ‘a homeless man’, the second stanza lists a moment of flamboyant poetic imperatives,

‘take these happiness pills for your green stones
take a little solace in your lemonade
take the slow sun glossing the brass tips of grass
take the memory of a poet who used to be holy
unfold in these rainbows’

Here is a method for enjoying a sonnet that may not be one but which doesn’t matter as long as you take delight in it.

And floating on an actual charlie wave is realised in the full-on list poem of that title, this with a stridency in its ‘ANTI’nesses which is quite likely toying here and there with the ol’ reverse psychology approach to meaning,

‘ANTI binary love song eating non binary code
ANTI that you have stopped reading
ANTI ‘charlie wave’ sung by rihanna madonna hannah arendt
ANTI any person of voice & style more beautiful than charlie’

A poem with a possible green colour of both the ocean (within its blue) and the life of its writer, is far out – my favourite expression of appreciation,

‘i slipped my bandages
started to feel comfortable in my skin
took cold baths
ate mussels oysters scallops fine cuts of dolphin meat
my hair grew tangled & waved
i swam far out’

Far out is a perfect overall expression of appreciation for the poetry in this collection, and citing a poem with this as its title is a far out way to introduce the idea here and now.

As a first full collection there are obviously poems in this from previous publications, like those from Hilda Doolittle’s Carl Jung T-Shirt. If you haven’t read my reviews from Baylis’s prior work mentioned at the start of this review, that is excellent as I’m going to use a quote now in referring to such an earlier poem, where I wrote ‘For Charlie Baylis and pink champagne at the pony club, it’s a girl in leather boots who is carrying a daisy chain to wrap around the nuns and Jesuits, and while he tries to ‘stay in the now’, we have strayed into a world where much is new and interesting’ and it is this new/interesting – that we could call the surreal – which is continuing in his subsequent writing.

A fine example of this surreal/playful style is in the poem raymond carver’s raspberry fetish, (which I present as a screengrab to preserve its layout),

For those of us who know Ray’s writing quite well, it is reassuring to note that he is unlikely to have used the word imbecile.

The poetic chemtrails of Baylis’s poem lana del ray leave their impression of the singer as much as they are a veil over whoever/whatever the poem is about. Throughout all of these poems there is that sense of a prompting and deflection and tangent. Perhaps this is simply stating the impressionism in such poetry, or perhaps how evocation and its language are best always shifting to avoid the danger of certainty. I can definitely see ldr as the ‘prom date’ and the ‘slit wrists/it’s all over now/baby blue’ as an extended scenario from this prompting of her and her lyrics (and those of others) – or just that tangential move to the delight in,

‘psychics in sunglasses
rewinding
heaven’s atomic sunset

the shadow in the sunlight
with the west coast
under her wings

singing hey
that’s no way
to say
goodbye’

The poem moonlight simile (here in full) may or may not be a reflection on whatever this writing process is, as its own tangential steps through it are like riffs as prompts, and the most direct comment could be in the final line,

‘riding on a bike while the bike falls apart
riding on a horse while the house falls apart
riding on a cart while the roman empire falls apart
i can’t stop thinking about you
a tick on your twitter means you are deluded or genuinely famous
either way you’ve probably never seen the inside of a spoon
i can’t understand why i am so “terribly unhappy”
i listen to songs consisting of the same sound repeated
over & over & over
i eat well
i exercise
i buy books about mermaids
i write poems about the above event
i write poems about the poems about the above event’

That said, my caveat was may not be…

In one of the last poems in the collection pink mink there is another line (double spaced) about writing poetry,

‘that is to say: poetry is a bitch it takes me

round the park like a poodle on a chain of lace’

and the reference to ‘lace’ suggests a lyricism but more likely a frailty, though neither is prevalent in the body of work. Indeed, in a closing section titled fuck these motherfuckers, there is quite simply a celebration of the catalyst: bouncing from this to that as a delight in surprise and entertainment,

‘i will die of excess candyfloss, levitation, golf carts
to the face’
(white guilt)

And this is where the reader will embrace with most delight, or not. I imagine those who might look for/want more clarity (which wouldn’t have to be at the expense of the riffing) and I can understand this but am at ease in riding poetry ‘behaving like waves’ (stephanie says) but ‘doesn’t behave itself’ (from me) as I cleverly put it in that tweet of mine mentioned at the beginning of this review. For example, from jenny wave,

‘i undress the colour green
she pins a spin inside her thigh
i listen as she begins’