Mutterings of An Unsettled Mind: Poems
by Dan Fitzgerald
65 Poems ~ 67 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Blue Jade Press
ISBN #: 978-1-061-1-043-1-69
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
In his poem, “The Well Dress Man With a Beard,” Wallace Stevens wrestles with his own unsettled mind:
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket’s horn …
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
I do not know if Dan Fitzgerald has read Stevens extensively, let alone, read the excerpt cited above. What I do know, is that mature poets go through seasons of dealing with the “unsettled” nature of life. Poets are particularly sensitive here. Fitzgerald’s third collection, Mutterings of An Unsettled Mind, tackles head on, the meaning of his poetic journey.
This volume, however, is not just for writers or poets alone. Whoever you are, whatever you have spent your life doing, this volume contains a treasure of insights.
Mutterings is not structured in sections. The poet guides the reader to contemplate life as on a walk on a summer evening. Or musing with one’s spouse over coffee in the kitchen. Or with a friend with whom one can say anything and know acceptance. I felt welcome dwelling within Fitzgerald’s habitat.
Not surprisingly, the lead poem is entitled “Unsettled”:
I have sat in this chair
a long time,
sometimes with music playing,
sometimes in silence;
always watching alone
the world outside.
Seasons have passed;
My face has grown wrinkled.
The room around me
Has become my comfort,
my refuge,
my place to
let my mind do its wanderings:
traveling, visiting, exploring
all the places I have been afraid
to go.
Over the years it has thought
so many things
but it has never found a way
of settling down.
A note about the poet’s style is in order. Many poems make unique usage of indentations. There is no strict pattern here. It is as if the poet desires the reader to linger a touch longer, rather than rush through the thought-experience. This technique drew me in; I was glad to remain in his company.
Key words stand out to me: he has sat in his chair “a long time,” there is “music;” there is “silence.” I think of a kaleidoscope in which images move quickly through the mind, “seasons” pass, the mind “wanders,” “travels,” “visits,” “explores,” yet never finds its longed-for rest.
Fitzgerald’s titles are a kind of precursor to the journey: “Gift of Night,” “Secret,” “Hard Truth,” “Falling Away in a Wind,” “Odd Life,” and many more. I found myself skipping around according to titles that drew me back to my youth. “Listening to Old Records,” is an example:
Staring at the floor vent
near the stereo,
words and music scratch
through the seldom used speakers.
Vinyl crackles around the room.
I sit with the album covers
spread out before me,
listening like these sound were new
and the memories that go with them
were things yet to happen.
This poem mirrors my friends and me, aspiring teenage guitar players who dreamed of forming a rock band. We couldn’t get enough of Lonnie Mack, the Beatles, Elvis, and Dave Clark Five. Records and record covers lay strewn about everywhere. Fortunately, for me, my unsettled mind had to settle for a more realistic future. I was only marginal on the guitar.
Throughout Mutterings, I sensed a thread of sadness. It is a healthy sadness. “Courage” reveals the intensity the poet feels as his journey penetrates his being. With a companion, no doubt his muse, Fitzgerald summons what he needs:
Your eyes hide the telling
of roads taken and abandoned,
memories searching deep in vision.
Paths can be followed, though,
in the creases wandering
around the bright colors
dancing in your smile.
Tell me, someday if you wish,
about all your journeys
and how they were taken.
Maybe then, I will get the courage
to tell of my own.
I noted in the beginning that Mutterings of an Unsettled Mind is not just for writers or poets alone. I’m more convinced than ever that this volume contains a treasure of insights for all thoughtful people. Many of these reside in a “Land of Echoes”:
“I live in a land of echoes, / I catch them in dreams / and in passing winds; / so familiar, so far away, / so close, I feel them in my heart.”
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