Julene's Reviews > Failed State

Don't miss Dave Bonta's most recent book, "Failed State," filled with smart, concise, political haibun and erasure poems. So many of these either burst my heart open or made me bust out laughing. His short haiku following the prose capture the essence of the piece. He has a sharp intellect, wide knowledge, and a wicked sense of humor. In the Preface he poses the questions that led him to write this book, and his thoughts on the term "failed state." He says, "I wanted to write about the state of failure because too many success stories have obscured the reality: that failure is often a more liberating place to be."

In the poem World Bank, he is a country man in a big building, dining with a friend in "the hollow core of the building...with glass too thick to permit a view of the clouds....It's sometimes such a relief not to understand." He writes this haiku:

moonflower
is the sky still available
in all languages

After leaving his friend and having trouble finding the exit to the building, he writes:

trapped inside
a moth's day-time dream
of being human

Section IV, Human Resources, contains "passages liberated from the CIA's Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual (1983)" He quotes passages and does erasure poems that capture the meaning and absurdity. Here we have instructions on Torture, so in the paragraph from the manual, "The Torture Situation," the words he leaves in the text are:
torture may actually intensify resistance it is no thing But a show of strength.

And in, "Truth Serum," he uses the paragraph:
"Studies indicate that as high as 30 to 50 percent of individuals are placebo reactors. In this technique the individual is given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill) and later is told he was given a truth serum, which will make him want to talk and will also prevent his lying. His desire to find an excuse for compliance, which is his only avenue of escape from his depressing situation, may make him want to believe that he is drugged and that no one could blame him for telling his story now."

the words he captures are:
o placebo placebo drug me now

I love this book.