Book Review: Tomorrow Is Another Song by Scott Wannberg

If there was any justice in this world Scott Wannberg would never have been able to leave his house without being hounded by the press. He would have been under a constant spotlight, his every move scrutinized, his every word pored over for controversy and his picture would have shown up on tabloid covers every week. Unfortunately poets in our society don’t have the status of celebrities. In another time or another culture his abilities with words might have made him famous, or at the very least infamous. In the courts of the Chinese Emperors civil servants, or mandarins, were judged as much on their ability to compose poetry as their ability to draft policy. Unless obfuscation is considered an art form, times sure have changed.

All of which means that outside of a relatively small number of people who were blessed with an awareness of his work, Wannberg lived out his live in obscurity. He was 58 when he died on Friday August 19, 2011 at his home in Florence, Oregon. Suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he had moved in 2008 for health and economic reasons from Los Angeles upon the closing of Dutton’s bookstore, where he had been a fixture for 25 year. According to friends quoted in his obituary in the Los Angeles Times Wannberg was constantly writing poetry, whether off the cuff introductions for associates as they entered the store or more traditionally with pen and paper; it was as natural to him as breathing is to most of us. Poetry, according to one friend, allowed Wannberg the chance to formalize his natural inclination to speak in a kind of ongoing stream of consciousness narrative about the world around him.

On September 30, 2011 Los Angles-based independent publisher Perceval Press released Tomorrow Is Another Song, the second collection of Wannberg’s poetry they have published. One of the first impressions I formed upon reading through it was there was a sense of urgency pervading his poetry that was absent form earlier work. I don’t think it was any sort of prescience on Wannberg’s part concerning his death, it was more like he felt America had been given a very small window of opportunity with the election of Obama, and he could feel it closing almost even before it had been opened.

In earlier poetry he had taken great pleasure in railing against the Bush/Cheney administration and everything they had represented. In biting satires which directly referenced them or in his advocation of things they opposed, he took great pride in describing a vision of America far different from the one they espoused. For Wannberg, like Carl Sandburg and e.e. cummings before him, was quintessentially an American poet. He loved the potential the country represented and hated how it was failing to live up to it. In poems encouraging people to find their own song and and not being afraid to hide their light under a bushel basket, or in others where he questioned what kind of world had they created where teenagers attempted to commit suicide, he critiqued the loss of love and hope he saw around him.

I don’t know what I expected from this collection of his poems, but I don’t think it was, “Everybody says they want to be loved/The say it over and over and over/As soon as they finish hitting me over the head/I will get up and love them.” (“Earful Of Sun”) However, that was the genius of Wannberg. He was always so far ahead of us in describing what he saw that our expectations couldn’t keep up with him. Anyway, why should he live up to anyone’s expectations? Why should he all of a sudden start writing about sweetness and light just because the names at the top changed? Maybe, unlike the rest of us who have grown disillusioned with Obama for failing to live up to our expectations by changing the world simply by being elected, Wannberg understood the only way change can happen is if we are willing to change. With all of us yelling “What about me?” at the top of our lungs, we’re never going to hear anybody else or understand it’s not just the other guy who has to change, we have to as well.

Wannberg spoke/wrote in a voice most Americans (and North Americans from above the 49th parallel) will recognize. His poems are filled with cultural references we are all familiar with and he espouses the core values we all claim to hold so dear. That doesn’t mean he mouths platitudes about freedom and independence. What it does mean is his poetry celebrates those who are truly independent and the freedoms nobody wants to protect. It’s amazing how so many people yell about their rights to own weapons and the freedom to say how much they hate somebody because of the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation and nobody thinks twice about it. Yet those same people don’t believe in a woman’s freedom of choice or an individual’s right to hold the job of their choice no matter who they are.

It’s that hypocrisy that comes under attack in Wannberg’s poetry. Unlike others he very rarely attacked individuals or their beliefs (the only exceptions are politicians and the political personalities for whom hypocrisy is a way of life) as he is genuine in his belief that we really could do a better job of being nice to each other. “The stupid angry people smash, gouge, cut, kick, and bite./They do it for love and God and country.”(“The Angry Stupid People”) There are so many voices telling us we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves, or that we should be worrying about the state of the world all the time, Wannberg had a better idea. Whether directly or indirectly his poetry encouraged us to celebrate being alive. Embrace the messy, emotional condition of being human. What other choice do you have anyway, might as well enjoy it while we’re here. This was from a guy who for the last few years of his life had to travel around with an oxygen tank, yet his poetry was still filled with calls to all of us to find our songs and dance like crazy.

There is music in the American idiom he says,/and wipes his face for the last time,/and begins to think about going up to bed./Tomorrow is another song./Tomorrow will be other patients and/words to discover and stories behind such words/ that illuminate./The game, after all/is one of discovery./The day you stop finding out things/is the day/you might as well/turn yourself in for good.” –“The Dancer Steps Forward,” Scott Wannberg

It’s easy to become cynical in the face of so much bullshit. It’s easy to throw rocks at those you don’t agree with and it’s really easy to pretend you don’t care. Scott Wannberg cared and wore his heart on his sleeve for all to read. He dug deeply into the soil of America, because like all poets he knew where the bodies were buried. But he was looking to do more than just exhume its dirty secrets — he wasn’t merely looking to spatter others with the dirt that flew from his shovel. He dug and dug in order to remind us of the beauty of the heart that’s been submerged by two hundred odd years of rhetoric spouted in the name of politics and expediency. One person can’t scrape off that much accumulated rust and corrosion, but he can give us a good idea of how to go about getting the job done. For those who have eyes to see and ears to listen Wannberg’s poetry provided all the tools necessary — we just have to remember how to use them.