As we all know, poetry is just prose with a little therapy thrown in to help us feel good about ourselves. This is especially useful at Christmas when stress can leave us with nowhere to turn, but help is now at hand. A little-known plaque-winning author, Rob A. Mackenzie, has written a book (The Opposite of Cabbage) guaranteed to up the feel-good factor this Christmas season. Here is a small preview of the gems it contains:
1. Caring Confrontation – not sure what your problem is? Afraid to admit the causes even to yourself? Read this book and find the tough answers you’ve been searching for (from ‘Married Life in the Nineties’):
You… blamed Miss Garlick’s Pop Literature course
for some inner trauma you couldn’t bear to name,
left, like most things, muzzled and obvious.
2. Fairground Confusion – do you often compare your own fairground equipment to that of others? It’s a hard thing to admit to, but we all do it. Mackenzie discovers hope in the prayers of vegetables (from ‘Fallen Villages of the North’):
Cabbage allotments between rival chair-o-planes
raise leaves to heaven
3. Rejection – learn to cope with rejection by identifying the positives in every situation. Imagine being almost successful in (from ‘How New York You Are’):
…placing something in the East Lothian Review at the ninety-fourth
attempt in two years
after a rejection slip signed personally with the editor’s initials in blue biro
gave them a stab of hope last week
4. Empathy – Mackenzie understands. He presents poems tailored to your life and includes everyday scenarios you will immediately relate to. It’s like having your own life described to you, using words you didn’t quite realise applied to you before. For example, those moments you’ve found yourself (from ‘Glory Box’):
at the intersection
of theology and real life, where the angel Barbie
scours the magazine gossip, Why I scrubbed
my face with Brillo Pads….
See what I mean?
5. Marriage – ever feel you can never get marriage counselling when you need it? Bypass the waiting lists and take such advice as (from ‘Moving On’):
…when Liz Taylor had married seven times –
a sonnet! – you’d think that would have been the perfect
time to stop, but the usual imagined future egged her on.
6. Referral – this book realises that some problems may need specialised help. On those rare occasions when it fails to heal everything, it nevertheless tells you where to go (from ‘Hospital’):
left in the terminal zone –
ignore the fluorescent light
insistent as a flatline tone.
Hug therapies are on the right.
7. Writer’s Block – some of you may have tried writing to help you through life, but along comes writer’s block and things are worse than ever. Much advice is on offer, but nothing works. However, this does (from ‘A Creative Writing Tutor Addresses his Star Pupil’):
…try this iambic prayer: ‘John Ashbery!
John Ashbery!’ A mantra that you must
repeat until the sounds fall quick and short
as one sound falls
8. Unfulfilled Desires: all those things you could have done, but didn’t? The sprout you could have eaten? The gloved hand you could have obsessed over? The Opposite of Cabbage doesn’t shirk from tackling such issues. If you consider (from ‘The Look’):
how many children I might have fathered
if fatherhood could be accomplished by a glance
you might at least feel relief that you are not among the author’s offspring.
9. Commercialism: Astonishingly, the book chips away at the fundamental connections between Santa and sleigh, carol singer and shopping mall, sales pitch and manipulation. Such disconnection has never been achieved before (from ’The Deconstruction Industry’):
Muscled men swing wrecking balls
between billboards and referents
10. The Weather: many poems in this book deal with the weather, but none so poignantly, none with such a hushed tone, none so quietly devastating as ‘Holiday at the New Butlins’, in which a group of holiday reps expect their T-shirted summer holidaymakers to sing ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ with the sky blue and the temperature outside around 20 degrees centigrade. Depressed at the clouds, the short days, the dark winter mornings? Find solace here:
Blind forty, it’s Christmas in July, the bingo-caller
suits her Santa hat…
This book works wonders. Read the .pdf extract – it will change your life, although the change will last longer if you read the whole book. It relieves anxiety, gives succour to the soul, and stops wars. It does things that cabbage has never done before. Therefore, it is called The Opposite of Cabbage.
