Death Rattle for a Golden Age

KVKW Death Rattle for a Golden Age Warren Woessner Near Occasions of Sin Louis McKee Cynic Press http://cynicpress.com 79 pages; paper, $15.00 After it was over, the Fugs sang the praises of "The Golden Age of Fucking" (on The Real WoodstockFestival ). Although they didn't date it precisely, I,would estimate it lasted about twenty years—from the early sixties, when birth control pills reached a mass market, until the early eighties, when HIV/ AIDS and other STDs purged the culture of "sexual revolution," "open relationships," and "make love, not war." Near Occasions has almost no biographical information about the author, but from his photo and his writing, I would guess that McKee is of an age to have experienced the Golden Age first hand. While a poet's love life does not always enchant, I am also the right age to appreciate the risks and rewards of collecting these oldies but goodies. The title ofthe collection is odd. My generation didn't think much about "sin" during the years of "free love." The "near occasions" might be encounters near and dear to the author, orjust near misses. In any case, this collection contains plenty ofpoems that record both. McKee starts out with poems that recount his coming-of-age as a teen in early sixties Philadelphia, where, in "Nineteen Sixty-Two," Gary "U.S." Bonds was screaming from transistors the kids on Viola Street carried, and the girls danced while the boys tossed pennies against the walls of the factories, of their future. The boys don't stay innocents for long. In "The Angels," sexual energy sends its first sparks, and as McKee and his buddies walk home at dusk after playing basketball, a loud car pulled up beside us, four girls, a red Mustang, the Angels, loud on the radio, but they didn't need directions, these girls, these angels, they knew where they were going. The Angels were a "tough" Philly girl group that even guys could admit liking, but, for McKee, sex didn't stay symbolic for long. In "That Goddamn Fourth of July," McKee makes it to third base with his girlfriend, while a neighborhood kid blows off his fingers with a cherry bomb. In "Toward A Definition ," McKee quotes a line from Abbie Hoffman: "The propensity ofour generation has been to define itself," but, apart from the "electric guitars, birth control pills, / hair, denim, and enough money / in our pockets to run a risk or two," McKee makes it clear that his generation defined itself mostly by having a lot ofsex. The poem describes an act oforal sex using ice cubes that's both tender and pornographic: She puts her head in his lap, takes him into her cold crowded mouth and he sighs— it's the same sound she made when he touched that spot on her neck. In "The Nurturing," McKee's best friend and his wife let him briefly nurse at her breast. Then he kisses it: Not a child; this was the man, bold for the moment, a lover-son, too embarrassed to look into her eyes and say thank you. There are many solid "love poems" that are a lot more lyrical and understated, but when Near Occasions succeeds, it does so with this sort of surprising honesty and lack of artifice. In this era of superconfessional hubris, we are told that no topic is off-limits, but, if this is so, why are so many of these poems startling? Picasso said, "Art is not truth," and I know that to be true, but it is important to the force of these poems that I can believe that the poet is giving us his stories straight up. It is important to theforce ofthese poems that I can believe that the poet is giving us his stories straight up. McKee's tour-de-force is a fantastical postdivorce poem, "Starting Over," in which the poet moves into a new, empty house. He finds a discarded Barbie doll in the yard, cleans it up, and buys her an outfit at Kmart: "Cowgirl Barbie." No pervert, he assures us: It would have been wrong if I'd gotten the...