CITIZEN RELENT by Jeff Weddle, reviewed by Hex'm J'ai

CITIZEN RELENT, published in 2019 by Unlikely Books, provides us a temporal triptych. 

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The Future.  In this section we are provided Jeff’s musings of very potential future(s).  Whether the bitter-sweet and wistful future in “Responsibility of Eggnog” which makes clear the fleeting of youth or the dystopian probabilities of “In the End” we are engaged with a very tangible concept of time slipping into entropy and a feeling of the inevitable.  This cold inevitability of times march is presented in his “An Archeology”, which is a musing I, myself, and I’m sure many others have entertained.  That said, this not just doom and gloom as there are multiple potentials.  We are reminded to savor those fragile and fleeting moments as in “Please Pay Attention”.

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The Present (2019 EV).  Alright friendly friends, here are the politically leaning meat and potatoes of our Americana pie!  Mind you, as I was reading the pieces contained in this section I quickly flipped back to the publishing/copyright page to see when this was published as these poems are eerily prescient of the calamities that ensued the following year.  So, I conferred with the author and he assured me that he is not a prophet of doom.  Indeed, Weddle, the Great and Powerful is not the man behind the curtain but is someone who actually pays attention!  Through pieces like “Twilight Empire” we are presented the dystopia of NOW that became clear to us during 2020 but were always prevalent, hence why Jeff’s ability to be socially astute could be confused with prescience.  We see the undercurrent of social injustice, cultural war, division and threat of fascism as always being there as echoed in “What We Now Endure” and “Charlottesville”.  Also, Jeff employs biblical references, evangelical language, macho MAGA rhetoric and general obliviousness against the very institutions that perpetuate these problems in pieces such as “Just Saying”, “Quiet Jim”, “Oh Beautiful” and “MAGA”.  Again, Jeff has painted for us the very real and crystal-clear image of an ugly unmasked Americana that is lit to pop.

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The Past.  This completes the countdown, grounding Jeff’s futuristic musings and present observations in shining nostalgia.  Shining memories for sure but not all are painted gold, that would not adhere to Jeff’s penchant for veritas.  Again, shining with powerful imagery such as painted in “When we Left that Day” or “Sweet Life”.  We are also given my personal favorite from this section “The Deadliest Man Alive” where one can feel the texture of the thin comic book pages and even smell the print.  It made me miss my X-ray specs and the sheer escapism which embodied even the ads in the comics in that lost era (I never got the submarine either Jeff).   

From Citizen Relent:

The Deadliest Man Alive 

I wanted Telecult Power 

and voodoo 

Count Dante’s secrets 

I wanted to be the world’s

 most dangerous something

though I would of course 

use my powers for good 

I wanted to be the one 

kicking sand in some guy’s face 

if there was going to be any sand kicked 

I wanted flying saucers overhead 

and landing in the empty lot 

down the street 

Charles Atlas and dynamic tension 

seemed an answer 

to questions I didn’t know to ask 

and masked ninja masters called to me 

I definitely did not want 

to make extra cash selling flower seeds 

and I never considered 

learning guitar by mail 

or looking suave with a false beard 

though I really did want to send off 

for a pet monkey 

but my parents said no 

so I ordered sea monkeys 

and I got x-ray specs 

and vampire blood 

and a life size poster 

of a moon monster 

the submarine big enough 

to get inside and fire torpedoes 

never came 

even though I sent a check 

from my very own bank account 

and those days are gone 

and most everyone I loved is dead 

or might as well be 

and they haven’t made 

a good comic book 

in forty years

Jeff Weddle grew up in Prestonsburg, a small town in the hill country of Eastern Kentucky. He has worked as a public library director, disc jockey, newspaper reporter, Tae Kwon Do teacher, and fry cook, among other things. His first book, Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), won the Eudora Welty Prize and helped inspire Wayne Ewing’s documentary, The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press (Wayne Ewing Films, 2007). He teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.