His Only Merit by Benjamin Green
Finishing Line Press, softcover, $17.99 (Realease date: September 26, 2025)
Don’t let the short length of this chapbook fool you. The pages are packed with reimagined iterations—like peering through a keyhole to glimpse what lies behind another edition of Wallace Stevens’s titles, which Benjamin Green borrows. He may use another’s titles, but he has plenty of his own innovative wordplay, one line being: “All under a scarf of sky.” A visual that encourages contemplation, almost reaching back to classic Chinese poems’ style and grace.
So many lines jump off the page—another of his, “There is no apostrophe in the possessive of ‘it.’” Some beg the question of why that detail was added to the natural canyon scene, then a sly, almost Zen-like assertion pops into view. Many Eastern thought themes surface as well: “nothing-ness,” “no end to consciousness,” and “the world is what you make of it.” Each, like any good koan, asks us to return and consider the more profound meaning.
Along with the borrowed nineteen titles, Green’s inspiration nods to Stevens’s repetition style, (which became his trademark). With that practice, Green, too, extends the boundaries of phrases, sinking them deeper, building momentum and mystery. This method brings the reader to confront the moment each time Green returns to phrases like “gold and brown.” We are given a path to follow through the landscape—trail markers, per se. Canyons and cottonwoods appear as repeated landmarks, grounding the reader in place even as the sea of swirling metaphors reshapes the inner landscape. Yet after the downbeat repetition, there tends to be a delightful jolt out of the hypnotic rhythm, such as a line in his poem “The Poems of Our Climate,” which reads, “Gold and brown leaves-- did I / Expect more?”
Green has provided a well-guided, colorfully painted poetic experience, as if taking the reader on a journey with the walker in the canyon through the seasons. But not to be compared, as he declares, “Comparison remains useless: each season / Marks another one, and one less to live through.” There is also the absence of season in the desert, as seen in his line, “When nothing reminds me of change,” and then we end the collection with the last season of our life: “Every sound seems frail, and flat, / The world and I drift apart.”
Perhaps his own mirrored reflection in his poem “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” sums up the inner landscape of his dancing words: “I was the world in which I danced, / And there I found myself-- / More truly and more strange.”
Green’s chapbook is an invitation to stroll through language, to linger, and to let its echoes be heard.
