STREET GUIDE TO GARY INDIANA
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A few more than half of the poems Henzel performs concern this elusive character, who at times comes across as a mythical hero of the Paul Bunyan variety. In “The Paper Boys,” for example, Wilson imitates myths about the origin of the moon or the stars to tell how Gary Indiana invented smog and water pollution. At other times, Indiana seems more like a parody of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, a humble newspaper vendor who hangs out with the guys and still comes up with the idea “that revolutionized Western society, creating 10,000 jobs.” At still other times, he’s more like one of those charming, slightly eccentric characters who inhabit Richard Brautigan’s prose poetry. In “Roots in the Rubble,” for example, Indiana is fascinated with the relics of the recent industrial past and keeps “rusted railroad spikes while tossing arrowheads through the trestle ties.”
Unfortunately, the fact that Gary Indiana changes so radically from poem to poem–from force of nature to popular hero to foible-filled regular guy–undercuts the power of the series. Nor does it help that Wilson’s poems vary so wildly in quality. Some of them are mysterious and beautiful; others fit Gore Vidal’s definition of free verse as “carefully ruined prose.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Johnson Photography.
