Clay: Poems by David Groff; Trio House Press, $16
Dedicated to and greatly inspired by Clay Williams, Groff's partner of 17 years, Clay, a collection of moody, inspired verse, is a serpentine journey, a tour of the multilayered deliverance of love and the finite complexion of time, often viewed through the lens of a debilitating, stigmatized disease.
An accomplished, award-winning poet and creative writing instructor at the City College of New York, Groff has produced a thin yet potent three-part volume consisting of 41 poems. These pieces flirt with the deeper, darker sides of life; they also memorialize the legion lost by the ravages of disease ("To Men Dead in 1995," "Dead AIDS Poet Archive"). Just when the melancholy tones threaten to overwhelm, Groff inserts a comical gem, a sexy line, or a bitchy verse to reboot the reader's heart and mood.
Passionate expressions and dedications of true love can be found in the entertaining opener "Clay's Flies," where the author tends to his partner's experimental HIV medicinal regimen with the same fervor he uses to "pull Clay up behind a dune,/and yank his bathing suit to his knees" to deliver a blowjob, all while irritating sand flies buzz about them.
His group tribute to four boyhood friends in "We Boys Pull Down Our Pants" forms a nostalgic homage to "boys inching into men,/becoming good at being hard." Groff's lyrical eloquence is again on fine display in the couplet "Fire Island Song," where he writes of walking the beach alone, remembering a lover who committed incremental suicide with "drink and drugs," remarking, "It would be nice if you weren't dead."
Groff singles out individuals in other poems like his octogenarian father, who is profiled in "My Father, A Priest, Pruning"; celebrated author Paul Monette (Groff edited Monette's last two novels); his mother, whom he paints in delicate prose about her knee surgery and her life and death; and of course, his beloved Clay.
Also profound is the collection's closing poem "Epithalamion," a piece limned with Buddhist overtones as it speaks to the eternal marriage of life and death, how death is ever-present in life, and the ways in which that bittersweet synergy becomes a part of us forever. As a whole, Groff's creation is a brilliant rumination on the human condition, whether it exists in a state of grace or is lost in the cruel clutches of disorder.