Mediterranean Men

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

That Nick Mancuso is a well-known actor has much to do with his verse in
Mediterranean Men, a collection of mostly lengthy dramatic monologues,
in which the speakers are often ancient and legendary Mediterranean men
like Oedipus, Odysseus, and others.

The first poem, “Oedipus L.A.,” sets the tone for much of the book.
As the title suggests, Mancuso alludes to contemporary Los Angeles as
his blind old king bemoans all that happened, but aside from that, the
language and tone of the piece strike me as more 19th century than 20th.
It’s as if he went right back to the Browning source without noticing
how Pound took and modernized the form. Later poems in the book sound a
bit more contemporary, but there’s a declamatory sensibility at work,
which makes them all very much an actor’s verse, meant to be heard,
most likely performed by the author.

A couple of the poems strive for greater immediacy. “New Year’s
Eve, 1997,” with its evocation of Times Square and environs, and the
title poem, about the author’s Italian uncle who “came to Canada /
after the war / to work in a factory / with his brother, my father, /
and he worked there for / forty years,” captures something of the
man’s life and times, in a manner more suggestive of Purdy than
Browning, and feels genuine in a way the others do not.

People who get to hear Mancuso perform his dramatic monologues will
perhaps find them compelling and entertaining; on the page, however,
they lack the very drama they seek to express.