David Herrle's Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy (©
2014 Time Being Books), is a hefty poetic treatise that explores –
in Herrle's scarily well-informed opinion - the varied and
contradictory reasons this world reveres and destroys all that's
bright and beautiful, as well as the impact of macrocosmic events
(history) on a microcosmic happenstance (the human soul).
To prove this premise, Herrle devotes
the first third of the book by paying tribute to well-recognized
icons of beauty (Katy Perry, Rita Hayworth, Eva Braun, et al). Here,
Herrle champions the girl on the pedestal whose unwilling/unwitting
elevation to heights of glory both exalts and condemns her. Herrle
compares and contrasts the ever-increasing modern day need for
destroying that which you love to The Terror in 18th
century France, Hitler's Holocaust, and the invention of the atomic
bomb. This sets the reader up for a one-two punch. The meat (no pun
intended) of Sharon Tate involves Herrle's troubling look into
the depths of three historical lovlies who, through no fault of their
own, met with a grisly and tragic end: Sharon Tate (at the hands of
the Manson Family); Marie Antoinette (under the blade of the
guillotine), and Mary Jane Kelly (the last, youngest, and most
attractive of the Ripper victims). Herrle doesn't spare the reader
any time to feel remorse. To balance the equation, he also invokes
the maddened minds of Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson and his
followers (Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, etc), and various
personages from the (pre/post) French Revolution (Jean-Paul Marat,
Marquis de Sade, Napoleon Bonaparte). Beauty v Beastliness, Peace v
War, Life v Death, Creation v Destruction; all of these themes are
dissected under the blade of Herrle's excellently written poetic
prose. In the end, why do we even bother?
I believe, and I may be going on a
limb here, we (in this case, Herrle) bother because to do so leaves
us with nothing left to live for. Even in an existential world, there
is a need for beauty, light, and a purpose beyond oneself. Everyone
needs to be a
hero (Joseph Campbell was correct). Theology, philosophy, art, music,
poetry, none of these things matter if one cannot, even for one brief
moment, transcend the visceral “anus mundi” to advance beyond the
immediacy of their shitty existence. Herrle proclaims, “I'm... the
Scarlet Pimpernel.”
Herrle also dares himself and the
reader to take their deeply ingrained ideas of beauty for a walk
through the darkest depths of hell. Every artist must do this;
question WHAT they believe in, put that belief through the ringer,
abuse/rape/destroy it to see if that belief can/will survive. How
would one's viewpoint change, say, if you it came to you, as it did
to me, that I was born one day before the Tate-LaBiana Murders? How
uncomfortable would it make you feel to know, as you were drawing
your first breaths, that a couple hundred miles away there was a
psychotic band of fringe hippies planning the murder and evisceration
of Sharon Tate's baby, an innocent who should have been born into
this world without harm the way I was? How ugly and intrusive the
world becomes to me when these thoughts present themselves. How
enraged I become when I read Herrle's imagined account of Tate's last
moments, and those of her baby's life in the poem “The Baby Lived
Twenty Minutes After Sharon's Last Breath”: “You begged those
soul-midgets/to take you to their lair and kill/you after you birthed
your son./The gleeful stabs that replied/seemed to make one girl
cum.” If this doesn't lay you low, as it did me, if it doesn't make
you question the cruelty of the world and challenge your premise of
sweetness and light, I don't know what will.
All is not lost. In the end, (sorry,
no spoilers), Herrle is able to give the reader a glimmer of hope,
like a wet towel on a bad burn. Sharon Tate and the Daughters of
Joy is Herrle's stunning account of initiation into the deepest
layers of self-doubt and the hard-won attainment of inner wisdom.
Treat Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy as you would a copy
of Liber AL vel Legis, The Torah, The Koran, or
The Art of War. It's not a book for the meek, but it is a
book that will make the reader stronger for the reading.
Sharon Tate and the Daughters of
Joy, David Herrle, copyright 2014 Time Being Books, ISBN
978-1568092225, $15.95, 198 pages.
(poetic content ©
2014 david herrle)
(article content ©
2014 marie lecrivain)