Review by Tori Bissonette
“Suite for Hallucinated Voices is a book of revelations for a life that refuses to end. CJ Scruton moves beyond deconstructing illusion and reaches toward the task of interpretation—examining the messages she’s received, near and far, deciding which false-speaking idols can be torn down and where her own song belongs in the cacophony. This book parses the noise of the heavens without shutting the voices out.”
I suspect it’s some sort of injustice to merely sit and read Suite for Hallucinated Voices by CJ Scruton. The release comes from Half Mystic Press, which specializes in prose and poetry that incorporates and celebrates music. Suite is no exception, with accompanying chord figures and performance notes, including vocal assignments and tonality. In short, Suite is a performance. Luckily, we here at For Page & Screen specialize in experimental forms, as we live between screenplays and more traditional fiction. Reading the poems, if one can rightly call them only that, is a beautiful experience, but I envision it might be more transcendent to see a live recitation. With performance notes such as read “like a prophet, like you know what’s coming next” and read “awestruck, as if nervous about building false idols,” I can only imagine how this poem-play-concert might unfold on stage. Then again, maybe these voices aren’t meant to be real entities and their message is best received through our own perception of their different performances–hallucinated voices, if you will.
Sadly, I was only able to take in Suite silently by myself and let my imagination run with it. Nonetheless, it’s quite the experience. It’s not a casual read. Scruton’s poetic style requires careful attention and consideration. There’s a musicality in the word choice that creates a pleasant experience for both the eye and the ear, but the poetic styling is dense at times. A second or third read produces a more rewarding experience. I felt simultaneously that I understood and connected with many of the verses while also feeling I may never reach the bottom of my understanding. That invitation and space for interpretation and analysis is, of course, one of the vital components of strong poetry.
I have a particular soft spot for long, illustrative titles. Though some of Scruton’s poems have titles as short as “Silence,” others are far more specific. A particular favorite of mine, both in title and content, was “Aria for Soloist Unobserved in a Practice Room with All The Lights Off Who Cannot Be Quantumly Proven to Exist At All.” There’s a slight tongue-in-cheek-ness to the title, while still conjuring a lonely, artistic image. The poem, like many in this collection, plays with physical page space and layout beautifully. The tight juxtaposition of abstract concepts with tangible details, even within one thought, creates a vivid experience with unexpected moments of depth.
Most of the collection has a confessional style that revolves around the speaker’s yearning to be understood and the vulnerability of coming to love someone. Often the reader is placed in the unnamed position of “you,” a you that knows the poet yet is also a stranger in many ways. The stream of consciousness approach works well here, as the “I” of the poems weaves through images and memories to both say and avoid what they most want to convey. An unnamed divinity runs through many poems, though the speaker toys with these ideas more in the abstract rather than through any explicit religious affiliation. This too seems to tie into the speaker’s ceaseless journey to understand and be understood.
Overall, Suite for Hallucinated Voices is a beautiful collection that brings together the vulnerabilities of being human in a poignant exploration. It’s a rewarding read, whether read by voices real or hallucinated.
For more information on CJ Scruton’s Suite for Hallucinated Voices, or to purchase your own copy, head on over to Half Mystic Press!
A digital copy of Suite for Hallucinated Voices was provided by Half Mystic Press for this review.
