Charles Rammelkamp, Transcendence, BlazeVOX books, 2023, ISBN 978-1-60964-427-7, 115 pages, $18.00
Charles Rammelkamp is both poet and entertainer. Most poetry has a patina of seriousness to it. We enter its lines like we would a cathedral, all hushed and devout. Rammelkamp has a seriousness to his writing, but there is also the comic, the quick-tongue satire of the 21st century. His work explores the profane and applies science and an analysis of rational and irrational thought to the issues he explores. He is not a wise-guy, exactly, in the satiric sense, but a wise guy probing the meaning of life and humanity’s values.
There are poems exploring the serious questions of our mortal existence, but there are times, occasionally, when the comedian delivers a Lenny Bruce line or two. Transcendence is earthy and flesh-reverential.
The poetry is narrative, not lyrical. It imparts the many-faceted story of seeking transcendence through several avenues of exploration. Also, it tells the tale of nefarious government agencies. The CIA, experimenting to find a truth serum by slipping mickeys (so to speak) into unwitting bodies. All of the unethical behavior has been researched and documented by the author. Part of the narrative is fiction. The college days and the drug use are made up for interest’s sake; the poet is not a druggie. The narrative doesn’t encourage illicit drug use, but shows a history of it for rational minds to examine.
The book inspires serious discussion. It also elicits spontaneous laughter. I get a mild chuckle at this poem’s ending:
Varieties of Religious Experience
“I see our research as right
in the tradition of William James.”
Richard Alpert declared at the faculty meetings,
invoking the name of the great Harvard psychologist,
Alpert’s and Leary’s research methods
a contentious controversy
in the Center for Research in Personality.
“We are working to develop new models
to conceptualize these profound,
mind-altering experiences.
There is nothing to fear here.”
But wasn’t it always about fear?
Wouldn’t fear lead to their dismissal?
“The personal attacks against our research
not only violate our academic freedom,
they border on slander.”
The story leaked to the Boston Herald,
a sensational tabloid long before
Rupert Murdoch got his hands on it.
“Hallucination Drug Fought at Harvard,”
the headline screamed,
“350 Students Take Pills.”
Alpert’s and Leary’s days were numbered.
So much for William James.
What about B.F. Skinner?
The Harvard Behaviorist didn’t give a damn,
about “consciousness,” after all.
The book’s narratives are well-organized. The first section titled “Kiss the Sky” contains anecdotes of events of the narrator’s college experience. The second section is called “Glenn Webber Investigates.” Webber is a fictional character used to help bring out the story of the CIA experiments.
Truth serum? The ultimate object
of the first CIA mind-control program—
Bluebird. The goal:
to make a prisoner “sing like a bird.”
The third section, “Tune In, Turn On,” narrates the saga of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. The fourth section is called “Mindfulness.” It explores world religions. There is a controversial poem here, but, if you look at what it says, there is truth in it. This poem is framed in the author’s comic irreverent regard for transcendence and all its medieval concepts. In some ways, it is like drawing with crayons but effective in giving the picture. At the very least, the poem elicits questions that dogmatists couldn’t entertain without conniptions. Disregarding the irreverence of the poem, seriousness is needed for philosophical thought. The poem brings up evil which religious thought cannot answer. The deus ex machina of a demiurge is all dressed in horns, scarlet red skin, and saliva that drips from its lips. Note that the epigraph is, in its eccentric way, a metaphor for what follows:
Revelation
I just assumed all bladder leak pads felt the same—television commercial for Always Discreet incontinence pads for women.
“My eyes were opened,” Lynch confessed,
“when I took a World Religion class in college.”
They used to hammer him as a kid
with Jesus dying on the cross for his sake,
as if he owed something
to this guy he’d never met,
a debt he’d never be able to repay.
Plus, here was this guy, writhing,
in great pain. Not really very appealing.
Nothing Lynch aspired to, you know?
But Hinduism? Buddhism? Taoism? Zen?
Those really appealed to him.
Peace. Enlightenment. Pacifism.
A welcome to something better.
Take a look at the symbols.
You get a cross in one.
A gut writhing in agony
Like a fish on a hook.
In the other
You get the lotus flower:
purity and enlightenment.
He could see that.
It was no contest.
The poem is the first one in the fourth section. Following it are poems that delve into Western adaptations of Eastern religions: yoga classes, meditation, repeating mantras, physical exercises that are somehow connected to expanded consciousness, and the sex nerve (the title of a poem).
The last section is called “The Psychonaut.” It is a short section. The titles of the poems are: “The Doors of Perception;” “Altered States;” “The Psychonaut Discusses Life’s Goals;” “Modernday Researchers;” “Psychedelic Toad;” “Dead;” and “Lydia McCullough’s Depression.” This section sums up all that goes before and tries to give the search for expanded consciousness and Transcendence meaning. It suggests that the magical chemicals help the American mind, at least, to cope with death.
“The conversation about death
is the biggest taboo in America.
Psychedelics can change the experience.
“This culture has a fear of death,
of transcendence, of the unknown.
Psychedelics offer direct revelation.
—–quote from the poem “Dead”.
Transcendence has a philosophical and ultimately religious meaning, which the poet addresses. There is the philosophical question about the reality of Transcendence. Is it an illusion? Does spiking our perception reveal a greater and truer world? Read the book and see where Rammelkamp’s journey leads you.
© Charles Rammelkamp and Dan Cuddy
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. Another poetry collection, Transcendence, has also recently been published by BlazeVOX Books, and a collection of flash fiction, Presto, by Bamboo Dart Press. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? will be published later this year by Kelsay Books.
Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. In the past he was a contributing editor of the Maryland Poetry Review and an editor for Lite: Baltimore’s Literary Newspaper. He has had a book of poetry published “Handprint on the Window” in 2003. Most recently he has had poems published i, the Pangolin Review, Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review, Roanoke Review, the Amethyst Review, Synchronized Chaos, Fixator Press, Beatnik Cowboy, Gargoyle. and The Chamber Magazine.
The Loch Raven Review 