Book Review: Fantasy by Ben Fama

Fantasy
Poems by Ben Fama
Ugly Duckling Presse, April 2015
ISBN 978-1937027476
$14; 80 pp.
Reviewed by Adrianna Smith

With the dawn of social media, the 21^st century has directed the spotlight on the individual. Ben Fama’s first full-length book of poems, Fantasy, depicts the all-too-real world so many of us live in—a world obsessed with the individual, where technology creates walls as much as it builds bridges.

When we choose to focus on the products of our urban, commercialized world, technology helps deepen the rift between individuals. The “I” dominates almost all of Fama’s poems. This emphasis marks a clear bifurcation between the “I” and the “you,” deepening the estrangement between two people, whether it is the relationship between speaker and addressee, poet and reader, or two lovers.

Fama writes about the “culture/ of attention.” And where we direct our attention is one of the collection’s central questions. The disjointed thoughts that string together the title-poem, “Fantasy,” is typical of many of Fama’s poems, which read like a series of messages exchanged on social media:

Forever is the saddest word
The poem’s not worth it
I’d like to read to you
What Andy Warhol said
About the traps of the rich
But my tastes are changing
This is a love note
To a Fire Island lifeguard.

Fama rarely allows one concept to dominate a poem. Like our technologically-attuned brains accustomed to scrolling through news feeds and following whatever idea catches our interest, these poems balance multiple trains of thought simultaneously. The poetry’s syntax—a general lack of punctuation and capitalization of words—reinforces this stream-of-consciousness effect.

Many of Fama’s poems describe breakdowns of emotional communication. Throughout “Like,” the speaker explores the different stages of love, beginning with “Thank you for accepting my invitation to chat.” By the end of the poem, after digressions and fictional accounts of a “virtual romance” for “the social media generation,” the speaker turns to this anonymous lover, finally ready for a real conversation—“So tell me.”

“Odalisque” almost reads as a love poem, ironically depicting the love glorified in the media (i.e., one that is founded on superficiality, alcohol, and drugs). But the poem ultimately centers, as all of these poems do, on the self. The poem ends with the speaker acknowledging his lover in terms of himself: “If you were not here / I’d be incredibly bored.”

It is clear that technology and social media have allowed those with access to it to live in their own personal worlds. And with this acknowledgement comes this question: is the speaker of these poems writing to a specific person, or is all of this only occurring “In my head?” Fama speaks for the millennial generation when he addresses this fundamental question of communication and communion. We may be able to speak to others more easily through technological media—Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc.—but are we really connecting with other people?

In “Sno-Cone,” Fama uses cultural currency to identify with his intended audience, referring to commercial phenomena such as Toms, Amazon.com, and Ikea. But Fama uses these allusions to dig deeper toward the underlying implications of this cultural currency. The speaker, believing he is “smart / as smart as Siri” notices that his “iPhone autocorrected / soulmate to simulate.” Rather than defining our lives by relationships with real people, we have defaulted to the easier relationships we develop with our technologies. Most poignantly and to the point: “Sometimes I wish / The world had a face / I could touch the cheek of.”

Fama’s poems can be difficult to read because of the disturbing truth they reveal about the isolating nature of technology and the desire it creates for physical contact and emotional communication. “Like” expresses these concerns explicitly: “I’m sad a lot / I’d like to get away from culture / Are you staying with anyone?”

The world of the individual self is not the only one we inhabit, nor does Fama want it to be. The “art” of social media, as product and producer, is increasingly becoming the reality of many people’s lives. Fama’s poems are an important reminder and warning of what happens when we cocoon ourselves in our inner worlds, craving the real but not stepping out into it.

Adrianna Smith is pursuing a Master’s in Literature at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she continues to write and read poetry. A native Washingtonian, she has written for the Washington Post, and holds a BA from Georgetown University. She started the non-profit, YouReach, which runs educational programs for Hispanic youth in the greater Washington area.