METPO by SCOTT MACLEOD

 Reading by Eileen Tabios

METPO by Scott MacLeod

(Serious Publications 40, Austin 2023)

I’m now convinced Scott MacLeod is one of the finest writers of our time but perhaps his literary talents have been somewhat camouflaged by his focus on performance/conceptual/visual art. My latest read of his works, METPO (Russian for METRO), chronicles a trip he made to Eastern Europe with a focus on Moscow as part of a 2.5-month tour presenting his performance art. It is charismatic writing due to pulling off one of the most difficult styles in writing: atmospheric writing. Reading his passages on trains made me recall my own visit to Russia—at about the same time, it seems, which was when last century was coughing to an end—and which also included a long train ride from Moscow to Siberia when I became increasingly choked by cigarette smoke and Pushkin recitations as the night unfolded. METPO is poet’s writing as memory and descriptions can’t help but lapse to lyricism… which is not so easy when the topic is Russia, a 1990s Russia whose food privations I recall and which exemplified itself in Scott’s journey in the multi-day offering of some thick bologna-type meat that became greener as the week unfolded (I shouldn’t laugh, but I am). METPO is highly effective writing because one need not care about Russia or poetry or avant garde art to get into the story—the writing is that heady. But what makes the writing uplifting is the same characteristic that makes Scott a great traveler, even through challenging terrain (oh my god I got exhausted just reading about his navigation of a train station with all the baggage he was carrying, no fluency in the local language, and the urgent need to exchange currencies): compassion. Scott remained accepting of many flakey (my word) situations he experienced and I think that compassion helped elevate his experiences. We often come across unexpected situations in that part of the world where, in my opinion anyway, things don’t just happen but happen dramatically. (One excerpt reminds me of when I entered a hotel bar (probably in "Irkuts" which later inspired a poem titled by the same word) and saw a single gangster dressed in a striped Zoot suit-type outfit surrounded by beautiful women of varying ancestries as if he wanted to say he has a “girlfriend” from each different ethnicity living within Russia’s borders.) It’s that innate compassion that doesn’t turn Scott’s vision away from anything and which makes METPO the best “on-the-road” memoir I’ve read in years... even as it reminds how the avant garde is so often (laugh) exhausting.

 

P.S. I adore the book production. I don’t know what you call that font where each letter contains space, but it’s gorgeous. I don’t just recommend Scott MacLeod’s METPO—I absolutely love it!