CELEBRITY SADHANA

Hollywood stars seek enlightenment in this volume of poetry.

Sadhana is a yogic term for “a means of accomplishing something.” In this collection, Nathan imagines the sadhana of various Hollywood celebrities with his tongue very much in cheek. Natalie Portman admires the quirkiness of Winona Ryder: “Winona is the kind of crazy that Natalie will love / even after she drinks all her beer / & wrecks her truck.” Shia LaBeouf takes inspiration from Joaquin Phoenix’s esoteric performance art: “Shia remembers / that time when everyone thought / Joaquin went AWOL from / acting & became a rapper. / Shia is a bona fide fashion icon / & Joaquin has rounded up the actor- / artist’s finest ’fits to prove it.” Jeff Bridges encounters Keanu Reeves eating a sandwich: “Now, let’s just permit / this fear to engulf us for a moment / & not do our normal thing,” the grizzled actor tells the famously serene one. Jodie Foster and Sasha Baron Cohen discuss ancient Buddhist masters: Baron Cohen’s “joke is to show Jodie / a doughnut, eat it, tell her where / it’s been, then reveal / that it wasn’t a doughnut.” These celebrities search for wisdom in one another, music, isolation, and snippets of Eastern philosophical traditions that they may or may not completely understand. (Baron Cohen discusses the 15th-century monk Drukpa Kunley in his Borat voice: “When will I have big penis like / this Bhutanese poet yogi?”) Are these stars any closer to understanding than the rest of humanity? Are they further away?

Nathan proves himself a versatile poet, switching registers between the comic and the serious as well as impersonating different voices. Several poems are written from the perspective of a TMZ–like entertainment news service, which is just as interested in celebrities’ spiritual pursuits as it is in whatever else they do: “You may not have heard, but / our sources tell us Joaquin Phoenix, the star / of Gladiator, aged 42, prepares / to spend the next year on retreat / in a cave. / We were like, ‘OMG / WHAT?’ / Phoenix renounces / his Hollywood lifestyle in favor / of an underground chamber / in the Mojave Desert where / he expects to achieve complete & total / enlightenment.” The author also summons the aesthetics of various filmmakers in poems like “A Shia LaBeouf Dream (dir. Terrence Malick)” and “A Winona Ryder Dream (dir. Tim Burton).” The poems are narratives and very much flow one into the next, with the same cast of actors reappearing and comingling. Nathan is skilled at crafting a succinct, evocative image. He describes Bridges as “a man who fits / perfectly into the clothes / of passing strangers.” LaBeouf’s sex dream includes the lines “Hands tighten around the shaft / as minds pronk off / to starlit savannas.” But the most impressive aspect of the collection is that it transcends its gimmicky conceit to challenge readers to engage sincerely with the notion of enlightenment. By the end of the volume, neither the audience nor the poet is condescending to LaBeouf or Ryder. Instead, all are acclimated to the reality that they are all blindly searching, all absurdly lost.

A deftly composed collection of poems on the struggle to find meaning in modern life.