poetrycommentary

Bright Shining As

pmfjohnson — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:31:01 +0000

In the March ’12 issue of The Sun, Alison Luterman hits us with a very sad poem, the struggles between mother and child, “White Lady Of Once A Week.” This feels a lot more personal to me, gets me much more in the gut than most poems I read, a signal victory for Luterman in my book. But oh, at what cost. “The rain, she means. // ‘The clouds are banging into each other,’ I tell her…Turns out to be wrong. // Like almost everything.” That simple phrase at the end comes back to haunt in the poem, as every mother seems haunted by her child at one time or another. A son is a son until he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life, my wife likes to quote, but daughters are so much more often a challenge, it seems. And so it is here. ” ‘I am ghetto,’ she says then…” and the narrator replies, “You’re not // just where you came from…” but the child is rebellious, of course. Such simple, straight language, so much more relevant, immediate, and powerful a poem than almost anything else out there. A poem that matters. That gets at a truth I can hear. Wow. She has published many good poems in this magazine over the years. This may be her best.

The other poem in the issue is by Ralph Earle, “After the e-mail saying you forgave me,” which is basically after the title a straightforward image-driven poem, picturing a moment in nature. And quite short. “The cottonmouth, thick as a muscular arm, // slid into the water at my feet.” Also a very enjoyable poem, and the juxtaposition of title and images, without narrative comment, and the subtle symbolism (see snake above) gives it power. Well done.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

The Poetry of Science

pmfjohnson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:13:25 +0000

Kind of a fun little number starts the poems in the latest Asimov’s, “Book Wyrm,” by Robert Borski. “Blankly laired in a deracinated // forest of pulp…” But read it quickly, it’s short!

Then, a treat, the next of the Bruce Boston music poems, “The Music of Particle Physics.” “When you listen more and more carefully…its convoluted waves..grow more particulate and fanciful.” A thought experiment that will leave you turning uncertain possibilities over and over in your head.

Geoffrey A. Landis checks in with “Tachyons,” immediately making them my favorite subatomic particle. “Tachyons race // backwards and forwards in time — // maybe sideways…” Such an excellent pairing with the Boston poem above. We need more subatomic poetry, I’m thinking…and not thinking, as it were.

Megan Arkenberg ends it with “Apocalyptic Love Poem,” where the end of the world kind of interferes with the end of the love affair, with satisfying results (for the reader, anyway. Maybe not so much for the narrator! ;-> ) “I hoped it would not end like this…” Gotta love the dual meanings. The over-the-top-ness works very nicely for the ending of a relationship; the whole world should be ending in such a situation, right? Anyway, it made me smile.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Journaling Poetry

pmfjohnson — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:57:30 +0000

Got the latest issue of The Journal the other day, and worked my way through the poetry. It seems like a market dedicated to poets sort of at journeyman status — learning their craft, spreading their wings a little beyond the classroom, sold to a couple top markets, have a chapbook or two out, maybe won a contest, but still very influenced by teachers and theories and the import of poetry as a declaration of rebellion. Or something like that. Since I have no experience of the poetry academy, it’s all pretty alien to me. But I thought Keith Leonard’s “A Brief History of Silence” was worth reading. “What more // could anyone want than to crease history // into a paper boat….” I like that line. That’s a good line. There are good images in there, and a nice ending. He seems like he’s well on his way.

I very much liked Sara Rutkowski’s “Notes On My Father.” I give it the best of the mag award, in fact. “In the mornings, he shaved ginseng root // into the cappucinos he placed next to our beds.” That’s an opening line that’s going to draw me right in. It’s a caring but clear-eyed look at a complex character in the narrator’s life, a tricky balancing act to pull off. “On beaches, he looks peculiar, like a stand-in // for the real thing.” Makes you think.

I also liked Angelo Nikolopoulos’ “My Desire Has Made Me Radiantly Unspecial–” The humor comes out right in the title, and proceeds apace. “I’m tired of being a ten-fingered thing, belligerent.” Not a humorous poem, per se, but certainly one with a wry view: “I become many-bellied and inarticulate…” And a fair share of smiles for me.

Let me also mention Jane Otto’s “Biology 101,” a slice of life. “The day I know I’m pregnant, we dissect fetal pigs.” Absolutely a poetic moment, and a worthy poem arose from it. Just an excellent ending, as well. Glad I read it.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Iron In Winter

pmfjohnson — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:43:13 +0000

One of the trickier things in poetry is to convey the feeling of import in a moment where something occurs that others might not consider impressive. In the latest issue of Iron Horse Literary Review, Brock Guthrie does that quite well with his poem, “Half Hour.” “Snow falls…on the rows of stacked silver cans, and on the possum that tries to burrow into your uncovered trash can.” It is a poem about the narrator’s encounter with a possum. The sense of a good ol’ boy with a drunk on, but still affected, is beautifully understated. A nice moment. He also gives us a fine “Clever Fish,” about differing with his girlfriend in his enthusiasm for seafood. “Oh, you’d eat // crab cakes (with cocktail wine and sauce)” which shows off his folksy delivery. And an amusing little twist at the end of it. Good, solid poetry.

Douglas Ray gives us the rather (but aptly) overtitled, “Taking the Wonder Out of Winter Wonderland: A Southern Snowscape” which is really a delightful little poem, about how winter is never more than just a wintry mix in Alabama. “It’s the outlet // mall version of the designer New England stuff.” Of course, being from a place that considers New England nearly the southland itself, their winters being, oh, just a bit milder than around here, I don’t know how well I can relate to that. ;-> I just like this poem, though, and its tough little ending.

And “Cedars,” by Benjamin Myers, is much worth reading. “They are not native to this place, // but have rushed the grassy hill, // an infantry in spiky green.” What a great image, and an excellent description of how cedars fill a landscape!

But the poem I kept going back to was “Later Songs,” by Doug Ramspeck, about his time in a meadow. “The body wants to beat the drums of old snow.” Not an easy poem to digest in a single gulp. Some of the lines are quite tricky: “this dark promise // we make breathless to our footsteps in the snow.” But there is enough there, in hints and elusions, that made me want to pursue it, understand what he was saying. Strong work.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Rhymes In The Sky

pmfjohnson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:36:27 +0000

A trio of poems in the latest Asimov’s, always a good moment. The first by G.O. Clark is “A Change In The Gravity,” which analyzes what might be the result if gravity were to lessen. “cats will nimbly perform // incredible entrechats” and “tires won’t squeal as much // on hot summer nights” Not that I ever recall seeing any cat doing even a simple entrechat. (On the internet, you can get a video explaining those cool words you should know, having worked at a ballet company for years, but really don’t cuz you were a money guy. Embarrassed smile).

C. W. Johnson gives us “Discoveries in the Annals of Poetry,” which has interesting thoughts, but somehow a quiet, underlying sadness. At least for me. “In the margin // of Rilke he wrote an equation proving // all their arguments were about the dead // child…” It has several provocative, almost impossible comments like that, leading to re-reading.

I want to give a special shout-out to A. Walker Scott’s Sonnet I, a traditional sonnet with dead-on rhymes and a smooth presentation, so hard to do in such a rigorous form. “How cold is space, that dark and hollow night, // Which holds in velvet hand the jewels of God!” Yeah. The rest of the poem is equally adept. Much worth reading.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Iron Songs

pmfjohnson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:38:01 +0000

In a commentary about her poem “Late Autumn,” in the latest Iron Horse Literary Review, Tara Bray talks about being inspired by her attempts to explain death to her daughter. Interestingly for me, the line I like best, “I wonder about those fists he lost to rage,” resonates with the line, “His hands were clenched in fists of rage,” in the song American Pie by Don McLean, which song is about the death of the singer Buddy Holly. I don’t know if the reference is intentional — I suppose it doesn’t really matter — either way, it gives a depth to the poem, extra ripples, if you will. I like the way she hedges her bets in this poem, makes no hard declarations, tiptoes her way through the mystery, if you will. “Mystery is where I’m drawn, // but it’s no reflection of these simple hands.” With a professional-level finale, having a great specificity.

I also like “Camera Obscura,” by Heather Price, which is a bit of a trick, since it’s a ghazal, and I am not an easy sell on such. But it’s a fun love poem, and a bit sexy, judiciously so. “Your fangs came out. My halo dropped to the floor.” Also, she gives me a chance to dig back to my six years of Latin in school, very satisfying. “Et nos non inventimus ita.”

I read Melissa Cundieff-Pexa’s “Prelude for Wren,” to my wife, and we were happy with quite a few of the phrases, especially the opening. “Imagine you were once nothing // yet never an afterthought.” It’s a poem to the author’s daughter, who we are told in her notes, is now four years old. “eyes // and body patient as a root.” I found some of the later phrases a bit confusing, though I really liked the ending.

The last poem I’ll mention is by Robby Nadler, “The Proposal,” that just has a sort of irreverence, or contentiousness, that I very much enjoyed. “someone points out // i’ve never been to nebraska…i reply // there are other places in the world // with names of u.s. cities…” though it seems to be a poem in memory of someone: “and you then slip away…to now the back gallows // of a just-dusted memory hall…” which line makes me go over it, re-experiencing, mulling the sadness. So the sorrow and the irreverence play off each other to powerful effect. A strong poem, with a kicker of an ending.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Coastal Poetry

pmfjohnson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:13:59 +0000

Just got back into town after a conference on the Left Coast, and learned Main Street Rag took a couple of my poems, and North American Review sent me a contract. Now there’s a good feeling.

Anyway, it got me to contemplating how location affects poetry. Were I a coastal poet, might my images be sunnier, with dollops of breeze and sand? Hm.

In the current New Yorker, Eric Weinstein, a young poet budded in Georgia and transplanted to New York and environs, presents “The View From Atlantis,” which gives us few geographical hints — “A tree is deciduous // Leaves turn and return…” and, “The ocean drinks my name…” and “in the feathered night of the city…” but maybe something of the repetition and slow transference of images he uses developed from years living in the city. Certainly things are not swiftly changing in his world.

The other poem in the issue is by Matthew Sweeney, an Irish guy (from my own ancestral Donegal, btw) who seems to be one of those raconteurs and roustabouts that Tom Waits sang of so long ago. Here he presents us with “Booty”: “Going down the hill // in a striped French T-shirt…” The narrator meets a thrush, then a heron, then a peeled stump, then his butcher. Things are bashed, or half-submerged, or “sporting a sad face.” Can’t quite figure out what’s going on here, but nobody seems very happy about it, that’s for sure. As for geography, we have a half-submerged supermarket trolley, and the birds, a river, and cars whizzing past. Kind of a general anywhere, much like Weinstein’s world in that way, where everyone has a quite small view of booty, evidently.

Conclusion: maybe we could argue where we live has much less effect nowadays, since such similar things are visible in both these poems, and the items mentioned can be found in most people’s worlds. Certainly the things mentioned in both poems are visible outside my window, and available as well in the city we started out in this morning, thousands of miles farther from our home and from the locales of these two poets. And is that a good thing? Oh, probably not.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Plurality of Poetry

pmfjohnson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:01:35 +0000

There are always so many items to review when a Poetry mag comes in, it’s hard to do justice to all the tidbits stuffed in there.

A.E. Stallings is one of my favorite poets going . She starts off the show with “Momentary,” a poem about what she almost sees on her front stoop: “I only ever see her tail // quicksilver into tall grasses.” Such a master of delightful image: “zither of chromatic scales.” Can’t say that I know exactly what it is she isn’t quite seeing on her stoop, disappearing every time she blunders along, but isn’t that kind of the point? I’m thinking little lizards, though a small snake might work as well. She leaves the “zero at the bone” out of it, as well, letting the readers supply their own emotions.

I really like the longer poem Philip Levine pitches to us here, “How To Get There,” roughly about a homeless person begging coins near the Brooklyn Bridge, though more tangled and interesting than that. “A little deal table holds a tiny American // flag — like the one that Foreman held…” I like where he enjambs the line, so the little deal can hold a tiny American. Such a gentle portrait of a sad life.

D. Nurske has a very short, very powerful poem, “Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes,” that I might consider the best of the issue, at first cut, though so often a longer contemplation changes the mind. Raises chills up the back.

The thing about the Robert Pinsky poem is how its clarity allows us to see how smoothly he makes his turns, in a poem, “Creole,” honoring his ancestors. He goes from discussing his father, “he got fired at thirty…his boss, // planning to run for mayor, // wanted to hire an Italian veteran…” to a discussion of war veterans in the days of Rome, “the intricate Imperial // Processes of enslaving and freeing…” and then with a last turn, ends with a few word definitions. “Banker comes from an Italian word for a bench.” Far-reaching, with unlooked-for twists; good fodder for study to push our own poetry up a notch.

While there are also poems worth review by lesser luminaries, and don’t forget that in this 100th year of the mag, they are bringing back oldies but goodies, the last poem I’ll mention in my little blog is Albert Goldbarth’s, “Keat’s Phrase,” which has Goldbarth’s usual density of phrase. His father has “a quiet pride // in something I’ve done that isn’t even thistledown // or tiny shavings of balsa wood…” huh? you go, and go back to try to understand why that phrase, at that moment. It’s all there, limpid enough if you study it, but so many syllables per word: “our own pedestrian version of early maritime cartography…” It’s the inventiveness I like so much, I guess. And the salt-of-the-earth characters who pop in to surprise. Check it out.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Leonard Elaborations

pmfjohnson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:49:30 +0000

Imagine my delight when I opened the latest New Yorker to discover they’ve published a Leonard Cohen poem, “Going Home.” I’ve always been amazed at his work, the trickiness and depth, and so tore into this one to see what might be. My first impression is that it has the layout of a song lyric, rather than a poem. So how does he do that? Digging at it, I figure out the following.

He gives three lines of a stanza at full length, then adds a little coda to the end of the fourth line: “Even though it isn’t welcome // He will never have the freedom // To refuse.” A trick that works especially well inside the framework of a measure. Also, musicians for quite some time have been finding rhymes in words that would not seem to resonate at first glance: Leonard, shepherd and bastard here; though near rhymes are prevalent in current poetry, of course (and we’re all the children of Emily Dickinson in this). And he uses a verse, chorus structure (and arguably a bridge), where the chorus repeats the exact words each time. Wouldn’t have thought of doing any of these things myself, normally.

And yet it works fully as a poem for me. Partly because of the resonances he manages: “A cry above the suffering // A sacrifice recovering…” And maybe partly because of the circular structure. Good tricks to adopt, if needed.

Don Paterson turns in “Here,” a fourteen line poem of couplets. Never know whether to consider that a sonnet or not. In this case, I would say so: there is a turn in the middle, from his initial proposition: “I must quit sleeping in the afternoon” to a consideration of his mother, “Long years since I came round in her womb” which has interesting interpretations of getting with the program as well as a first appearance. And a summation in the last couplet.

On one level the whole poem is a little “in-the-head” for me — a lot of chewing through phrases to figure them out — but I very much appreciate the returning motif of the heart, starting with a sort of debate with his heart in the early lines, then the wonderful image of his mother’s heart next to him when he was in the womb, which I will recommend you to track down and read, rather than givign it here. So ultimately I like the poem, and think it worth a re-read and some mulling over.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

Flurry of Missouri

pmfjohnson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:08:40 +0000

The more of these little critiques I write, the more delighted I am at the quality and depth of our current poetry scene. I was more cynical and negative about the work I was reading before I started, but having to soberly and honestly assess what I think of each poem, rather than just deliver some off-the-cuff snark, has enlightened me. I have written entire blogs, then deleted and redone them, thinking I was being unfair. I’ve learned a great deal about how poems are constructed, and so feel my own work has grown better. And while I am still content without a college degree in creative writing, I have a better feel for what I missed, back in the day.

In the current Missouri Review, Richie Hoffman presents a number of poems about the sea. The first is my favorite, “Glassworks,” about an artisan’s shop at the edge of the ocean. “You put your hand against one wall, // where they stored the raw things…” There are no wild flights of language, but each phrase presents something fresh, so the overall effect becomes gloriously original and interesting. Hoffman has structured the poem quite formally as well — beginning in the particulars of the location, bringing us in with the heat of the afternoon, sound, smells, then going for the larger frame: “Have you, too, desired to be unmade // in another’s hand?” And an understated ending, not trying to go beyond that high moment, but supporting it, letting us come down into reflection.

His “Jellyfish” is also a powerful poem. “you felt like something human I touched.” An interestingly ambiguous phrase. The poem is very anchored in the specific, to good effect, and again, the ending leaves us with much to reflect on.

Monica Ferrell gives us “Planet,” a reasonably good elision of travel to another planet and the human experience of aloneness. “Still you’re searching for some key thing; // Minerals? Fuel?” I have a niggly, though, that damaged the poem for me – as the narrator tries foods and water, to see if they are edible/potable: “Furtively, you try them, one night…sweetness of daffodils, water crisp as dimes.” Problem is, daffodils are poisonous. You can plant them to keep varmints from eating your other bulbs in spring (with middling results, though!). And many varieties (most?) have very little scent. Hyacinths are much stinkier. Tulips much more edible, as I recall. Neither work well as a replacement word, though, I grant Ferrell that.

I like her poem, “In the Fetus Museum,” much better. “incorruptible, a slip of moon…” Some wonderful lines here, including this: “A door through which // possibility never walked.” That gave me shivers. Best line of the mag, I think. And her “Epithalimium” poem had a very fun ending, definitely worth a chuckle.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson