I had a drama teacher who counselled his actors to push our acting, go for more and more, until it was far too much. “You can always cut it back,” he would say. I have found that a useful approach with poetry, as well. Also fun.
The River Styx came in today. Ripped the mailer off and went right through it. A theme of hell. Seems appropriate. None of these folks have trouble going for the extra gusto in their poetry — let that be a lesson for those still trying to crack the upper markets. The first few poems seemed solid, and workable, but didn’t send a shiver up my spine. Richard Cecil’s “My Place in Hell” works a good rhyme scheme, and William Greenway’s “Self-Deliverance” has a few images in it — “as if we had to carry our bodies with us like knapsacks” — that I’d have been proud to write. We kick up a gear with A.E. Stalling’s “Song: The Rivers of Hell,”
“I know the River Woe, //Its tidal undertow,”
The way it gulps you down– // A dismal place to drown.”
but it’s a little sing-song, almost. Not quite up to her usual brilliant standards, at least not for me. Still, a marvelous ending, with a satisfying twist. (And on rereading it now, I like it more, as I grow more comfortable with the sound of it. So this is a poem that grows on you. I like those). The Albert Goldbarth poem, “Francois Boucher, The Breakfast, 1739” is highly slick in its use of a rhyme scheme I didn’t notice until rereading it. He hits some home runs with his work, but maybe not with this one.
The hero of the magazine, for me, is John Whitworth’s “Lost.” Here we go. A pompous, righteous narrator still unable after all this time to understand why he is in hell, but without saying a word about the specifics, we know, we know! …”I was horribly betrayed // by those I held most close, by those I made, // by those I made…” And a tricky rhyme scheme, throw in the cool image, “I should have seen the beetle in the wood.” and the most excellent ending, and it’s a master class for us toilers at the word. Bravo.
Wishing you glad tidings,
P M F
