What hooks me into a poem? I contemplate this while re-reading The Journal, Ohio State’s Spring/Summer 2011 issue. In so many of these poems, even on second glance, nothing grabs me in, nothing keeps me there. Yes, they are competent works, yes they have no less to say than anyone else, but there seems no profit in reading them. Words, words, words.
Then I read Pamela Alexander’s Adironak, c. 1880, and though at first glance it is no different, yet something intrigues me, and I go back, and puzzle out what is going on, and discover she has a man and a bear traveling together back in the day, and there’s something very interesting indeed going on here. “…the audible shimmer of insect…” I really like this poem. So an intriguing narrative is very important. Most of the dull stuff seems to have a more tangential relationship to story. Not to pick on Pamela, but her next poem in the issue, “Small Story,” is a much more conventional narrative about being a small girl surrounded by the amazement of a house, and though it’s still worth reading “Will the bears throw a party // in the treetops?” it’s down a full step from the previous poem for me. And in her next , “Against the Shore,” I have a hard time figuring out what is going on, and it falls completely flat for me. No interesting line, no interesting ideas, no insights. It’s the mystery of poetry, that one can hit such a deep home run on one work, and then flail so badly on another. Just my opinion, I have no doubt in my mind another person picking up this magazine might rate her poems exactly backwards from what I just did.
Brittany Cavallero has a poem of great fun in here as well, “Lies I Told.” “I always washed my hands.” “I’d love to see your succulents.” Again, the idea is cool, and maybe idea is more rare and wondrous and magical than we like to admit. A good idea can carry a poem, certainly. Also laughter!
And finally, John Repp’s poem, “Nothing Happened,” again with a strong narrative arc, is a poem about almost making love with a girl when he was very young. Or maybe he did make love. Part of the fun of the poem is how he backtracks on the idea, and revisits it, as we will do with memories, rewriting, or over- or under-writing, our histories in our heads, trying to puzzle out the mysteries. “Nothing happened in the dark stairwell // but what she allowed to happen.”
Three very good poems I am glad I read. Thak you, poets.
Peace in poetry,
P M F
Talking Green Ducks
Posted in Mainstream Poetry, tagged Amit Majmudar, Amit Majmudar Dothead, Edward Hirsch, Edward Hirsch Black Rhinoceros, P M F Johnson, poetry commentary, poetry critique, Sharon Olds, Sharon Olds The Green Duck, The New Yorker on July 27, 2011| 3 Comments »
The new New Yorker came in today. Maybe the most visible poetry in the country; the mag certainly gets its share of submissions . So the first poem is “Black Rhinoceros,” by Edward Hirsch. Can’t say as I understand the digression in the middle about his parents buying his shoes on discount. Though without that, and the last stanza, this is more essay than poem. No epiphany, no sparkling language, no fine quotes to take away, no real reason for being. Maybe I just hold this magazine to a higher standard. Or maybe I don’t get the point. Do you ever feel like there’s this whole secret way of reading poetry everyone else gets and you don’t, and that’s why all these poems are being published you don’t understand at all? I get that way sometimes. ‘Course, even if it is true, there’s room for us all, I guess.
Anyway, Sharon Olds did “The Green Duck,” next, and this is definitely an improvement, having more a poetic feel, even if it’s a bit of a gross-out in parts: “I have eaten // brains, my tongue loves to probe // the delicate folds…” Eewww. Gotta love it. But is there then another digression? “There are homes where children are used as toothpicks…” I mean, a good line, sure, but at first glance it’s like it’s just there to give the poem import: “see, there is abuse in the world, I mention it, therefore I am an important poem.” Ah, but rereading the poem, I guess it does fit in, as the theme of the work is really a narrator growing up, and the duck speaking to her. Yeah, I guess I’d say this poem is overall a success. Worth rereading.
Nextly, and finally, “Dothead,” by Amit Majmudar. Who we heard from the other day in The Threepenny Review reviewing Kay Ryan’s “The Best of It.” Now it’s Amit’s turn to shine, a poem about being a small boy, whose mother is different than other mothers. I very much enjoyed his rhyme scheme, which he has employed before (his poem, “Instructions to an Artisan,” is one of the best poems to appear in Poetry Magazine in the last decade, in my view. Just a staggeringly good poem. Hunt it down. It’s worth it). I like the climax of the poem: “I said, hand me that ketchup packet there…” A boy feeling very much a boy.
So, all in all, another good effort by Mr. Muldoon, culling these poems from the prospects — my respect for him as an editor climbs each time.
Peace in poetry,
P M F Johnson
My eBook of poems, Against The Night, a sweet, rueful look at love in a long marriage, is available on Amazon, and at other fine e-retailers.
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