What Keeps Me Reading On?

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

Read Full Post »

Spoon River Wilder Than A Mile

Or something like that.  Got the new Spoon River Poetry Review, 36.1, spring 2011, and I’ve been dipping through the poems.  Do others read these magazines like I do, bouncing from work to work, hoping for something just to drag me in?   Seems a rough and ready, if a bit harsh way to do it.  Survival of the fittest poetry, and all that.  I don’t have enough time to read them all carefully and thoroughly, relying on Sturgeon’s Rule (or was it Pohl?) that 90% of everything is crap.

But I liked A.M. Brandt’s poem about a boy in a poetry class trying to get at the essence of an encounter with deer.  Just the sort of poem I would tend to skip, but in fact, this one drew me in.  Just its flat honesty, no loopy tricks shouting ‘notice me, notice me, aren’t you amazed?’  “To simply insist that the heart //understand a sorrow that splits and gives way // and disappears finally…”  This line is actually more elevated language than most of the poem, which is why it resonates.  But with a split infinitive in there for those of us raising a fist against the grammar police, oh yes.  I am glad for this poem. 

And when rereading the magazine, which I have not before been familiar with, slowly, slowly, I start to get the feel of it, plain language, plain images, heartland poetry, only occasionally going for the flash.  Ben Debus’ poem is like that, and Anthony Opal’s as well.  “its white wings beat slow the way a woman //fans herself in church,” says Sally Ashton, in her poem “Follow the Tail Lights,” and I can respect a metaphor like that.

A featured poet of the show here is Austin Smith, the Illinois Poet of the issue, and he has some good work.  “Aerial Photograph, Glasser Farm, 1972” has good lines in it, and there’s fun stuff in “The Mechanic.”  “I am not a cruel poet.”  Worth a chuckle.  But his best poem for me in this issue is “The Vampire.”  “Behind the yellow drawn curtains…and the signs in the yard admonishing us // to keep out lived a vampire.”  That’s the conceit, but he plays against  it in a heart tugging way — I won’t give away his trick, but it’s worth looking up the poem and reading the whole thing.  A beautiful poem.

Peace in Poetry,

P M F

 

Read Full Post »

Talking Green Ducks

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.

Related blog posts:

The New Yorker – Oct 30, 17

The New Yorker – Aug 21 17

More New Yorker Poems

 

Read Full Post »

Missouri Misery Inverted Sometimes

Just received The Missouri Review.  Now poems here tend to be more drawn out — stretchy.  Longer, in fact.  And often more in the head, which makes me wary.  Long, intellectual poems?  Not my sweet spot.  But they can have good poetry, so I open this issue up, and look it over.  First off, they have little diatribes by the contributors on what they are trying to do with their poetry.  Do not read these.  I want to say poets should never try to explain themselves, the results are too horrible, but in this very same issue is an interview with Brian Turner, and it makes me want to rush out and buy his work.  So there you go.  Maybe poets should never explain themselves free form.  I don’t know.

The poem I thought the best of the issue was “Prologue, Epilogue –for my daughter” by Steve Gehrke.   A thundering avalanche of a poem, “when the eternal grammars sifted into you // like the sediment of stars.”  Just a lot of fun, original lines, that add up to much more.  Descriptions of what his daughter is to him.  “The welcome plagiarist of genes.”  And, “the eureka in our laboratory of sighs.”  To pull off a poem like this, to give it gravitas and relevance, is not an easy trick.  Steve does that here.  “The Evaporating Braid,” again for his daughter, is also a good poem — to get me to read a long poem of many parts is a good sign of…something, anyway.  I won’t do it, I’ll abandon it in the middle if it’s not good at every point, can’t make me.  That’s my attitude.  Long poems are sloppy poems, that need major editing.  Mostly.  Nevertheless I read this one all the way through, and went back to parts.

Peter Jay Shippy also has his moments here.  Kind of loopy, loose poems, including “Enchantment,” “Because his neighbor was a witch // Lucas agreed to paint her house…” not as linear as that might imply, but fun.  “The Girl in the Blue Oyster Cult onesie” has its pleasures as well; a bit of a portrait of a man and his daughter.

Peace in Poetry,

P M F Johnson

My book of poems, Against The Night, a wry look at the love that builds throughout a marriage, is available on Amazon, and at other fine e-retailers.

Related blog posts:

Blue Collar Review – Summer 2018

Missouri Review – Winter 2017

Rattle 61 – Fall, 2018

Read Full Post »

Three Ways to Heaven

Got the new Threepenny Review.  For me, most interesting weren’t the poems as much as the review by Amit Majmudar on “The Best of It,” Kay Ryans’ Pulitzer-winning  collection.  Amit’s thesis is that Kay’s poetry uses 7 masks to deliver the message, starting with brevity — and that her poems are essentially irreducible — you can’t really quote from them, since you need the whole poem to deliver the point.  Well, that’s going a ways for me, but surely this is my favorite book of poetry over the last year or two.  I have been studiously inhaling each of her poems, day by day.  Amit gives her a gushing endorsement.  Not that I disagree.  She does things no one else in the field can do — I rate her up with Charles Simic (sp?  I’m getting him mixed up with Clifford Simac the sf guy suddenly) as arguably the two best working in English at the moment, though I’ll toss in Kooser and Collins when the mood strikes me, and defer on including haiku in that mix, since haiku are such a different beast (Anne L.B. Davidson is right there with breathtaking moments, I’m thinking).  This review is worth the price of the mag, in my view.

But let me also mention the W.S. Di Piero poem in this issue, “Other Ways to Heaven,” which has a couple lines that keep drawing my attention back: “while the wife// still asleep, wanders among secrets scratched //like starlines in the skull’s compact heavens.”  And “Wood smoke atomizes birches…”  I find the poem overall very difficult to follow, even after taking a couple runs at it, which raises my warning to poets in general: I the reader have a LOT of calls on my time; you think being confusing is cute, or will pull me in; but mostly I’ll just drop it and go on to the next writer.  Say it, say it clear, and if you got the chops, I can be blown away.  See reference Kay Ryan above.  But W.S. could as easily point out that whatever this poem has done, it does keep drawing me back , and those lines will resonate for a long time.  So does a poem really have to be approachable in its entirety to make it worthwhile in its parts?

Read Full Post »

Twelve Mechanical Tones

The new Asimov’s rolled in today, and has a few good poems.  First, the Bruce Boston work, “The Music Of Robots,” is one of my favorite Boston poems so far.  “If you listen closely// you can hear //a liquid shimmer of oil // clinging to each note…”  What a delightful line.  Worth spending time with, letting resonances sink in.  I really enjoyed Fiona Moore’s “Stone Roach,” a cool view of the world from quite a different point of view.  “Determined to outlast // prettier, cleverer species…”  Gives me a bit of a shudder, actually.  And Jessy Randall’s “I Have A Remote In Each Hand,” is a bit of a one-trick pony, but those can be good poems too — they say what they have to say, then get out.  I liked it.

Bravo, all.

P M F

Read Full Post »

The Joints Are Jumping

Maybe because the magazine Frogpond doesn’t take all that many haiku for any given issue, though being the house organ of the Haiku Society of America, the haiku they do print tend to be distilled into a higher proof.  Or maybe it’s just that George Swede is an excellent editor.  Either way, I enjoy this magazine a lot.   The latest issue is 34:2, 2011.

The haiku that moved me the most was “still shining” by Sylvia Forges-Ryan, a former editor of Frogpond, in memory of Tom Noyes.  Very sweet.  One with a mouthful of chewy sounds was “northern flicker encrypting a birch” by Scott Mason.  Note the use of metaphor, the hard sounds underlining the rat-a-tat of the flicker, with echoes of Morse Code.  Another rule broken (haiku aren’t supposed to have metaphors, but only simple descriptions; a rule the old masters broke often enough) — so many poems seem to work better when the author knows enough to successfully break a rule.    And two of our best haiku writers, one right after the other: “sunbreak   the ornament in wasp wings” by Cherie Hunter Day.  I’d have never thought to put it that way.  Good to have my mind stretched.  And “whiteetholdingrudges” an absolute master work by John Stevenson, again one I’d have never come up with — so many different brains work in so many different ways.  Randy Brooks has a very good essay in this mag — Frogpond and Modern Haiku both have a rich tradition of essays on the craft.  Finally, Adelaide Shaw’s haibun on hair-braiding is definitely worth spending time with.  I admire excellent haibun so much at least in part because I don’t have any sort of handle on how to write them.  Isn’t that the way of the world, admiring most that which we cannot do well?

A summer of peace upon you,

P M F

 

Read Full Post »

The Sense In Making Sense

Seems to me we’re steadily swinging back to coherent poems, with fewer drivel ghazals showing up in the magazines — the reader can figure out what the poet is writing about.  I like this.  It makes the poet vulnerable when the intent of the poem is clear, in that people can more easily see if you have failed.  And snigger at your flailing attempts.  But truly great poems can be more easily appreciated as well.  Very few non-linear poems are worth the candle, in my view.  They’re so SERIOUS.

Got the latest North American Review this week, and most of the poems are linear; I don’t know that this was so much my impression a few years back.   The James Hearst Contest honorees have their poems in here.  One solid work is Jeremiah Webster’s “Scop Wanted.”  A finalist, not the winner.  “No wonder // students despise Beowulf, // the songs of Heorot // dormant on desks.  //The teacher is writing…as the arm of Grendel //twitches even now at his feet.”  Yep.  Been in that class.

Claire Millikin, with “Charm School,” Marianne Patty, with “Prom Night, 1954” and Sharon Hashimoto, with “Soft,” all deliver worthy poems as well. 

But my two favorite works do not seem to have been part of the contest, and mess a lot more with the language : Paisley Rekdal’s “Mae West: Advice,” (e.g. “be delectable, collectable, a decent debacle…”  When I read that line I knew I was going to love this poem!) and William G. Ward’s “The Near Rhyme Sonnet,” a paean to gnats, (“it would be so neat // to be a winsome gnat // with all the gnats of note // buzzing around you…”) both deserve to find homes in anthologies, as far as I am concerned.  Fun adds a lot to a poem.  Note to self! 

Peace in poetry,

P M F

Read Full Post »

From Little Acorn

One of the little pleasures of life is receiving a new magazine in the mail, knowing it’s chock-full of poems and that some of them are going to be very good indeed.  I get this more consistently with haiku mags than any other, and today I’ll talk a little about the most recent Acorn magazine, the Spring 2011 issue.

Carolyn Hall often has excellent work by the current masters of the field, and this issue is no exception — Robert Epstein, Adelaide B. Shaw and George Swede turn in good work this time, and it’s a problem when I have only a few words and so many poems that could be mentioned!  

John Elsberg has a delightfully unsettling haiku here: bared teeth // of the roadkill // my winter shadow.  I like it more as I study it.  Lots of extra energy to discover. 

And Harriot West, who has written so many good works: “trying to forget… //the ridge line sharpened // by fresh snow

Let me say here that haiku pose a special problem in reviewing: unlike mainstream poems, where a couple lines can give enough of a flavor of the work to discuss what is going on, with haiku, to recite three lines is generally to recite the whole work.  And how a haiku delivers what it does is almost never captured by anything less than the whole work — haiku capture a single moment.  Every word is important.  So I have given the works in their entirety here, with apologies to all who might take exception. 

One last, delightful haiku: roadside violet // all the places //I’ve yet to go

by Aubrie Cox, the up-and-coming haiku writer — using the adjective noun first line, then a more general concluding/contrasting thought, a standard approach in haiku, but the elliptical relationship between the two here seem especially crisp and resonant to me.

Definitely a magazine worth picking up — much more to it than just what I’ve included here.

Thank you all for such good work.

P M F

Read Full Post »

The Stars Our Destination

Received the new Star*Line in the mail yesterday.  Quite a few speculative haiku in here — I would guess many are performance poems, to be read at cons — they certainly seem to have much resonance with the sort of haiku I’ve heard at poetry slams.

Anyway, the poems I most enjoyed in the magazine would be “Chores,” by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff: “one more chore done, the laundry’s dry, // and soon the kids need picking up, //just hope Jake’s limbs are all intact // and that Gayle found her missing eye.”  Sort of a zombie pastoral.  Made me chuckle.

I also liked “T&A” by Neal Wilgus.  “A space alien // came into the bar // and took a seat next to me.”  Not quite a shaggy dog story-poem, but in the neighborhood of some Spider Robinson stories I remember reading.

Finally, I am glad that this magazine does some reviews of poetry books from the small press — giving me a littel broader view on what’s going on out there.

Peace around poetry,

P M F

My eBook of poems, Against The Night, is a sweet, rueful look at love in a long marriage. It’s available on Amazon, at https://www.amazon.com/Against-Night-Poems-PMF-Johnson-ebook/dp/B01LXQX9Y5/ as well as other fine e-retailers.

Read Full Post »