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
Sugar and Sows
Posted in Mainstream Poetry, tagged John Kinsella The Fable of The Great Sow, P M F Johnson, poetry commentary, poetry critique, Richard Wilbur Sugar Maples January, The New Yorker on January 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »
John Kinsella, in “The Fable of The Great Sow,” in this week’s New Yorker, adopts the tactic (more prevalent these days?) of using story techniques to construct his poem. So he starts with a grotesque and rather terrifying foe: “Great Sow, who squashed dead her litter // a year before, rubbed her thick sparsely haired // hide pinker than pink…” then the challenge: “To cut across her pen was an act of dexterity” then the hero, with an hint of the ominous: “I could have gone around.” It’s his precise and emotive language that makes this little tale fun to read, and keeps us on tenterhooks: “Fed on meal and offal, she’d been penned // with boars merciless in their concupiscence.” Great trick. We have to stop at that last word, cuz it’s a four-dollar one — ‘Does it mean what I think it does?’ we ask. Which just adds to the frisson. You see why Kinsella has had such a great career. After he gets to the confrontation between hero and primal force, he turns the poem to talk about a painting of a pig he saw once, then brings that moment back to this one, concluding the story. Don’t know that I think the turn to the painting was as successful or as deft as it could have been, but I would agree that sheer technique carries the reader through, and the moment he describes is fraught enough, the character of the pig so powerful, that this is indeed a worthy poem. Kinsella should be proud.
The other poem in the issue is by our old standby Richard Wilbur, who does “Sugar Maples, January,” which let’s admit would fit a little better if it wasn’t as warm as March out there these days! ;-> Four straightforward couplets, with pure rhymes, and a plain topic. “What years of weather did to branch and bough // No canopy of shadow covers now…” Just laying it out there for us, nowhere to hide, either he pulls it off or looks like a goldarn fool. But you can picture that image he gives us, the twisted, beaten-on trunks and branches of the maple trees, dark grey against the lighter grey sky, lonesome and mighty. So specific, and because the language is stripped down, it delivers extra layers of meaning and resonance that do not happen with more tangled poems. Simplicity creates power. Kind of like a golf swing. I wish more poets would catch on to that. (The power, not the swing!)
Anyway, I admire very much both poems. So often the more renowned poets back in the day seemed to be allowed a pass, to get away with less than their best in the greater markets. But Muldoon seems to catch them at their finest quite often, a neat trick (Alice Quinn did so as well in her day, as I recall).
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:
Rattle 59 – Spring 2018
The New Yorker – Jan 22 2018
Rattle 58 – Winter 2017
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