I’ve been going back and forth about which poem is my favorite in the current issue of Poetry, but I think I’m going to settle on Austin Smith’s “Factory Town,” cuz of the cool metaphors. “The factory stands on the train / of your town’s wedding gown” it starts, then reviews the people you meet. “Who knows what bright things / they conceal in their coats” and before the end refers to the river as “that gray, dappled, / broken thing.” Just such a nice use of language.
Jessica Fjeld has a concise and engaging poem, “Political Theory.” “In a famous painting of a founding father / and the back end of a horse.” As you know by now, I do love my judicious humor.
And Aram Saroyan presents a poem, “Film Noir,” which beautifully captures the spirit and language of noir in a series of one line sentences. “He took her into his arms. / She let him in and walked out of the room. / He ran down the escalator….He waited in the rain.” You get the idea. And it ends as it needs to, on a sort of poetic fade-out.
I liked Charlie Bondhus’ “Sunday In The Panopticon,” I think purely for the sound of the words. “The sun reflected off / the glass and my table was an inscrutable / tower of light from which I peered…” Boy, that’s a neat image. And notice how the line bounces where the sun reflects off it, and then again after the word inscrutable, as though the light became suddenly blinding there, making us avert our eyes. Subtle and beautiful.
Finally, I like Jillian Weise’ poem, “Future Biometrics.” “The body that used to / contain your daughter // we found it…” It becomes a meditation on the growing consequences of identification in the information world. A quick poem, but all the more powerful for that.
Peace in poetry,
P M F Johnson
