Let me start with “Elemental Intelligence,” by Conrad Geller. “What interests me… is how a raindrop / nibbles down the windowpane…” Just the precisely correct word, ‘nibbles.’ Such a drop does seem alive, hesitating and darting as it moves. “contemplating when to make / the next, best move, then coursing… in seeming triumph.” And the poem has us consider what makes something alive. What patterns do we share with the inanimate world? Or not inanimate exactly, for there is life in such a drop. I love poems that arrest me, make me think about the world in a new way.
Maybe the most original and creative poem in the issue is by Caroline N. Simpson. “Choose Your Own Adventure: The Galapagos Mating Dance.” “You are a single woman, about to embark upon your most challenging and dangerous mission.” The header explains what ‘you’ are to do — discover a useful mating ritual. Then it’s on to Chapter One: “You are a blue-footed booby. / A male approaches you… He offers you twigs and grasses.” The tone is so fun, the parallels with human rituals so apt. There are several chapters in this long poem, each describing the rituals of a different creature, with many laughs, but often rueful ones. There is such a loneliness underneath — they say true humor arises from the truth, and that is true here. Ms. Simpson is very much an ecologist of the heart. As the Chapters unfold, the reader is allowed at points to choose to move to a different section, depending on whether this current ritual appeals or not. What a genius structure. And the ending Chapter, Seven, has a most satisfactory conclusion. A poem worth hunting down this issue for.
Anne Starling has a moving poem, “Compassionate Friends.” “Almost immediately, we feel / we are too advanced for this group / of grieving parents, his father and I;” What a brilliant use of tone. Bringing the attitude of competition to a grief group. Shocking the reader with the commonality, and the recognition that we, too, have had such inappropriate reactions in gatherings. And then the buried pain buried with this approach, that we are there for grief as well. But we deflect notice from that. We do not ourselves work on that. And yet we are still going to such a group. We still need it. We don’t know how to participate in a straight manner, using this sort of sideways superiority as our defense mechanism. Wow. All that delivered in three lines. But the narrator does rally, is able to speak of her child, is able to touch her grief, for a moment anyway. Just a first-water effort, all around.
The theme for this issue is Athlete Poets, and there are intriguing poems in this section of the magazine. My favorite here might be “Strangers,” by Lazlo Slomovits. “A man is running hard / to catch the bus that just left… the driver… stops // and opens the accordion door.” So it starts, and yes, we see the man as an athlete. But as the poem unfolds we rethink that into athlete in service of: “…the man does not get on– // he points back to an old woman / who has not run a step // in a very long time.” We are witnessing an act of kindness. “…then walks back slowly / still breathing hard // toward us…” The moment hangs suspended. “What can a group of strangers / do at a time like this?” It is a question gratifyingly answered, and a poem of unity of strangers with each other. Bravo.
The last poem I will discuss is by Stephen Dunn, who is the poet interviewed in this issue as well. (A marvelous interview.) The poem is “Little Pretty Things.” “As insects go, lacewings seem to have nothing…” Well, that’s an intriguing start, fun and challenging. And it quickly develops: “I imagine they envy / wasps…” And deepens: “…lacewings have nothing to do but be beautiful, / and so are dangerous.” Now we are in human territory. “I’ve known a few / of their human counterparts, and… have forgiven a meanness.” The parallels are enlightening, and disturbing. A great use of metaphor, a thought-provoking poem.
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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