lots and lots of neat

recommended: bob hicok

I realize, as these recommended poets collect, I seem to be biased towards the poems by emerging poets. It's really not intentional, at least I hope it's not intentional. I read Hicok's "Absence Makes the Heart. That's It: Absence Makes the Heart" from issue #11 of Octopus Magazine just as I read the Naca, as I read the Swensen, etc.

I am fond of this poem. Oh, yes. It's clever underlined by pathos, just look at the title. It plays on an aphorism, then cuts it short to make a new point. These two opposing sensibilities in the poem, and their opposition, create a soothing tension. Yes, soothing. And out of this, Hicok stages an argument in favor of absence, using the seemingly ineffectual medium of one surreal image followed by another. This poem is perhaps reined in a bit more than the other two poems in this issue, and I think I'm happy with that control. The metaphors in "Absence..." are so beautiful in their aptness, I wouldn't want a reader distracted.

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
This Clumsy Living (Pitt Poetry Series)

recommended: barbara maloutas

I don't understand how it is I can like "Reason for Water" so much, when I don't really care for the Eric Baus poems that are in this same issue of Octopus Magazine. I respect both for the hyperbolic potential of the imagination impelling both poems forward. "Reason for Water" is just unrelenting. There is water everywhere, and Maloutas keeps saying that, about the water. There is never enough, there is too little, there is enough to fill cisterns, or reservoirs. Oh, sure, she lets herself get distracted, or I guess it could be distracting, talking about silk hats, or the "i" sound in "sin," but it always comes back to water. She even tells you how to drown in water, like any good guide would.

Baus breaks away from his center, or he mistrusts the idea of center so much it should be put into quotes. He mocks it and kind of twirls the poem around that. In "A Delphi," he names a character "Minus," only to make that character's subsequent actions and statements a collection of non sequiturs. Why? Or, well, I understand "why," but it seems to me if a reader is going to continue through this poem, there needs to be a tension, some possible sense that could connect all these things together, and if there is no sense, the poem just sits a flaccid string of words.

Perhaps, in this light, "Reason for Water" could be thought too insistent. I suppose that's its magic. It is always insistent, artfully so.

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
The Whole Marie

recommended: dobby gibson

I think the term "stream of consciousness" might be passe. Or maybe it's this fancy critical term that gets used to describe the modernist style Virginia Wolff and William Faulkner used to open further how a writer can say what he means to say. These days, everyone assumes that you say something, and it should sound like the truth. Even if it's a lie. (Oh, great legacy of Reagan, Clinton and W. Bush.)

So what is this style Dobby Gibson is using in his Octopus #11 poems? He sounds so intent. Like there's nothing holding his voice back. I don't think it's enough to call it a river of consciousness (which sounds kind of cheesy) or a cataract of consciousness (which still doesn't do the compulsive tone justice). So I'll just say there's something very true, addictively true, about his loud voice. And I'll believe him. Even when he's doing something kind of tricky, like with that word "about," and while he's turning it I can hear, even amidst all that loud voice noise he has going on, that there's something really smart being said.

Recommended Links:
Octopus Magazine
Skirmish: Poems
Dobby Gibson homepage

recommended: kristin naca

Is there someone, please, who can give an Academy Award to Octopus Magazine? I'm serious. At Issue 11, I might be way late to the game, but damn. This thing just hurts me to read it.

That's right. It hurts to read Kristini Naca's poem in there, "House." "A house has all around it," the poem says. And, you know what I'm doing? I'm nodding my head like hip hop. I'm pouring some on the ground for a homey somewhere. Because I want to belong to this poem, be hard with this poem. It goes everywhere.  Language can't be pure reference theory? Yes, it goes there. The mysterious compellingness of the speaker's biography? Yes, it goes there. Fresh, fresh DJ scratch personification? Yes, it is pimping in those sandals too.

I'll be honest. I rolled my eyes when I found out MTV was going to sponsor one of the National Poetry Series books. I figured it would have to be some Jewel book, or something they could read on The Real World (is that show still on?). But it turns out Krisin Naca's going to be the book they published. And if this is what she's writing, I say, "Serve me first!"

Related Links:
Octopus Magazine
Bird Eating Bird: Poems (just do yourself a favor and preorder it)

from my more fashionable nature

I still insist that I have been at the front of many trends, like sweater vests, overalls, cigar smoking, and eating meals at McDonald's (way before everybody else was "lovin it"). My family and friends never agree. But they don't understand how dangerous it is to be fashionable.

FotC - Fashion is Danger from Flight of the Conchords

recommended: sean bishop

I am happy to admit that, again, I recommend a friend's poem. And what I like even better is that one of these poems appeared in a workshop Sean and I had together. I don't mention this out of some sense of propriety. The version of "Tribunal" appearing in Mid-American Review (29.1) is pretty much in the same place I remember seeing it then.

I'm more interested in this strange argument that people raise regarding MFA programs, and how they only seem to produce one "workshop" poem. Maybe some of the people with that concern would say that Sean's poem is just that, a "workshopped" poem. I don't think so. In fact, what I would argue is that good poets go through workshops so that they can learn more about their own poetry, and good poets, like Sean, know what advice to disregard, and what advice to follow. I don't think this poem needed a whole lot of guidance. There is an exoticism to the scene, a hovering threat, an implied violence. And there's a torquing of language (cliched language, even) that carries a political statement.

I don't want to use Sean's poem as too much of a platform, because I think it deserves a recommendation free of platitudes. I'm just getting frustrated with some people blaming MFA programs for the publication of so many bad poems. There are other mechanisms in the poetry publication machine that deserve some critical attention. John Barr, who is so fond of grandstanding in Poetry against graduate creative writing programs would be good to check his own publication.

Related Links:
Mid-American Review (worldcat search for Mid-American Review)
Gulf Coast (where Sean is Associate Editor)

recommended: carl adamshick

One more poem from the March/April 2009 issue of American Poetry Review. Adamshick's poem, "Out past the dead end sign" starts off a little clunky. And quite honestly, if each of these sections were poems on their own, I would not think so highly of this poem. Individually, the sections don't have a lot to say. But it was that simple move of aggregation, with an italic "And" no less, that made me interested.

And, the multiplicity of voices. The sections move between what I think are male and female speakers, giving me the impression that past the dead end sign there are things happening, suspicious things, dangerous things. Loving things. Adult things.

And, as the poem goes on, and all these narratives push against each other for room, I find the stories more compelling.

Related Links:
American Poetry Review (worldcat search for American Poetry Review)

recommended: tony hoagland

Sometimes I feel as though the issues of American Poetry Review take on a certain flavor. With this March/April 2009 issue, in the stretch of poems by Goldbarth, Hoagland, and Carl Dennis, there is what I would call the instructional poem. Why instructional? Because I feel the poet wants to address me, his audience, directly. He wants to lead me to a place. With the Hoagland poems, that place is "appreciation." You haven't heard of it? It's where the poet has a certain take on a given situation, and you and I as audience are led to it so that we can appreciate it.

Altough maybe led isn't quite the term for it. Charmed. We are charmed by the diction, how the poet is so eager to engage us, how the poet is so funny and flirtatious.

I'm not always bought off on these kinds of poems. I'm suspicious. Or maybe I think that that appreciating place doesn't take full account (or advantage) of the given situation. But in the case of "Famous Feminist Breaks Vows," I'm very interested. The reversal of expectation when I move from the title to the poem. And the people involved.

Related Links:
American Poetry Review (worldcat search for American Poetry Review)
What Narcissism Means to Me

recommended: sasha pimentel chacon

"Blood, Sister" or everything, please, sister Sasha, everything, keep no reservation. I remember when I was in the navy, and we would start the engine room, and I was responsible for starting the ship's generator, and I opened the main valve (SG-V15, if I remember correctly), and I could just feel the power pushing that turbine round. This was heavy machinery, major electrical power.

And here's Ms. Sasha Chacon, in the March/April 2009 issue of American Poetry Review, opening up all the valves, giving everything. Is this her identity she's speaking of? Is this what she's been told her identity should be? Is this really a sister that she's asking me to recognize? I willingly entertain all the possibilities. Because in that panoply, and the violence, the bloodied violence, that ties all these pieces together, there is a pleasure.

Related Links:
American Poetry Review (worldcat search for American Poetry Review)