lots and lots of neat

recommended: taije silverman

What I'm struck by in this poem is the honest confrontation with helplessness. It seems a likely subject for a poem whose occasion is the mother's sickness, and the radiation therapy she is undergoing, and the months of diagnosis the family has been put through.

And maybe it's the speaker's confrontation and then acceptance that brings on her joy. I'm not completely sure. I sense it, but I think the true merit of this poem "On Joy," in the Spring 2009 issue of Ploughshares, is the vague, but powerful source of the speaker's emotion. It comes from some place outside her, outside her purview. "Past these fields are others no one sees, / and past them oak and poplar trees." For me, this unknown place hovering just past sight, and the speaker's knowledge that this place exists even if she can't see it, makes me believe this "unaccountable" joy that rises in her. At least this is what she calls it, despite every reason she has for not feeling joy. And when I read this poem, I want to call it joy too.

I find it touching that a poem can make this earnest consideration of a serious situation still full of wonder. Why joy? Thankfully joy.

Related Links:
Ploughshares (worldcat search for Ploughshares)
Houses Are Fields

recommended: gretchen mattox

Another poet from the Winter 2009 Laurel Review. Perhaps what I like most about this particular issue is the range of poets that have been offered. A great big thank you to David Dodd Lee and John Gallaher for the excellent poets in the issue.

The two poems from Ms. Mattox, in particular "mount Washington, butterflies," remind me of Cezanne paintings, or at least the description I remember reading about them in some undergraduate class I took. The landscapes that he flattened onto the canvas, trying to remind the viewer that the canvas is only two dimensions, and there could be a new perspective if this new perspective were given to you.

However, what comes with this new perspective is a warping of the emotions which are at stake here. With "mount Washington, butterflies," the speaker is actively trying to stay away from someone else who flits in and out of the poem. "you want me back?" she interjects at one moment. Or "I don't need you for my subject-- / objectively--the loss unfolds" This resistance combined with her lush description of Byzantine hills, and houses like pillboxes, sets up a tension in the poem, one that most accurately mimics the strain in the speaker, which keeps on getting revealed.

Related Links:
Laurel Review
Buddha Box

recommended: arthur vogelsang

This all poetry, Winter 2009 issue of Laurel Review is really quite something. I've still got a few more poets left to talk about from this issue, including Mr. Vogelsang.

What I find so rewarding about these poems is their rhetorical stance. It appears to me the speaker in these poems has a real attitude about his subject, and how he plays that attitude out, in his language is what makes some of the more extreme images more credible. In "Arthur Rimbaud," Reason, which, earlier, was placed on a see-saw opposite its unnamed nemesis, has found itself falling in love with that nemesis. In return, the nemesis slams Reason to the ground, which "injures / Its vertebrae." I like the violence here, and I like the conceptual point that Reason would have a backbone, and falling in love would put that backbone in peril.

But I feel the violence can only work because of the attitude of the speaker. The conceptual framework in the poem could easily take over the pleasure that comes with reading it, or at least focus that pleasure on the intellectual alone. But the speaker here has this attitude toward Reason. As though he is saying, "Yeah, we rely on Reason, and then it goes and gets itself in trouble."

Related Links:
Laurel Review
Left Wing of a Bird

recommended: louise mathias

I guess it's all about implication. Or the consequence of saying one thing leads to the need to say another thing. The new poems Mathias has in the Winter 2009 issue of the Laurel Review have this movement that I recognize, and I admire. What is this movement? It's hard to describe without sounding as though I'm just explaining the way any poem works. The poems layer lineation and the information that can be conveyed in a sentence. Yes, yes, it seems like all poems work this way.

But Mathias' poems pull the distance between sentences a little further apart. For instance, "You giving in // is a kind of willed amnesia, / the color of a rabbit's under-fur. // To speak of a word like bait." The movement I'm talking about is this image of a "rabbit's under-fur" leading to "a word like bait." It fits. But why? Because you would think that a rabbit is bait? I think that's part of it. Because the under-fur would be even more vulnerable? Because a "willed amnesia" has implications that might lead you to speak of bait? Because that could lead you to an impression that feels like the color of under-fur? The questions are more voluminous than the poem. But they manage to remain within certain bounds that make me feel that they are all relevant. And of interest. Or maybe more than interest, they keep me involved with the poem.

It leads me to say these poems aren't nearly as spare as they look on the page. They cover a lot of ground. A LOT!

Related Links:
The Laurel Review
Louise Mathias
Lark Apprentice

recommended: dorothea lasky

I'm interested in how this Winter 2009 issue of the Laurel Review is proving me out as a fan of some poets I have had a bit of difficulty warming to. Graham Foust, in the previous post, comes under this heading, and now here's Dorothea Lasky, who I have approached with some reluctance. Both have this huge hype base surrounding them. And because I'm just a little perverse in inclinations, perverse in that I am unwilling to give in so easily to what others have embraced, then it takes me a bit to get past my initial resistance.

But now, after these poems, and the poems I read by Ms. Lasky in last year's APR, I'm a fan. I want AWE, and I really want AWE if if turns out to be poems like these her in the Laurel Review. Each poem commits to a separate emotion, and then guides that commitment all the way through to find its greatest possible potential. These poems are pleasure, and lyrical emotional energy. I would embrace the poems off the page and hold them in my arms, if it was possible.

Related Links:
Laurel Review
Awe

recommended: graham foust

Let's give it to Mr. Foust. He deserves all the things that belong together. Broccoli. Paper towel rolls. Those little tabs off the tops of cans. "The Only Poem," appearing in the Winter 2009 issue of Laurel Review, has that quality of an organized wilderness. Exactly what I like in poems, when they take their imagery out to the very edge of intelligibility, where they might break down to absurdity, but they just manage to keep it in bounds. It's a tricky place to be.

And I think I prefer my poets to at least appear to be keeping it all under control. Like John Ashbery? Not in control. He's that guy who can ride his bike through an intersection, even during traffic, and he'll make it through unscathed. It's all so easy for him, and it always has been. I believe in it, I'm grateful for it, beyond words, but I had to be persuaded that it's his charm, and it's always going to be there.

Foust, at least with these poems, feels like a man at the front of a third grade classroom, who can let chaos reign, and then, with a single word can turn all of them on task. "The Only Poem" hits this at the beginning of the second stanza. Just right. Just right.

Related Links:
The Laurel Review
Necessary Stranger

recommended: joy manesiotis

I think it's tricky to write a poem about science and selfishness. It's tricky because there aren't that many people that have thought about how selfish a human body can be, scientifically. Joy Manesiotis apparently did. And not just her selfishness, even that little embryo guy, trying to grab on to her uterine wall. Who does he think he is? She has her own identity to deal with here, embryo. Can't you be a little sensitive? Just a little bit?

This poem, "Small," in the Spring 2009 issue of Colorado Review, is quite a feat. I want to call it a scientific lyric, but not in that "fractal poetry" kind of scientificism (I'm sure Ms. Fulton wouldn't say hers is scientific, more mathematic), more like scientific as the type of language and perspective at thet poet's disposal.

Related Links:
Colorado Review (worldcat search for Colorado Review)
They Sing to Her Bones

recommended: mark irwin

I know I have a weakness for a concept elaborated further and further by a string of images that are almost impossibly connected. It's what draws me in to the Bob Hicok from Wednesday, and the Dobbie Gibson from last week. Mar Irwin's poem, "Red Feather," in the Spring 2009 issue of Kenyon Review does just that. "Sometimes I think the red feather's / the word is." And with this unlikely equation the poem leaps up to attention. Well, it might not be attention at that point. He has to make that red feather / is combination really touch, and, fortunately, for all of us, he does. When he walks into a "sun-ripe / woods" and the poem responds "red feather," I can't help but feel. What? I'm not sure. What is is is is just then? I might know, but I know the speaker does. And it may be that's what I need from this poem.

Related Links:
Kenyon Review (worldcat search for Kenyon Review)
Tall If (New Issues, 2008)