lots and lots of neat

recommended: geoffrey g. o'brien

It is fascinating to think about how grammar, and sentence, create a momentum by manipulating syntax. Those wily academic sentences that pile one subordinate clause onto another succeed when they know how to build the tension of the sentence's momentum, and then release it. It's a beautiful thing, really. Often enough it alone can stretch the intelligence, and widen the concept the writer has in mind.

Geoffrey G. O'Brien's poem in the September/October 2009 issue of Boston Review relies upon the momentum created by a sentence. But the sentences in O'Brien's "Poem Beginning to End" are not participating in a closed system. And what I mean is not just that the sentences can point in multiple directions, it's that the sentences that get started are derailed, usually as the function of a line break, but sometimes mid-line. But, and here is the magic of the poem, most of the time it doesn't feel as though there is anything grammatically irregular. Yes, there are distinct moments when I feel disoriented reading the poem, but O'Brien maintains enough consistency with the images, like men, a cup, some house, that I feel as though I'm still in the same general location.

And so I'm left with a vague sense of disagreement. I'm assuming the speaker can feel that all these people around him don't really have a common purpose, and they're not going to find one, because they're not all that interested in it. For me, this unhinged grammar is meant to make me feel unsettled, the same limbo that the speaker is in. Yes, meaning cannot be produced by a poem that defies the mechanics of communicating, but I can still claim a sense of what this all means. And for me there is value in that.

Related Links:
Boston Review
Green and Gray

recommended: forrest gander

I'm not at all interested in the occasion for this poem. The action described here, of "touching" someone with new-minty breath, is fashioned into something much more precious than it really is. I'm not sure I can imagine any poem that could take that gesture (a woman who has just smeared toothpaste on her upper and lower teeth), tie it to evaporation (the poem is titled "Evaporation 2"), and then claim that the speaker is "touched" in any way.

However, I am still recommending this poem, published in the May/June 2009 issue of Boston Review. The parenthetical asides, and their constant rhythm shifts, invigorates this poem. "the meanings (in increments) lie / bare (she says) (Oh, to her friend) // who is watching" That moment, "Oh to her friend" is where I feel the poem invents a new grammatical relationship (she says, "Oh to her friend") or the speaker says "Oh" in response to the meanings), and, at the same time, changes up the pacing of a reading. Mr. Gander continues to make these parenthetical comments, and they may be straightforward descriptive additions, or they may have this element of ambiguity, adding a graceful density to the poem's possible meanings.

Related Links:
Boston Review (read poem online here)
Eye Against Eye

recommended: jynne dilling martin

On the whole, a good group of "Discovery"/Boston Review Contest winners in the May/June 2009 issue. But I have to say that Ms. Martin's poem, "Reprucussions of the Current Import/Export Ratio," stands out as my favorite of the group. I like it when the theme of a poem is tied to the action of multiple images in a poem. For this poem what this means is that within the first two stanzas, the idea of "personal mystery" and "invisibility" are made central to the poem. They go together. Of course, they go together, but the art Martin uses in stating invisibility makes me feel a depth to the concept, partially because of the skipped rock sinking, which for me evokes a physical sensation that doesn't seem to have an end, or a bottom to the whatever this body of water is, only sinking.

But this depth is also created by the simplicity and specificity of the images. Turnip seeds sewn into coats and skipping stones sinking out of sight. They have such an easy coincidence, and that ease is what I think lends the poem authority. So that when Martin extends the image, I trust her, and I keep trusting her enough so that when it lands on these turnips sprouting out of gravesites, and a donkey (which had appeared earlier drawing mathematics in the dirt) who has its leg poised for more problems, and I'm not sure I can put in words who "you" are at the end, I'm willing to accept the speaker's need to pose a question without my knowing what all the parts of the question are about. Because this poem is more about the sentiment that drove her to ask a donkey anything.

Related Links:
Boston Review (or read the poem online)